Zoom Thanksgiving: The 7 best games to play on that holiday family call
Navigating family gatherings on Thanksgiving during the COVID-19 outbreak is going to be tricky. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t still be fun.
Typically a holiday in which large groups of people gather together for a day of over-eating and possibly a rousing game of football, the coronavirus pandemic has shrunk Thanksgiving down to smaller groups (and, in some cases, portion sizes).
Because of this, many families intend to celebrate Turkey Day together via Zoom, the video chat platform that’s become so pervasive throughout our culture. In order to keep spirits high, PennLive suggests the seven games below that you and your loved ones can play together-apart over the video platform, or indeed any other video platform of your choosing.
Play fairly, play wisely.
Charades is a party classic that’s appropriate for all ages. For those of you (somehow) unfamiliar with the game, essentially one person picks a word in a category and attempts to wordlessly act it out for their teammates to guess. The team with the most correct guesses wins. You can find the game online, or make your own list of categories to play.
Primarily associated with our society’s elders, bingo is actually a very fun game to play even when you’re under the age of 80. There are plenty of free printable bingo sheets online that each Zoom member can use as their own. Someone can be designated the caller (picking up random numbers however they please) and, boom, you got a rousing game of Thanksgiving Zoom Bingo!
You may not think a scavenger hunt over Zoom is doable, but humans are a clever, creative race. In order to pull this off, Life Between Weekends suggests parties choose a leader who calls out things to find. Each person then has one minute to find that item within their household, and whoever shows the item on their screen first wins that round. The player with the most points overall wins the game.
Pictionary is a game very similar to charades, only there’s, well, pictures involved. Essentially, people attempt to guess what each drawer is attempting to convey artistically. Whoever guesses correctly gets a point. To play this via video chat, you can use the Zoom Whiteboard function to make life a little bit easier.
Do you know the exact year the seatbelt was invented but have no idea what you ate for breakfast this morning? Then trivia’s the best game for you to play with your family this Thanksgiving. There’s plenty of useless information out there to quiz each other on should you want to go ahead and create your own game to play. Otherwise, there are a ton of ready-made trivia games online to choose from.
The rules of Werewolf may at first appear confusing, but once parties get a hang of it, it can become a seriously addicting game involving social deduction and battling wits. Each player questions the other trying to figure out whether or not they’re actually a werewolf until each nefarious individual is at last revealed. You can see how you can play on video chat, right here.
If you’ve ever been stuck in a car for a long period of time, you’ve definitely played The Alphabet Game. Essentially, traveling players try to spot an object starting with the letters of the alphabet in sequential order (for example, a stop sign for “S” followed by a “take right” sign for “T”). For Zoom purposes, one can perform the version in which two players have to have a conversation in which each sentence goes through the alphabet without messing up. (“Are you there?” “Bet your bottom dollar I am!”). It’s a pretty malleable game that can go on for quite some time and, better yet, really works that noggin.
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