Playing With Friends and Family, Wherever They Are

Most online domino games sit you down with strangers. This one is built the other way round: you play with the people you already know, because you send them a code and nobody else can get in. Here is how that works when everyone lives somewhere different.

The problem this solves

Mexican Train is a game families played around a table — at holidays, on caravan trips, on the same evening every week. Then people moved. The set is still in a cupboard somewhere, and the four people who used to play it are in three different states.

Playing online is not the same as being in the same room, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. But it keeps the game itself, and the hour spent on it, which turns out to be most of what people miss.

Getting everyone in

1. Create the game. One click — it names itself something like Warm Lynx.
2. You land on an invite screen with a six-letter code, and a link that carries the code for you.
3. Send the link to your people however you normally reach them. A group text works. So does reading the code down the phone to somebody who does not do links.
4. They sign in, put in the code, and appear in your game.
5. When everybody is in, you press Start.

The code is the whole security model, and it is deliberately simple: no lobby, no matchmaking, no strangers wandering in. If you did not send somebody the code, they are not in your game.

Playing alongside a phone call

The thing most families do, and the thing we would suggest trying first: put a phone call, a video call or a group text on at the same time. The game is quiet on purpose so the talking can happen wherever you already do it.

There is a small built-in trick for tables that are not on a call. You can change your display name mid-game, and people use it as a message — "Ann" becomes "Ann-nice move" for a turn and then goes back. It is not a chat window, but for a group of four it does a surprising amount.

You do not all have to be there at once

This is the part people are usually surprised by. There is no turn timer. The game will not pass for you, will not drop you for being slow, and will not expire. A game can sit half-played for a day and pick up exactly where it was.

So a family spread across time zones can play a round across an evening, or across a whole weekend, with people taking their turn when they get to it. One caveat, stated plainly because it matters: the game does not email you when it is your turn. If you want a nudge, you can allow browser notifications and leave the tab open, but otherwise people check back on their own. In practice most groups keep a group chat going and say "your turn, Mum" in it.

What each person needs

A browser and a free account. That is genuinely all — no app store, no download, nothing to keep updated, and nothing to pay. It works the same on a laptop, an iPad and a phone, so nobody has to have the same kind of device as anybody else.

If somebody in your group is nervous about the technology, the page for older players goes slower and covers the same ground.

If you have never played the game itself

Mexican Train is easy to learn and hard to be bad at, which is why it survives family gatherings. If half your group has never played, how to play Mexican Train covers the whole thing, and the online game blocks illegal moves anyway — so beginners cannot really go wrong.

Keep reading

• How to play Mexican Train — the whole game
• Playing with a big group, up to eight
• Playing on an iPad or tablet
• Playing with just two people