Online Drinking Games to Play Over Video Call

A video call removes most of what a drinking game normally relies on: the shared table, the cup in the middle, the ability to see who moved first. What is left is talking, counting, pointing, and reacting to what is on screen, and that is enough for a good night if you pick the right games. The ten below are the party drinking games that lose the least over a call. Each one comes with its normal rules and the adjustments for playing it through a laptop. The section at the end covers turn order, muting, and lag, which are the three things that actually go wrong.

Never Have I Ever

The safest choice for any call. Everyone holds up ten fingers on camera. Going around the screen, each player says something they have never done, and anyone who has done it drops a finger and drinks. The first player to lose all ten fingers finishes their drink. The full rules and a list of 40 questions are on the Never Have I Ever page.

Video call adjustments:

• Keep your hand in frame. Fingers are the scoreboard and a hand below the camera is a hand nobody trusts.
• Turn order is the tile order on the host’s screen, read out once at the start.
• Use the “nobody drinks, the speaker drinks” rule, because on a call the safe statements are even more tempting.
• The storytime rule (if only one person drinks, they tell the story) is better online than in person, because only one person can talk at a time anyway.

Most Likely To

The host reads a prompt (“most likely to get arrested on holiday”), on three everyone points at whoever fits it, and the player with the most fingers on them drinks. A tie means both drink. The prompts and the rules are on the Most Likely To page.

Video call adjustments:

• Pointing at a screen is ambiguous, so say the name as you point. The host counts the names, not the fingers.
• Have the host write twenty prompts before the call. Reading from a list keeps the game moving and stops the “um, most likely to… hang on” pauses.
• If the group is over six, have each player nominate out loud in turn instead of all at once. Slower, clearer.
• Ties mean everyone named drinks, which on a call is the easiest way to settle it.

3-6-9

The Korean counting game. Players count upward from 1 in turn, and on any number containing a 3, 6, or 9, the player claps instead of saying it. A number with two of those digits, 33 for example, takes two claps. Say a number you should have clapped, or clap when you should have spoken, and you drink. The full rules are on the 3-6-9 page.

Video call adjustments:

• Count slowly and leave a beat between numbers. Lag turns a quick count into two people saying 14 at once, and nobody can tell who was first.
• Claps need to be on camera, not just audible, because some microphones cut them out.
• The host is the referee, and the host’s screen is the truth. Arguments about lag end there.
• Start again at 1 after a mistake rather than continuing; on a call the restart is the only way to get everyone back in sync.

Cheers to the Governor

Count from 1 to 21 around the call, one number per player. On 21, everyone raises their glass, says “cheers to the governor,” and drinks. The player who said 21 then replaces a number with a rule (clap for 7, say 12 in French, reverse direction on 9). The rules stack until the group cannot get to 21. Full rules and twenty rule ideas are on the Cheers to the Governor page.

Video call adjustments:

• Rules that involve pointing, clapping, sounds, standing up, or other languages all work on a call. Rules about swapping seats or touching the floor do not, so the rule-maker should stick to the first kind.
• Have one person keep the list of rules in the chat window. Everyone can see it and nobody can claim 11 was a clap when it was a bark.
• Allow a two-second pause per number. The restart rule on a mistake already slows the game, and lag penalties make it worse.
• “Reverse direction” online means reversing the tile order, so say it out loud.

Medusa, video call version

At a table, Medusa is heads down, heads up on three, and anyone who makes eye contact with another player takes a shot. Over video nobody can tell where anyone is looking, so the call version replaces eye contact with a name. Everyone looks down; on “Medusa” everyone looks up and says one other player’s name at the same time. If two players say each other’s names, they both drink. The table rules are on the Medusa page.

Video call adjustments:

• Names are shouted, not typed, and they have to be said within a second of the count. The host calls anything slow as a miss.
• If the group is four or fewer, it pairs up too often. Six to ten is the right size.
• Use sips, not shots. The table version needs shots to feel dangerous; the call version runs faster because there is no pouring, so keep the drink small.
• Cap it at ten rounds. It is a warm-up for the call, not the whole evening.

Truth or Drink

One player asks another a question. The player answers honestly or drinks instead. That is the whole game, and the quality of the night depends entirely on the questions. Questions go around the call in tile order so nobody gets ganged up on. The commercial card game of the same name exists, but the game predates it and needs nothing.

Video call adjustments:

• Keep the question and the answer in the same thirty seconds. On a call the pause before a hard question is longer and the rest of the group drifts to their phones.
• A drink instead of an answer ends the question. No follow-ups, no “but what about.” The rule is what makes people willing to play.
• For a group that does not know each other well, let the host screen the questions by having them sent privately first.
• Agree on a pass-for-free rule: each player gets one question they can refuse without drinking. We always add this one on a call where people do not all know each other.

Drink While You Think

The celebrity name game. The first player says a celebrity name. The next player has to name a celebrity whose first name starts with the first letter of the previous surname (Tom Hanks leads to Harrison Ford leads to Florence Pugh), and they drink for as long as they are thinking. A name with the same first and last initial (Danny DeVito) reverses direction. A one-name celebrity (Prince, Madonna) lets the player skip the next person.

