Super Duper Gamer Team Entertainment: party games

It's GameNight! Grab your favorite people, your favorite meal, drinks, snacks and... fun it up if you have the time. And if the best everybody can give you is an hour or so, take it. Sometimes you don't need an entire Friday or Saturday night. You just need enough time to eat something good, talk a little trash (just a little), get a few laughs in and find out who in the family gets way too competitive over a party game.

That's one of the reasons I like what Amazon is doing with Amazon Luna and GameNight. Instead of making everybody learn a complicated controller or asking every person in the house to own a console, GameNight is built around games that are easy to get into together. In many of them, the phone already sitting in your pocket becomes the controller.

And now the idea of “together” doesn't necessarily mean everybody has to be sitting on the same couch.

Make GameNight an Actual Night

I think part of the fun is making a little event out of it.

Order pizza, cook burgers, stuff mushrooms, grab wings, make tacos or... Barbecue. Pop up some popcorn even. If it's just adults getting together, grab whatever drinks everybody enjoys and get your sip on. If the kids are involved, whip up their favorite snacks and maybe make some delicious punch together.

The game is part of the night, but... it doesn't have to be the entire night.

You could eat first, play for an hour and call it from there. You could play a few rounds while everybody is finishing dinner. You could make Friday night GameNight once or twice a month without turning it into another thing everybody has to squeeze into an already packed... schedule.

That's important because family fun doesn't always have to be some huge production. It surely wasn't that back in the day... and we still had a blast. Sometimes an hour where everybody is getting their laugh on is enough, especially the way a work week can through all types of curve balls at ya.

Everybody Can't Make It Over? Do It Anyway

This might be my favorite part of the newer Luna setup.

Amazon Luna's Remote Play lets a host bring friends or family into supported multiplayer games even when everybody isn't in the same place. So maybe your brother is across town. Your cousin moved to another state. Your friend got off work too late to drive over. Somebody has the kids and isn't leaving the house tonight.

That doesn't automatically cancel GameNight anymore.

Here's another idea: everybody picks up or makes the same kind of food.

Tell everybody, “Friday we're doing pizza and GameNight.” Or tacos. Or wings. Everybody gets their food wherever they live, gets comfortable, and then meets up online. Now you're basically sharing dinner and GameNight without anybody having to fight traffic to get there.

You can even get everybody on a regular voice or video call while you're playing if you want more of that sitting-around-the-table feeling. Half the entertainment is usually hearing somebody explain why the game “cheated” them anyway.

Here's How Luna Remote Play Actually Works

The process is pretty close to what you would expect, but there are a couple of important details.

The host signs into Amazon Luna with Prime/Luna Standard or Luna Premium and opens the Remote Play section.
Select Generate Code. Luna creates a unique six-digit invitation code.
Send that code to the friends or family members who are joining you.
Each guest signs into Luna using an Amazon account, opens Remote Play, enters the six-digit code and selects Join.
Once at least one guest has joined the lobby, the host launches a compatible game and gets the party started.

The host can invite up to seven guests, although the actual number of people who can actively play depends on the game. Your guests don't need their own Prime or Luna Premium subscription to accept the invitation. They do need an Amazon account and a supported Luna device.

One thing to know before you start planning the whole night around everybody's phones: the Remote Play lobby itself isn't supported on mobile devices. Players joining remotely will want a supported Luna device available. If you're getting Luna set up on the living-room screen, you can also get Luna on your TV.

GameNight titles can still use compatible phones and tablets as controllers once you're playing. Android users can also check out the Luna Phone Controller.

If Everybody Is in the Same House, It's Even Easier

For a normal in-person GameNight, the host launches the GameNight title and Luna displays a QR code. Players scan it with their phones or tablets, and those devices become their controllers.

That's the kind of setup I like for family games because you don't have to stop and teach Aunt Whoever She Is... what the shoulder buttons do or go searching the house for four controllers that haven't been charged since last Christmas.

Scan. Join. Play.

If you also play Luna games that use a more traditional controller, the Amazon Luna Controller is another option to keep around. And if you're building the setup around your television, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max can help bring Luna into the living room without adding a game console to the entertainment center.

There Are Some New Games to Put in the Rotation

Amazon has also kept adding games to GameNight, so there are some newer options worth checking out.

The newest October addition is Space Metal Mania, which mixes arcade shoot-'em-up action, co-op play and heavy metal into one chaotic package. You and your crew pilot through alien forces, dodge attacks and take on bosses while the soundtrack drives the action. This one is probably for the family members or friends who would rather blast something than answer trivia questions.

Bowling Mayhem is another recent addition and might be one of the easiest games to picture becoming a regular family pick. It supports up to six players and uses phone-based controls. There's a more traditional bowling experience in Classic Mode, but Mayhem Mode is where things can get a little ridiculous.

Then there's King of Tokyo, a video game take on the popular board game where giant monsters compete for control of Tokyo. It supports up to six players and sounds like exactly the sort of game where somebody is going to remember what you did to them three GameNights later.

For the trivia crowd, It's Quiz Time: Guinness World Records brings questions based around Guinness World Records, including photo and video challenges. That can be a good one for mixed groups because everybody thinks they know some random fact nobody else knows.

Recent additions also include Batman: Caped Crusader – Chronicles, where players work together as detectives solving cases in Gotham, Centipede Swarm, a co-op reworking of the Atari classic, and Courtroom Chaos: Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which turns improvised courtroom arguments into the game itself.

You aren't capped at these options either, there's plenty more to enjoy! So... If you want to see what else is available through the service before putting together your next GameNight, you can check out Amazon Luna here.

Until then Fun it up... and game on!