We were recently contacted by Alisha, a university student who has created a website that allows users to play free board games together from a distance. Alisha created the site after adapting several popular board games so that she could play them with her grandma while they were separated during lockdown. Alisha asked us to pass this website on to you in case you wished to share it with your networks. This isn’t a resource that we are endorsing or were involved in creating but we wanted to draw your attention to it in case it proves useful. Find out all the details below.
Back during the first wave of Covid-19, Alisha adapted some traditional board games (such as Snakes & Ladders, Connect Four, Battleships, etc.) to play with her grandma, who lives alone and was struggling with the isolation during lockdown. Alisha’s grandma doesn’t have internet, so she adapted the boards to enable them to play with each other from afar. She really enjoyed playing them and said they gave her something to look forward to in her week.
This inspired Alisha to find a way to make these board games accessible to other people in a similar situation, by designing a website called Quick Quarantine Games (www.quickquarantinegames.com). All the board games are completely free to download and print out, can be played over the phone (with or without a video camera), and come with instructions on how to play without being able to see each other. The Boards have been adapted so that each player can use their own board, but can easily describe to the other players (on the other end of the phone or video call) where they have landed on the board etc. The games only require a few extra items, such as dice and playing counters, but many can be played with just a pen or pencil.