Games to play with friends, online or on one device

The family favourites are here first. Snakes and Ladders and Ludo are pure races of the dice for two to four players. Bingo seats up to eight online, with the numbers called every few seconds. Dominoes, Go Fish and Five Dice are the games for a table of two, three or four, each with robots to fill the empty seats. Tic Tac Toe and Dots and Boxes take a minute a game and are good ones to start children on. Sea Battle hides a fleet on each side of the screen, and Word Duel gives both players the same hidden word and times the race to find it.

For a longer sit-down there are the classic two-player board games: Backgammon with its full rules and no doubling cube, Mancala in its Kalah form, Nine Men’s Morris, and the chess, checkers, Four in a Row and reversi that have been here since the board games arrived. Every one has a robot at Easy, Normal and Hard for when nobody else is free, and most let two players share one device, with a curtain between turns whenever a game has cards or ships to hide.

Online games are played through our server, which rolls every die, deals every hand and checks every move, so nobody can peek or cheat. A friend who loses their connection has a minute to come back, and a robot keeps their seat warm in the meantime. The games are casual (there is no rating), but members’ online results are kept on My stats. Nothing needs installing, every game works on a phone, and there is a short How to play box on each page if you have forgotten a rule.