The Best Multiplayer Mobile Games for Friends & Family
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The leaves are starting to fall and the weather is getting colder. It’s the perfect season to gather family and friends, light a fire (if you’ve got a fireplace!), and host a game night. While you could limit yourself to classic board games like Scrabble and Monopoly, you’ll have way more fun if you check out the world of mobile games.
Mobile games have revolutionized family game night. There are a plethora of options to choose from, including adaptations of classic board games, quick, hilarious party games, and chaotic cooperative experiences. Once you try a mobile party game, you’ll never want to play Monopoly again. Here are six of the best mobile games for family game night.
Heads Up! (iOS, Android)
Free, offers in-app purchases
Heads Up! is perfect for charades lovers. It’s essentially a fast, reverse version of the classic party game. One player holds a phone up to their head, which displays a random word drawn from a deck of cards. The rest of the players shout out clues to help the guessing player choose the correct word. The guessing player keeps going until they run out of cards, and a new player takes up the mantle.
Who Can’t Draw (iOS, Android)
Free, offers in-app purchases
Who Can’t Draw is an art-based variation of Telephone. The first player is given a word. They’ve got a short period of time to draw that word. Then, they pass the phone to the next player in line, who needs to figure out what the image is and copy it. The last player in line needs to guess what the original word was, and they can also nominate players for best and worst artists.
The game comes with a basic set of words, though you can expand that by buying more sets in the app (including licensed sets, like Pokemon).
Spaceteam (iOS, Android)
Free, offers in-app purchases
Cooperative games offer a great change of pace during family game night, and Spaceteam is the cream of the cooperative crop. Each player (the game supports up to 8) is assigned a control panel. They then work together (as a spaceteam) to stop their ship from exploding. Expect a lot of shouting, technobabble (think “beveled nanobuzzers” and “four-stroke pluckers”), chaos, and, probably, an unfortunate death due to ship explosion.
Psych! (iOS, Android)
Free, offers in-app purchases
A modified, question-based version of Balderdash, Psych! is a game of fooling your friends and family with ridiculous statements.
The game spits out a real trivia question, and each player submits a wrong-but-plausible answer. The player submissions and the real answer appear on the screen, and players must then figure out which answer is correct. Each time someone picks your answer, you get a point. If a player guesses the right answer, they also get a point. Psych! is zany, family-friendly, and a little bit chaotic—perfect for game night.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (iOS, Android)
$9.99
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a cooperative game. On one player’s phone is a bomb. The rest have bomb defusal manuals. The objective is simple: use the manuals to work together and defuse the bomb before time runs out.
Of course, it's not that easy. Only the defuser can see and manipulate the bomb, and only the other players (the "experts") can read the manual. The defuser needs to describe the bomb to the experts, and the experts need to guide the defuser based on a bomb they can't see. Chaos, cross-talk, and, hopefully, a defused bomb ensue.
The Jackbox Party Pack (PC, Mac, iOS, Android)
$24.99 - $29.99
Jackbox Games is the reigning king of the party game genre. They’ve published eight Jackbox Party Pack collections. Each pack comes with five simple, fun, and completely insane party games. From classics like Quiplash, Tee KO, and Drawful, to stranger additions like Survive the Internet and Guesspionage, the Jackbox world is chock full of hilarious, slightly bizarre fun.
It's worth mentioning that Jackbox requires a bit more setup than most games on this list. The games are meant to be hosted on a large screen, with players joining via their mobile phones. Only one person needs to own the game, and it's available on everything from Xbox to Amazon Fire Stick and Apple TV.
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