The corona virus pandemic has drastically disrupted everyone’s daily life around the world, people have to give up on daily routines and going out for special occasions such as birthdays. Having your birthday in the middle of a global pandemic is unfortunate. But it doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun?
So how do you celebrate your birthday party during the pandemic?
Luckily, we live in a digital age where there are countless ways of celebrating your birthday with friends without even being in the same room with them.
Zoom can be the solution for you!
One of the most popular ways of celebrating a birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic is hanging out with your friends using Zoom. Zoom has quickly become the virtual happy hour app of choice. There are a lot of games that you can play, from trivia to word games. Here are a few games that we’ve singled out to help you with those virtual birthday parties:
We can start off our list with a good drinking game called “Most likely to..”
This drinking game is a very fun way to get to know your friends. You can come up with different “most likely to” scenarios such as “most likely to go bungee jumping” or “most likely to own a pub” – and decide which friend would be most likely to do that? Whoever it is, has to drink. Seeing the individual on the screen… makes everyone laugh! You can find a list of some questions here.
There’s also the classic “Never have I ever..”
I think most people are familiar with this game from their teenage years, but if you’ve never heard of it before, the rules are simple: One person says something that they’ve never done before and everyone who has done that thing takes a drink.
This game is perfect for your Zoom Birthday party because it doesn’t require any cards or points system, so you can play for however long you want. This game offers a lot of fun for the whole group and offers you a chance to get to know your friends better.
Cards Against Humanity
If you like the popular card game called Cards against humanity, you’re in luck! Playingcards.io made a free version of the card game called Remote Insensitivity that allows you to play it on your smartphone while you video chat with your group of friends. Getting started with the game is quite easy, you just have to go to their website, select the game and then text everyone the link to your personal game room and you’re all set!
Uno
The official Uno app is free for Android and iPhone users alike! You will have to make up your own drinking rules – or you can find some online – but once you’ve decided the rules then get ready for some action! Fair warning: adding drinks to the game can make the Draw 4 card even more divisive.
Around the world
This game is simple: one person needs a deck of cards and a camera aimed at the tabletop, everyone else just needs to watch the screens and call out their moves.
Then, the dealer places four cards face down and the rest of the players have to guess the colours of the cards. If you guess the card’s colour, you can tell another player to drink, but if you don’t guess the card’s colour, then you will have to drink. As the dealer reveals the cards one by one, the players guess the colours of the first card, then if the second card is higher or lower, then if the third card is between those two numbers, and finally, the suit of the fourth card.
Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based learning platform on which you can easily create quizzes and trivia games. You can login via your smart phone to answer the questions that are being projected in the Zoom meeting. So before you start, simply ask your quiz members to login to their Kahoot account first and enter the Pin Number that you will provide them. The Quiz master will then need to share their Zoom screen with you to load up the Kahoot questions. Make sense?
Final thoughts
All of the games mentioned above are suitable for virtual birthday parties, they can help you and your friends make the best of the current situation, and forget about social distancing for a while. What matters is that even though physically you are not in the same room, you can still enjoy each other’s company. If any of these games aren’t to your liking, you can always try the classic game of charades – you can simply split the group into two teams and use a charades idea generator to choose your words and phrases.