← Vela Parties

For younger players

Games for Kids

The problem with an hour of videos isn't the screen. It's that nothing is being asked of the child. Most of what follows is a group game — everyone in the room, each on a phone, talking to each other rather than at a feed. The rest is the sort of puzzle that used to come in a book bought at the till.

Ages 6 to 8 — with a grown-up playing too

At this age the game needs to be forgiving, turn-based, and impossible to lose badly.

Antakshari

Perfect for the youngest players because knowing one song is enough to contribute, and the phone handles the letter, the score and remembering what's been sung. Children who can't yet read a scoreboard can still take a full turn.

What it asks of them: listening for the last sound in a word, recalling songs on demand, and waiting for a turn.

Play AntakshariTeams · Hindi or English letters

Tambola

Number recognition dressed as a party game. A six-year-old scanning a ticket for 47 is doing genuine work, and they win exactly as often as the adults, which is the whole appeal.

What it asks of them: reading two-digit numbers quickly and tracking a grid.

Play Tambola2–30 players · a ticket on every phone

Ages 9 to 12 — the sweet spot

Ito

The best game on this site for this age, and it isn't close. Each player holds a secret number from 1 to 100 and has to describe it through a theme — "how scary is the animal" — without saying it. Then everyone plays in order, lowest first.

It is, quietly, an exercise in estimation and relative scale: is a crocodile a 90 or a 70, and how do you say that so someone else can place it? Children who freeze at "estimate the answer" in a maths lesson will do it happily here for an hour.

What it asks of them: ranking things on a scale, describing a quantity without naming it, and listening carefully enough to place their own card.

Play Ito2–10 players · 100 themes across 10 categories

Dumb Charades

Non-verbal communication under time pressure, which is a real skill and one children are often better at than adults. The film shows only on the acting player's phone, so nobody has to whisper it or leave the room.

Play Dumb CharadesTwo teams · the other team picks the film

Ages 13 and up

Judgement (Kachuful)

Worth singling out, because a card game teaches things a quiz can't. To bid well you have to estimate how many tricks a hand is worth, watch which cards have gone, and revise as the round unfolds — probability and inference, without anyone calling it that.

The reason it's usually out of reach for a beginner is that a table of experienced players won't wait while someone learns. Here the phone greys out the cards they can't legally play and says why, so a thirteen-year-old can join a real game on the first hand.

Play Judgement3–7 players · learn as you play

Bollywood Jeopardy

Splits by decade, which is the fun of it: pick the 1970s and the grandparents suddenly know everything. Cross-generational games are rarer than they should be.

Play Bollywood JeopardyTeams · pick a decade

On their own — the puzzle book, without the book

These are the ones a child does alone: the activity book from the shop by the till, except it generates a fresh puzzle every time instead of running out after a fortnight. Nothing to install, no account, and no way to spend money inside them. Each has a worked example on its own page, so a child who has never met the puzzle before can start without being taught.

From about six

• Sudoku — starts at 4×4, which a six-year-old genuinely finishes, and climbs to the full nine. Every puzzle has exactly one answer, so a child who reasons it out is never punished for not guessing.
• Word Search — thirty-eight themes and a new grid each time, with words running diagonally as well as across and down. Tap the first letter and the last; there is no dragging, which is what makes most word searches miserable on a phone.
• Number Match — clear pairs that match, or that add up to ten. The one from the back of every school exercise book, and quietly a lot of arithmetic.

From about eight

• Maths Sprint — sixty seconds of mental arithmetic that follows the child: three right and the numbers grow, one wrong and it eases off. It shows them every question they missed at the end, which is the part that actually teaches.
• 2048 — swipe, matching numbers join, and you keep doubling until the board fills. Doubling is the game, so the sequence it drills is the one worth knowing by heart. Three board sizes and an undo.

From about nine — and a new one every day

• Equals — find the hidden sum in six tries. Green means the right symbol in the right place, amber means it belongs somewhere else. Working out which sum fits the clues is real reasoning about number rather than recall.
• Word Ladder — turn COLD into WARM one letter at a time, and every rung has to be a real word.
• Daily Puzzle — sixteen words hiding four groups of four. Everyone gets the same one, which makes it something the family can do over breakfast.

Those last three change at midnight and are the same for everybody, which matters more than it sounds: a child can compare with a cousin in another city without either of them giving it away. All three also have a practice mode that never runs out, so finishing today's does not have to be the end of it.

A note for parents

The group games are the point, and they need two or more people in a room. The solo puzzles above are deliberately a different thing: quiet, finite, and above all finishable. A sudoku ends. A word search ends. None of them has a streak that punishes a child for missing a day, an animation designed to hold them there, or a next puzzle that begins on its own — when one is finished the natural thing to do is put the phone down, and that is the intention.

Nothing here has advertising aimed at children, in-app purchases, or a login. Nothing is collected either, so there is no profile of your child anywhere in this and nothing to ask us to delete later. Anything we add for younger players will be built the same way.

Every game here is free, runs in a browser, and needs no app or sign-up. One person creates a game, shares the link, everyone plays on their own phone.

Newer ones that work with children

All of these are on the family list, and the first three are co-operative — the whole table wins or nobody does, which takes the sting out of losing.

• In Sync — play your secret numbers in order with nobody allowed to speak.
• One Word — everybody clues the same word, and any two clues that match are thrown away unseen.
• Clover — one word to link Kettle and Volcano, with decoy pairs sitting there that it fits just as well.
• Fibbers — slide a card face down and say what it is; they can call you or look and pass the problem on.
• Most Likely To — everyone votes on who in the room is most likely to — secretly, so nobody follows the crowd.
• This or That — one person answers, everyone else guesses what they said; it turns into an argument about who really knows whom.

Playing more than one of these in an evening? Start a lobby — add everyone once and every game you open puts the same people straight into their seats. There is also a new puzzle every day.