Online Games to Play with Your Friends and Family

While it’s nice to meet new people on the internet, you can also use it to strengthen the bonds you already have with friends and family. Chatting and sharing videos are widely known ways to stay in touch, but playing games together is a great way too. You can choose to team up or compete against each other, and either way, it tends to build a whole new kind of relationship. Here are some of the best multiplayer games to try.

Games give you something to actually do together, rather than just something to talk about, which matters more than people expect. Below is a mix of quick, casual options and longer, more involved ones, so there’s something here whether you have twenty minutes or an entire rainy afternoon to spare.

Overwatch

If you’re into first-person shooter games, this one’s worth trying. Working together with a team, you either need to defeat the opposing side or defend a specific objective on the map. You can choose from a huge roster of characters, each with their own abilities, talents, and “skins” — different cosmetic looks for that same character. Every functioning team generally needs a tank (someone strong and hard to push around), a healer (someone who can support teammates in trouble), an offense role (players focused on attacking), and a defense role (players focused on protecting the rest of the team).

You can decide to play on the same team as your friends, or split into two opposing groups entirely. The second option is a genuinely fun way to settle, once and for all, who’s actually better at the game.

Civilization V or VI

This one is all about strategy and long-term planning, and it plays a bit like a digital version of Settlers of Catan. You take on the role of a nation’s leader, and it’s up to you to help that nation grow and thrive. To do that, you can form alliances with other players, or go to war with them instead. Just like with Overwatch, there’s a whole roster of leaders to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses worth keeping in mind while you play.

When you play this game with friends or family, you can either team up as allied civilizations, or each play entirely for yourselves. The second approach can lead to some genuinely fun rivalries, as long as nobody takes it too seriously.

Civilization V or VI takes quite a while to play through properly, which makes it especially fun for a sleepover or a rainy afternoon with a few hours to spare and nowhere else to be.

Minecraft

Younger kids in particular tend to love playing this with friends or older siblings. Minecraft is a construction game built around an underlying theme of adventure and exploration. Alongside other players, you can build genuinely beautiful structures, explore the Nether, and fight off zombies along the way.

Even though there’s a small combat element involving zombies and other monsters, the game as a whole stays pretty peaceful, letting everyone enjoy it at their own pace. The game mode can even be switched to “peaceful,” which removes the chance of running into a monster entirely — a good option for younger or more cautious players.

Fortnite

Of course, we can’t leave out Fortnite. This massive online multiplayer game is part third-person shooter, part building game. Using a mix of strategy and item upgrades, you can master some genuinely inventive building techniques to show off your skills.

The game has two main modes: “Battle Royale,” where you compete against hundreds of other players to be the last one standing, and “Save the World,” where you and your team fight off waves of monsters together instead.

Depending on which mode you play, you can either team up with your friends or go head-to-head to see who lasts the longest — both make for genuinely entertaining group sessions.

Call of Duty

This series is set in a war-torn setting where you have to defend your side against the enemy, with the specific setting varying from game to game. It’s a noticeably darker game tonally, but it can be a genuinely fun one for teens and adults to play together with friends. You can choose which side to fight on, and whether you want to team up with your friends or face off against them directly.

Age of Empires

This one’s an old classic. Age of Empires is a fairly approachable strategy game set across different historical periods, like the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, or the Middle Ages. You can play a random map, where your civilization takes shape across a procedurally generated landscape, or opt for a full campaign that follows an actual historical storyline instead. Campaigns take longer to complete than a random map, but they walk you through some genuinely important historical events along the way, which makes them worthwhile in their own right.

In this game, you can host lobbies that let friends join your game or campaign directly, so you can play through the whole thing together.

League of Legends

You’ve probably heard of this one already. League of Legends plays somewhat similarly to Overwatch, except from a third-person, bird’s-eye view of the map. It’s exclusively an online game, played either with and against computer-controlled bots, or with and against your friends, which makes it a fairly accessible option to jump into. Depending on the map you choose, matches can be three-player, five-player, or five-player with a randomly assigned character for everyone involved.

Throughout a match, every player earns gold, which can be spent on upgrades, special abilities, and general character strength. Everyone earns a small base amount automatically over time, with extra gold available for eliminating “minions” (small warriors belonging to the opposing side) or actual heroes on the enemy team.

Just like in Overwatch, each team generally needs an offense, a defense, a tank, and a healer. If you’re playing as a group, it’s worth agreeing in advance who’s taking on which role, so you don’t end up with an entire team stacked into just one category. The game works well across a range of ages too, making it a solid option for mixed groups of younger and older family members.

Jackbox Party Pack

If you want something far more casual that doesn’t require anyone to actually be “good” at video games, the Jackbox Party Pack series is worth a look. One person hosts the game on their screen (or shares it over a video call), while everyone else joins in from their own phone as a controller — no downloads needed beyond the host’s copy. The games themselves range from trivia and drawing games to ridiculous fill-in-the-blank prompts, and they tend to work especially well for mixed groups where not everyone games regularly, since the whole point is just laughing at each other’s answers.

Choosing the right game for your group

With this many options, the right pick usually comes down to two things: how much time you actually have, and how competitive your group tends to get. If you’ve only got twenty or thirty minutes, something like League of Legends or a round of Jackbox fits a lot better than starting a Civilization campaign you won’t be able to finish in one sitting. If your group gets genuinely fired up over competition, team-based games like Overwatch or League tend to channel that energy well, while something like Minecraft is a better fit if you’d rather keep things relaxed and collaborative instead.

Among Us

Among Us had a massive resurgence a few years back and remains a genuinely great pick for mixed groups of family and friends of different ages. Players work together on a spaceship completing small tasks, while one or more secretly assigned impostors try to sabotage the mission and eliminate crewmates without getting caught. Rounds are short, usually just a few minutes, and the social deduction element — accusing each other, defending yourself, trying to spot inconsistencies in someone’s story — tends to spark way more laughter and argument than the actual gameplay itself.

Codenames

If you’d rather play something calmer that doesn’t require downloading anything complicated, Codenames is a word-association game that works great over a video call using one of its many free online versions. Two teams compete to guess words on a shared board based on one-word clues given by a teammate acting as the “spymaster.” It rewards creative thinking and shared references, which makes it a particularly fun pick for a family group that already knows each other’s sense of humor well.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of games worth playing online with the people you already care about. And while the games mentioned above are some of the more popular picks, they’re certainly not the only ones out there. Find something that suits you and your friends or family, and enjoy a proper afternoon, or even a full day, of happy gaming together. If you’re feeling especially daring, you could even host a LAN party with your friends and game for two or more days straight. Have fun, and go for it.