10 Best Co-op Mobile Games to Shake Up Your Awkward Summer BBQ

We’ve all been to a party where no one knows what to say, the pleasantries are over, and everyone is sitting looking at their phones, wondering if they can take the six pack they brought home with them. You’ve got an unprepared hostess, guests that don’t know each other, and the situation is becoming dire.

These mobile games will hopefully ease the boredom and shuffle you through that awkward stage of no one talking to each other. If there’s one thing we all love more than each looking at a screen, it’s a bunch of people looking at the same screen!

Heads Up

Get through as many words and phrases as possible before time runs out, but the person with the phone can’t see them—also because the phone is on her forehead. The rest of the team has to act, speak, sing, and dance out what’s there as the timer ticks away. Bonus: the game tapes you playing charades and making a fool of yourself. You should know this app as Ellen Degeneres’ brain child.

Spaceteam

Finally, a game that demands you yell about discharging the Fluxtrunions and infusing the tea. You and your teammates must work together to stop your space craft from crashing, and the catch is that your commands don’t match the dashboard on your phone, which means you have to instruct other players to turn a certain knob or crank down a capacitor that only they can see. This is a fun one if you enjoy shouting at your teammates and repeating strange technobabble.

This or That

A good time-waster and ice-breaker, this is basically �����Would you Rather..?” but for your phone. Legs as long as your fingers, or fingers as long as your legs? This or that – you choose!

Reverse Charades

Instead of one flapping their limbs around for the group, it’s the group dancing about for one person. The whole group must act out a phrase or word and get through as many as possible by the time limit.

King of Opera

A very strange, but funny, game that actually works best on a tablet. The King of Opera is a battle game where 1-4 players can play and each opera singer tries to get his spot in the limelight by attempting to push the others off of the stage. The player that is able to sing on stage the longest is the winner.

Psych

Also from Ellen Degeneres, in this game, you have to try to psych-out your opponents seemingly true answer to the prompt. The game provides the correct answer to a word meaning ‘to shimmy,’ but in order to win, you have to make the other players believe that your answer that you provide is the correct one. The person who can psych-out the most people is the winner.

Evil Apples

If someone forgot to bring Cards Against Humanity to this get together then this is a fine alternative. Evil Apples is basically the former, but in mobile game form. One person is a judge and the rest of the players need to fill in the blank with their obscene, gross, and inappropriate responses. The first to seven wins!

Party Doodles

Another guessing game, but this time let’s hope the party guests can draw. This game the players have to doodle their word or phrase and everyone has to guess what it is. Is that a car…or a sphinx?

Ready Steady Bang

This one is a simple game that pits two players against one another in a quick-draw setting. Two cowboys are ready to draw out their guns and you have to be the one to shoot first. This game is played on one device with each player on either side of the screen.

Bam Fu

Be wary of long finger nails or lots of rings for this game. Use one screen to poke at the numerous tiles on the tablet until your color is the dominant one. Up to four players can play this game and with everybody chaotically prodding at the screen, also be wary of your iPad zooming off the table.