Family Fun You Can Have at Christmas Virtually

There may be loved ones you can’t be with this Christmas. But thank goodness we can still connect and share this special time with them virtually (anything is better than nothing in our opinion). But the virtual quizzes, played earlier on in the pandemic, have quickly lost their novelty. If you are looking for inspiration for games that you can play online, that isn’t a typical quiz, you’ve come to the right place. Below are just some ideas for games you can play with the family virtually this Christmas, and beyond.

Christmas scavenger hunts

The problem with spending time with each other virtually is we end up in a pretty fixed position for long periods of time. Shake up your Zoom chat this Christmas with a Christmas themed scavenger hunt. It’s perfect for little ones and older ones alike. Doing it at random intervals will make it energising and likely more engaging.  The key thing is to identify things most people will have, but will have to move around to get.  The best advice to give to your guests is to try and get as close as they can.  For example, when we tried this, many of our attendees did not have an orange, but got creative with various orange items, a Chocolate Orange and different fruits as an alternative.  It all adds to the fun.

Our Christmas items perfect for a scavenger hunt:

• Crackers
• Tin of chocolates
• Satsuma/ orange
• Bauble
• Elf
• Christmas card
• Carrot or mince pie

Wrap a present

This was actually quite easy to do virtually and again made for another engaging game with a bit of movement. The task: You need to wrap something up, whilst wearing oven mitts. Everyone competes at the same time and is judged on what’s wrapped, what it was wrapped in, how well wrapped it was and who was the fastest.  It’s a lot of fun as long as you don’t take the judging too seriously, ultimately it doesn’t matter who wins and losses, just that you all had a good time.

Virtual Codenames

Codenames is a great game and you may have played the boardgame version before- we love the new addition of Disney Codenames for a fun twist that features all of our favourite characters.

However, you can also play Codenames online for free thanks to horsepaste.com.  This fantastic website generates random games in over 10 different languages that you can play interactively.  Using your own code, you can all view the gameboard and play interactively over Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or whatever platform you may be using.

If you are not familiar with Codenames, you will need to first understand the rules of the game.  Luckily The Rules Girl has made a great video to explain them.

Virtual charades

Another game that gets people up and out of their seat is charades.  Just because you are in front of a screen does not mean you have to stay completely still.  We had a lot of fun playing this and it is so simple, children can join in too.

Play Charades makes it easy to generate words, hide them to stop everyone seeing, and has a built in timer and scoreboard.  You can also choose your difficulty level (Easy, Moderate, Difficult) and you can choose your topic (TV Shows, Songs, Movies etc.).

It is also available on Google Play for those who prefer to use mobile devices.

Pictionary

Similar to charades, get your family drawing, using their imagination and laughing, whether that be on a screen, or just using a pen and paper.

If you want others to play with, or to get a private room to play with your family, skribbl.io is a free tool that you can use to play real time online Pictionary which works great.

Among Us

Possibly the most popular game in the world right now, Among Us involves completing tasks in various locations as a team (using an online game code).  However, the twist is one (or more) of you are imposters and can kill your crewmates.

The aim of the crewmates is either to finish the tasks, or find the imposters, whilst the imposters must try to kill all the crewmates before being found out. This works particularly well over zoom as trying not to be caught lying when you’re face to face with people during discussion time can be great fun.

It is completely free on iOS and Android and available for a small fee on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Christmas cocktails

Some fun for the adults, and is a great way to top up your drinks in the process.

The game is simple: you have to create a cocktail in front of everyone. You have to tell us what goes into it, what you’re calling it, and you have to take a drink (your reaction will tell the judges whether it is good or bad!). The drinks should be judged on taste, presentation, name and most Christmassy (for a festive flair).

The beauty is, it can be anything! We had one group of friends quite literally make a coffee in front of us (with some festive twists) and in another party we had a glass of milk, carrot and mince pie, which they called ‘The Night Before Christmas’. It was really interesting to see the combination of flavours and seeing their reactions on drinking it, though, to be fair, everyone looked like they really enjoyed their creations.

There’s hundreds of other ideas online of other games you can play virtually, from creative word games (we recommend Just One- oneword.games), interactive online games such as a favourite we’ve reviewed before like Jackbox games, or using a tool like playok.com where you’ll be matched up against random players but can play classics like Backgammon, Chess, Ludo, Yahtzee plus others. We hope these game ideas will help make for fun and interactive games you can play with your loved ones this Christmas.