1 Turn a Day phone or PC game with friends

The Game Room
1

I have a friend or two I would like to casually play a game with. Nothing serious, a quick turn or two a day, perhaps 5 minutes of my time but which ideally will be something fun to mull over all day.

Chess is out, I love it, no one I know will play with me.

Wordle, Words with Friends, Scrabble etc. is out, no one likes word games of any variety.

I have loads of games on Steam, but they won’t work for this.

VASSAL is a great way to play most games for free, but alas, most are too heavy for this and the VASSAL engine is a bit rough for the uninitiated.

And I am out of ideas, I hope you brought some.

2

I found a knockoff of Warlords, the old PC game, several years ago. I can’t remember the name of it, however. It had an option to play by email. You take your turn, then send the game file to your friend.

I only played single player, but you like turn based fantasy strategy you might look for it.

3

Ah, the name popped in to my head and I found it:

https://www.nongnu.org/lordsawar/

4

I think some versions of Civilization will let you play this way. I’m not sure which ones.

Reddit recommends something called Diplomacy. I’m not familiar with it myself, but they also recommend you play with strangers, because apparently it can get intense and you may lose real friends over it. This was emphasized multiple times.

5

Man, I use to play the heck out of Warlords & Warlords II.

It looks like the download link isn’t working on the site.
This appears to be where it is trying to link to and the Lordawar-setup at the bottom of the list downloaded nicely.

6

THEY like Civilization and play it together. I am a die hard fan of II and IV but there is little to no interaction so I do not know why they spend time playing it together.

Diplomacy is also fantastic, and we have played it. It can be tough on friendships.

7

There are a bunch of board games on https://boardgamearena.com/ – some require payment but a lot are free. Yucata - Sun Temple of the Maya is completely free
There are quite a few lighter games at both sites.

Brian
BGA is gear towards live play, but async is an option

8

Get Fritz 17! The hell with humans, you won’t need them.

9

SocialChess, Chess.com, and Lichess is where I go to get my Chess on. I even signed up to the US Chess Federation for some real tournament play, but unfortunately they gather too far from me and I haven’t quite found out how to jump in to an online tournament, it’s a bit like Double Dutch in that regard.

10

There’s It’sYourTurn where each player makes one move a day (or hour, or whatever) of backgammon, chess, checkers, and a bunch of other games. Back in the early 00’s I was addicted to it.