Last year when I spoke about games in Da Ween, I talked about games that could be played in a group, or a family environment, in ways that didn’t need you to spend much money, and also could last for a few minutes more before some stupid asshole said ‘let’s play Cards Against Humanity.‘
Nowadays, there’s a good chance that you’re going to be doing your family gathering over discord or god help you, Zoom (augh). If that’s the case, then you might want to look into some game you can play, in a shared space that doesn’t require people to install games, or manage network settings, or click on ‘join’ and wait a lobby and we all know how long it can be to wait for Grandma to decide what her draft bans are on the way to the Rift.
Still, there’s a game you can play, on the internet, with your family, and if someone disengages or isn’t interested and you have other people still paying attention it won’t hold things up long.
This is a free game you can play in your browser, with your friends. At its core, it is a pictionary-style game, where you can draw with your tablet, your mouse, or your phone or whatever, and draw a picture, or guess at what someone else is drawing.
I’ve talked in the past about drawing games, and how they’re communication games? How the core of what you’re doing is trying to understand someone. With skribbl, the game you’re playting incentivises you to guess correctly quickly, so there’s a reason to want to engage people, but also, rounds are fast, so that if you’re struggling with guessing, there’s a push to start guessing together. You’ll see other people’s guesses, too, and, Wheel-of-Fortune style, you get some text to fill in so you know the size of the word, or breaks in the word, that you’re gunning for.
It’s a great little game, it’s free, it’s convenient.