Hosting a Virtual Game Night!

It has been nearly a month of social distancing and it is more important now than ever to stay connected with friends and family.

Here is a quick guide of how to host a virtual game night, whether you are joining the library’s trivia night (happening tonight, April 17th at 8pm! register here), throwing on a movie or playing online party game. This is what you will need as the host:

1. Two Devices: One device will be the main screen that is being shared (think of this as the device/game you’re centered around during your in-person game nights) and the other device is for your audio/video functions.
2. Auxiliary Cord: If you want to project the audio from your main screen device, you’ll want to plug in an auxiliary cord from the Microphone port to the Speaker port
3. A game to play
4. A videoconferencing platform (Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, Facetime, etc.)

Setting up a shared screen:

If you have an auxiliary cord plugged into device #1 then you will just leave the mic and speaker on both devices. If you are not projecting the audio from device #1, then you’ll want to mute and turn off the speaker on device #1.

Your main shared screen could also look like this to play a board game:

Some ideas for games that work well virtually:

1. Jackbox Party Packs (there’s child friendly settings for families playing together)
2. Family Feud (lots of free answers found online), 1 person to host and teams made up of your friends or family!
3. Trivia – make your own trivia questions and quiz your friends, you can also make a "How Well Do You Know Me?" type quiz for some extra bonding time
4. Online games – search for site that allows you to play digital versions of your favourite games (games like Codenames or other board games have been made into websites/available on tabletop simulators) or with a digital standard deck of cards http://playingcards.io/.
5. Board games - Roll and Write type board games are great during social distancing since it usually involves rolling a dice/flipping a card and filling of a personal game sheet (think Yahtzee). You might have to scan the game sheets/find digital copies of the game sheet. The game shown above is called Welcome To (purchased through local Markham game store https://www.woodforsheep.ca/). Other board games like Trivial Pursuit would work well. 
6. Other games - charades, pictionary works well too

Tell us the types of games you’ve been playing!