Party room

Open a room, put the code on the biggest screen in the house, and everyone joins on their own phone. The room sees the question. Only you see your answer.

Somebody opened a room and read six characters out.

Shown on the big screen. Optional.

What are you playing?

Build the night in the order you mean to play it. Fake News Factory runs inside the room on everybody's own phone; the rest open on their own page and the room keeps the score for them. Skip the whole question if you like, then add games and shuffle them about once people are in.

Nothing on the list yet.

Add whatever you fancy and put it in the order you mean to play it. You can change all of it later, mid-party included.

No account, no app. Everyone joins with a code. A free room holds 8 people and runs 5 games.

Bigger party?

A room is free up to 8 people. Past that it is a one-off pass for one party, bought when you need it and never again. Nothing here renews, and nothing here is a subscription.

  • Free

    $0

    • Up to 8 people
    • 5 games in an evening
    • Free, and no account

    Open one above. Nothing to do here.

  • Event Pass

    $5

    • Up to 30 people
    • Games all evening, no limit
    • One room, one night, no subscription

  • Event Pass

    $15

    • Up to 100 people
    • Games all evening, no limit
    • One room, one night, no subscription

A pass is emailed to you as a link, and that link opens the room whenever your party happens. Payment is handled by Stripe. Refundable until the pass opens a room, which is the point at which you have it in full. The terms say so in more words.

How it runs

  1. 1. Open the room

    You get a six-character code and a screen built to be read from across a room. Leave it on a laptop, a telly or a shared window in a video call.

  2. 2. Everyone joins

    They go to playantics.com/party, type the code and pick a name. No app, no account, no email. About ten seconds each.

  3. 3. Play, and keep score all night

    Line up the games you fancy in the order you want them, in the room or before it. The room runs Fake News Factory itself and keeps the score for the rest, so the evening has a winner rather than each game having one.

Never done it before? How to create a party room walks through all three steps, the three ways people join, and what to do when a code does not work.

How to run a room well

The rules take ten seconds to explain, so they are not what decides whether the evening works. These are the things that actually do, most of them learned by watching a room go flat.

Put the shared screen down

The most common way a phone-join game fails is that the host keeps holding the host screen. Half the room cannot see it, so the host starts reading everything aloud, and a game built around a shared screen collapses into one person narrating. Prop it on something. A laptop at the end of the table beats a television nobody can reach the remote for, and both beat the best phone in the house.

Read the code out, do not paste a link

The instinct is to drop a join link in the group chat. Resist it. Six characters read aloud gets eight people in faster than eight people finding the right chat, and it has a second effect worth more than the speed: everybody who joins is in the room. A pasted link travels, and a player joining from the sofa in another house changes the game into something else.

Close the round early, on purpose

There is a button to stop waiting, and it is there because one person taking ninety seconds costs everybody else ninety seconds of nothing. Dead air is what actually kills a party game, not a missing answer. If someone is still typing when the rest of the room has drifted into a side conversation, close it. They lose one round. The alternative is that the whole table loses the thread.

The winning lie is boring

The mistake almost every group makes in their first game is writing something funny. A funny answer is instantly identifiable as the made-up one, which means it scores nothing and its author has spent the round entertaining people rather than playing. The lie that wins is the one that sounds like it came out of the same reference book as the real answer: specific, flat and slightly dull. Save the jokes for the reveal, where everyone can see whose they were.

Nobody is sitting out

In a room past 8 people, only 8 write in any given round and everybody votes, with the writing passing round as the game goes on. Groups sometimes read that as being benched. It is the opposite: finding the true answer is worth more than fooling one person, so a round spent voting is a round spent on the higher-scoring half of the game. It also keeps the ballot short enough to read, which is the whole reason a large room stays playable at all. A free room holds exactly 8, so this describes a room opened with a pass: below that everybody writes every round and nobody is passed over in the first place.

If it goes quiet, shorten it

A room that is flagging does not need a different game, it needs a shorter one. Drop to three rounds and finish on a scoreboard while people still care about the scoreboard. Ending slightly too early is the one mistake in party hosting that nobody ever notices, and ending too late is the one everybody does.

Is this the same as Jackbox?

The joining is the same idea, and that is usually what the question means. The honest differences: this is free, there is nothing to install, and it works on a phone browser rather than needing a console or a computer running the game. What you give up is the production. There is no voiceover, no animation and no soundtrack, and those are a real part of what people are paying for. If a games night is the plan and you have twenty minutes to set up, buy the polished thing. If people are already in the room and you want something running before the mood passes, open a room.

Common questions

How does a party room work?
You open a room and get a six-character code. Everyone else goes to playantics.com/party, types the code and picks a name. Their phone becomes their private screen and yours becomes the shared one, so the room can see the question while each person answers it without anybody reading over a shoulder. Nothing is installed and nobody makes an account.
Do my guests need to download anything?
No. It runs in whatever browser is already on their phone. There is no app, no sign-up and no email address, which matters more than it sounds: a party gives you about fifteen seconds where everyone is willing to get their phone out, and an install screen spends all of it.
How many people can play?
A free room holds 8 and you need 3 to start. A one-off pass opens a bigger room for one night: $5 for up to 30, and $15 for up to 100. In a room past 8 only 8 people write in any one round and everybody votes, with the writing passed round as rounds go by. That is deliberate. Every writer adds a line to the ballot, and a sixteen-line ballot is not a choice, it is a reading exercise.
Is it free?
The room is free up to 8 people and 5 games in an evening, with no account, no email address and no card. Past that it is a one-off pass for one party: $5 for up to 30, and $15 for up to 100, with no limit on games and nothing that renews. Worth saying plainly, because rooms used to be free up to fifty and that is still the answer some search results and assistants will give you.
Is this the same as Jackbox?
The joining works the same way and that is the part people mean when they ask. The differences are that this is free, there is nothing to buy or install, and it runs on a phone browser rather than needing a console or a computer running the game. What you give up is the production: no voiceover, no animation, no soundtrack. If you want a polished show for a games night you have planned, buy Jackbox. If people are already in the room and you want something running in the next minute, this is faster.
Can I use it over Zoom, Meet or Teams?
Yes, and it is one of the better ways to use it. Share the host screen in the call and read the code out. Everybody joins on their phone rather than in the call, which is what keeps it playable: the private half never goes through the video window, so there is no way to accidentally screen-share your own answer.
What happens if somebody's phone dies or they refresh?
They come back as themselves. The phone remembers which player it is for that room, so a refresh, a locked screen or a browser tab being evicted does not cost anybody their score. If someone genuinely has to leave, the host can remove them and the room stops waiting.
Can we play more than one game in a room?
That is what the line-up is for. The host builds a list of games in the order they mean to play them, and can reorder it, drop something or add another game at any point in the evening. Fake News Factory is the one the room runs itself, and when it ends the room keeps the scores and goes back to the list. Everything else opens on its own page and the host awards the points back in the room, so an evening that plays Charades and a wheel spin and one room game still has a single running total at the end of the night rather than three unrelated ones.
Is anything I type stored?
Only for the evening. A room and everything in it deletes itself about a day after it was opened. There are no accounts, so there is nothing to log into and nothing to delete afterwards. Names and answers are visible to the other people in the room, which is the point of a party game, so treat the screen as public.

Games that need no room at all

A room is worth opening when everybody has a phone out and a screen to share. Most of the site is built for the other case, where one phone gets passed around a table.