H

Hall of Games

The Hall family table — wherever everybody happens to be.

On the shelf

Tonight's games

Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, and they work on whatever anyone happens to be holding.

Who's at the table

The whole family, four households

The family part of this page is locked, so the names aren’t sitting on the open internet. Type the family word once and this phone will remember it.

Over a call

How this works with everyone spread out

The call and the game are two separate things, on two separate screens. That’s the whole trick, and it’s why nothing has to fight for room.

1

Everyone joins the Signal call on a computer — big faces, and it works from anywhere in the world.

2

One person opens a game on their phone and reads out the room code. Four letters.

3

Everyone else opens it on their own phone and types the code in.

4

Play on the phone, react out loud to the computer. The talking is the game.

Big faces on the computer, the game in your hand

Because the call lives on a laptop and the game lives on your phone, nothing overlaps and nothing gets covered up — everyone stays full size on the screen while you’re writing. It also means whoever’s furthest away only needs the call to hold up; the game itself is a few kilobytes and barely touches the connection.