Video call adjustments:

• The drinking-while-thinking rule is the part that suffers from lag, because “they have stopped drinking” and “they have said a name” arrive out of order. Have the thinking player hold their glass up in frame and lower it when they have an answer.
• Set a ten-second limit. Thinking drinks on a call run long, and the limit makes it a sip rather than a penalty.
• No phones for looking up names. This is the rule that has to be said out loud on a call, because nobody can see the second screen.
• Repeats drink and pass; the game continues from the same letter.

Would You Rather

One player offers two options (“would you rather lose your phone for a month or your car keys for a week”). Everyone else picks one, and the minority drinks. Ties mean the question-setter drinks for setting a bad question. It is the lowest-pressure game on this list and the one to go to when the call needs to slow down.

Video call adjustments:

• Vote by holding up one finger or two on camera, all at the same time on the count of three. Voting out loud lets people follow the crowd.
• The host counts. A close vote is settled by the host’s screen.
• Bad questions drink, so the question-setter is encouraged to make both options hard.
• Keep a few prepared questions in the chat for when the group dries up.

Jackbox and Among Us with drinking rules

The party games built for screens (the Jackbox packs, Among Us, Gartic Phone, Codenames online) already solve the hard part of a video call, because the game runs on its own and the call is just for talking. Drinking rules are added on top. These are ours, written to fit the games rather than taken from anywhere.

• Jackbox (Quiplash, Fibbage, Drawful): drink if your answer gets zero votes, drink twice if the winning answer was about you, and the last-place player at the end of a round finishes their drink.
• Among Us: a crewmate who gets voted out while innocent drinks, everyone who voted for them drinks twice, and an impostor who wins makes everyone else finish their drink.
• Any game with a scoreboard: the bottom player drinks at the end of each round, and whoever is top after the last round picks someone to finish theirs.
• For all of these, mute the game audio on the call and keep only the voice chat, or nobody will hear the vote.

Screen-share movie game

One person shares their screen and plays a film; everyone drinks to the same set of rules. It is the best game on this list for a call that is going to run all night, because it needs nothing from anyone except attention. The rules are the normal movie drinking game rules: pick five or six triggers before you press play (a catchphrase, a character doing their thing, a title drop) and drink on each. Ready-made rule sets for ten films are on the movie drinking games page.

Video call adjustments:

• Screen share audio has to be enabled in the sharing settings, or everyone hears the film through the host’s laptop microphone and it sounds like a cave.
• Start the film at the same second. Shared screens lag by a few seconds for some people, so agree that the host’s screen is the truth and a drink called from the host’s screen counts for everyone.
• Keep the rule count at five. Nobody can read the chat and watch the film and drink.
• A title drop or a catchphrase is a drink for everyone; a rule that happens constantly (a character blinks) is a sip.

Making it work on a call

Three things go wrong on every video call drinking game, and all three have fixes.

Turn order. A table has a left and a right. A call has a grid that looks different on every screen. Fix it once: the host reads the order of tiles on their screen at the start, everyone writes it down or pins it in the chat, and nobody changes their view. Every game above that goes around the circle goes in that order. If someone drops off and rejoins, they go back to their old slot, not a new one.

Muting. Anyone not speaking is muted. It sounds unfriendly and it is the only way the counting games work, because background noise on one call swallows the claps on another. The host unmutes for the group moments (the toast on 21, the Medusa shout) and mutes again. For the talking games (Truth or Drink, Never Have I Ever) leave microphones open but agree that only one person talks at a time, and that person is whoever’s turn it is.

Lag. There is no fixing lag, so pick games that do not care about it. Never Have I Ever, Most Likely To, Truth or Drink, and Would You Rather cannot be broken by a two-second delay. 3-6-9, Cheers to the Governor, and Drink While You Think can, which is why each has a slow-down rule above. For anything that comes down to “who was first,” the host’s screen decides, and the decision is final. The group that argues about lag is the group that stops playing.

One more: keep the call to eight. Above that, every lap takes too long, the grid gets small, and half the players are watching someone else’s dog. Two calls of six is a better party than one call of twelve.

Tips

• Everyone pours their own drinks, so everyone decides their own size. Make it a sip, and say so at the start. The games above trigger every minute or two for an hour and a half, and nobody on a call can see when someone has had enough, so the pacing has to come from each person. A glass of water next to the drink, and a rule that “I’m out” ends the night for that person with no questions.
• Start with a talking game and move to a counting game. A call needs ten minutes of warming up before anyone can clap on 13, and Never Have I Ever does that job.
• Have the prompts ready. The difference between a good online game and a bad one is whether the host has twenty Most Likely To prompts in a note, and it takes five minutes to write them before the call.
• End on the movie. When the counting games have worn the group out, the screen-share film lets people stay on the call without having to do anything, which is how a video call ends well instead of just ending.