Free games to play on a Zoom or Teams call
One link in the chat, everybody playing before the small talk runs out.
Most lists of games to play on a Zoom call are lists of things to do on a Zoom call - charades, two truths and a lie, a quiz somebody has to write first. Those work, but they all put the same person in charge of running the whole thing, and they fall apart the moment somebody joins late.
This list has a narrower filter. It only includes games that are free, run in a browser tab, need no account from anyone, and start when one person pastes a link into the meeting chat. Nothing to install, nothing for IT to approve, nothing to schedule. Microsoft's own Games for Work app for Teams was retired in 2024, which is a decent argument for not depending on anything built into the meeting software in the first place - a plain URL keeps working.
A note on what this site is, because the name misleads: Board for Teams is not board games. It is short browser games, several of them live multiplayer rooms you join from a shared link, and those are the ones that belong on a call.
What to put in the meeting chat
Whisper Chain
Online Drawing Telephone Party Game
The best pick for four or more people and the closest thing here to a real party game. Draw the prompt you are given, the next person captions your drawing, the next draws the caption, and you all read the wreckage back together at the end. Up to ten players, and the reveal exports as a single image to paste into the channel afterwards.
Stroop Sprint
Stroop Effect Color Word Test
Sixteen rounds of naming the colour a word is printed in rather than the word itself. Four minutes, explained in one sentence, and dependably funny because everybody is bad at it. Up to eight players. Skip it if anyone in the group is colour blind.
Paint Mix
Daily Color Mixing Puzzle
Deduce which pigments were mixed to make a target colour, racing up to eight people through the same rounds. The thinking game of the set - it suits a group that would rather be clever than fast, and it does not punish the person on a laggy connection.
Kityt
Reaction Time Game
A fifteen-round reaction race for up to eight, over in about three minutes. This is the one for a meeting that ended early rather than a slot you booked. It finishes with a replay of everyone's run as kittens on an obstacle course.
Blink Shift
Daily Spot the Difference Game
Study a grid, watch it blink, spot what changed. Its Team mode hides several changes at once specifically so a room can shout them out around one shared screen - so this is the pick when half the group is in a meeting room on one laptop.
Flip It
Memory Matching Game
Memory pairs on a single screen with a ten-miss budget instead of a timer, so the call can argue about where the card was without being punished for taking too long. Screen-share it and let people call the moves.
Tic Tac Toe
Play Online With a Friend
Two people, about a minute. Mostly useful as the fastest possible check that link-sharing works through your company's network before you start something longer.
Other things that work well on a call
Several of these are better than anything here for a specific size or type of group. All are genuinely playable on a video call.
skribbl.io
Free, ad-supported
The default free draw-and-guess game and still the best for a big group that wants competitive scoring. Always create a private room for work - the public lobbies are unmoderated and the ads are not safe for a shared screen.
Gartic Phone
Free, ad-supported
Drawing-telephone where everyone draws at once in parallel chains, so nobody waits and a large group stays busy. The album at the end is excellent. Nobody watches anybody else during a round, which is either the feature or the flaw depending on your group.
Codenames (codenames.game)
Free
A free browser build of the word-association game. The best thing on this whole page if you have twenty-five minutes and can split evenly into two teams, and the only one with real strategy in it.
Jackbox Games
Paid
The best-produced party games there are, and they were built for exactly this - one person screen-shares, everyone else plays on a phone. You have to buy a Party Pack and one person needs to run it, which is the only reason this page exists.
Kahoot!
Freemium
The quiz platform everybody already recognises, and the realistic answer for an all-hands of thirty or more. Somebody has to write the questions beforehand, so it is far too much setup for a casual Thursday.
Gather
Freemium
A 2D virtual office where video chat follows where you walk, with small games built in. It replaces the call rather than running alongside it, so it is a bigger commitment - but it is much better than Zoom for a mingling event.
netgames.io
Free
A small unmonetised hub of link-shared party games including Codenames, Spyfall and Sketchful. Plain, reliable and account-free. Worth a bookmark for the nights when you want something different.
Running it so it does not die in the first minute
Decide the length before you decide the game. Five spare minutes is Kityt or a Stroop Sprint round; a booked half hour is Whisper Chain or Codenames. Starting a twenty-minute game with eight minutes left is the single most common way these fail.
Have the host share their screen for the room view and everyone else play on their own device. Trying to run a whole multiplayer game through one shared screen is what makes people quietly stop participating.
Post the link in the meeting chat, not in the calendar invite. The people who join are the ones who saw a link thirty seconds before it started, every time.
And say out loud that it is optional. A game somebody has been told to play is a meeting.
Frequently asked questions
Do these work on Microsoft Teams as well as Zoom?
Yes. None of them are Zoom apps or Teams apps - they are ordinary web pages shared as a link, so they work identically on Teams, Meet, Slack huddles or anything else with a chat box.
Do people need to install or approve anything?
No. Everything on this site opens in a browser tab with no account and no install. The live multiplayer games do need a WebSocket connection, which a small number of very strict corporate proxies block; if a room will not connect, the single-screen games still work over screen share.
What works for a group of twenty or more?
Not the live rooms here - they cap at eight or ten players. For a large group, use Kahoot, or screen-share a single-screen game like Blink Shift Team mode and let the room call out answers.
How long do these take?
About one minute for Tic Tac Toe, three for Kityt, four for Stroop Sprint, ten to fifteen for Paint Mix or Whisper Chain depending on group size.