Board Game Apps Worth Playing With Friends Online

During a long winter when our group could not meet in person, we moved our monthly board game night online. The first attempt was a disaster: four people, three different apps, one person who could not log in and a game that took forty minutes to set up. By the third month we had settled on a small set of apps that actually work for a group of friends, and we still use them even now that we can meet in person again.

Digital board games are a different experience from sitting around a table, but the best ones capture a surprising amount of it. Here is what we learned about choosing them.

What makes a board game app good for friends

A board game app for a friend group needs different things from a single player strategy game. The most important are:

Easy invites. Friends should be able to join from a link or code without creating three accounts.
Cross platform play. Some of your friends will be on phones, some on laptops.
Automatic rules. The app should handle scoring and rule checking so nobody has to read a manual.
Asynchronous play, ideally, so a game can continue over several days.
A fair price. One purchase that everyone can use, rather than each person paying separately, is best.

Our favorite types of games online

We tried most of the popular options. These categories worked best for our group:

Type	Why it works online	Good for
Classic abstract games	Simple interfaces, short turns	Quick games between two friends
Card drafting games	Simultaneous turns keep everyone busy	Groups of three to six
Cooperative games	The team works together over voice chat	Mixed skill groups
Word and drawing games	Very social, easy to learn	Larger groups and casual players
Heavy strategy games	The app handles complicated rules	Dedicated players with time

Cooperative games were the biggest surprise for us. Working together against the game over voice chat felt more social than competing, and it kept less experienced players involved.

What we avoided

Not everything that calls itself a board game app is worth your group's time. We dropped several quickly.

Apps with heavy advertising broke the flow of every turn. Apps that required every player to buy the game separately put off our more casual friends. And some apps borrowed so much from casino design, with daily reward wheels, random card packs and timed bonuses, that they felt less like a board game and more like the quick fire chance games you find on sites like ankertoto. There is a place for those, but it is not our monthly game night, where the point is the strategy and the company. Reading the odds in loot box mechanics explains why those random reward systems are so compelling and how to spot them.

The advice I disagree with: digital versions ruin board games

Among dedicated board game fans, you will often hear that digital versions ruin the experience. The physical components, the table talk and the face to face contact are the whole point, the argument goes, and apps strip them away.

I understand this view and partly share it. A physical game night is better. But the choice for most groups is not between a digital game and a physical one. It is between a digital game and no game at all, because friends have moved away, have young children or cannot all get together in one place on the same evening.

Digital board games also have real advantages. The app handles rules and scoring, so arguments about rules disappear. Setup takes seconds. Asynchronous games let busy friends take a turn whenever they have ten minutes. For our group, the apps did not replace our physical game nights. They kept the group together between them.

Paying for apps as a group

Cost was a bigger issue than we expected. Some apps are free with optional purchases, some charge once per player and some sell expansion packs that only work if everyone owns them. Before committing to an app, we started checking three things: whether one person can host a game that others join for free, whether expansions are needed by everyone or only the host, and whether the free version has ads during play.

Apps where one host purchase covers the whole table were the clear winners for us. We split the cost of those between the group, usually a few dollars each, and rotate who buys the next one. It keeps the evening fair for friends on tighter budgets and stops the group drifting toward only free games, which are often the ones with the most aggressive advertising.

Making online game nights work

A few things made a big difference for us:

Use voice chat, not text. Talking while playing is most of the fun.
Pick the game in advance and share the link beforehand, so nobody spends the first half hour installing things.
Start with short games of 20 to 30 minutes until everyone is comfortable with the app.
Rotate who chooses, so everyone gets to play their favorite.
Keep one simple backup game for when someone cannot get the main one to work.

Simple games often work better than complicated ones online, for reasons covered in why simple games still win against AAA complexity.

Our group still meets online once a month, between our in person game nights. Last month five of us played a cooperative game for two hours on a Tuesday, from four different cities. It was not the same as sitting around a table, but it was very close. More game picks are in our Genre Guides section.