Ever­y­bo­dy knows it at the mo­ment: lei­su­re ac­ti­vi­ties are re­du­ced and the pos­si­bi­li­ty to meet fri­ends is li­mi­t­ed – espe­ci­al­ly game nights at one ta­ble are not pos­si­ble at the mo­ment. So all we can do is sit at home alo­ne, wait and hope that ever­y­thing will get bet­ter in a few months? 

Not ne­ces­s­a­ri­ly. 

Be­fo­re we star­ted with Co­ro­na and its ef­fects, we had a game night every se­cond Tues­day at the TecAlliance. The­re we met af­ter work and en­joy­ed one of the count­less board games. Espe­ci­al­ly po­pu­lar were “Se­cret Hit­ler” or “Were­wolf” evenings. 

On Tues­day, 12th of may at 7 pm it was time again for me and se­ven col­le­agues: The first games night sin­ce Co­ro­na – online. 

A game night in times of the pan­de­mic? 

Yes, the In­ter­net makes it possible. 

One thing you have to cla­ri­fy in ad­van­ce is the com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on. Sin­ce I am a ga­mer mys­elf, it was clear that it will be eit­her Team­Speak or Dis­cord – both are free ?. The next step was to find a sui­ta­ble game. The­re are some free games on the in­ter­net that you can play tog­e­ther with fri­ends. “City, coun­try, ri­ver on­line” and “Skribble.io” are just two of many ex­amp­les. We our­sel­ves agreed to buy a game – the Ta­ble­top Si­mu­la­tor. This game si­mu­la­tes a ta­ble whe­re the play­ers can “sit down”. The­re are games that you know from home: Ch­ess, Uno, Mo­no­po­ly, … But the­re are also games that I have never he­ard of. Anno Do­mi­ni is one of them. It’s about ar­ran­ging in­ven­ti­ons ac­cor­ding to their chro­no­lo­gi­cal order. 

Is play­ing on­line even fun? 

Yes, it was a lot of fun. We star­ted with “Se­cret Hit­ler”, whe­re a lot of things went wrong, not least be­cau­se we still had to get used to the con­trols. That cau­sed a lot of laugh­ter. With “Anno Do­mi­ni” ever­y­thing went bet­ter. At the end of the evening we all agreed that it was re­al­ly a suc­cessful evening and that we would like to re­peat it if we had the chance. 

In sum­ma­ry, we can say about our first on­line game night that it was very well re­cei­ved. It’s so­me­thing com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent when you play in the same room with se­ve­ral peo­p­le, but it’s a good al­ter­na­ti­ve for that. So my re­com­men­da­ti­on to all tho­se who are stuck at home: Grab some fri­ends, find a com­pu­ter game and play it together. 

We have also de­ci­ded that we will have game nights at least every two weeks. Be­cau­se one thing is for sure: We all ha­ven’t laug­hed and tal­ked as much as we did that evening for a long time!