Breaking the Ice with Videogames

Starting university can be a tough experience, especially if you’ve grown in the same general area for the first eighteen or so years of your life. With living on your own for the first time and the pressures of doing a university course all in a very unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people, it can get overwhelming easily. However, with a little help from your old friend videogames, you can take care of one of those uncertainties, bonding with your flatmates. Here are some top games to help with breaking the ice with your new flatmates.

Jackbox Party Packs

This bundle of party games will give you hours of joy playing them and more importantly quickly break the ice and allow you to get to know one another. After an hour or two of playing the different game modes, you’ll have worked out who the worst artist is after a couple of rounds of ‘Drawful’, who the brainiac of the flat is from ‘You don’t know Jack’ and which flatmate has that slightly twisted sense of humour after a few side-splitting rounds of ‘Quiplash’. All of the different game types in the three of the party packs are easy, meaning that even gaming novices can pick them up and only require a laptop and each player to have a mobile device to play. So bring up to eight flatmates, pray that res-net is working and start having fun with this amazing game.

Flickr, BagoGames

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Keep talking and Nobody Explodes is a bomb defusal simulation where one player has a completely random bomb with up numerous puzzle modules to solve in front of them, while the others players have the guide to solving each module. With each bomb becoming more complex than the last, this game is excellent at getting your flatmates to communicate with one another in groups of up to four as you tell each other to press the detonate button, cut the blue wire and the order in which to press buttons with weird symbols on before you inevitably blow up. You’ll probably yell and curse at each other but this is all part of the bonding process, and you’ll emerge from the other side as an elite bomb defusal squad who have no issues talking to one another.

Hilarity ensues as your neighbours in the flat above wonder why they can hear people screaming ‘Engage the Eigenthrottle’ from the floor below

Spaceteam

If you don’t fancy spending money on these games but still want to use videogames as an icebreaker with the people in your flat you can always try out Spaceteam. It’s a free mobile app so anyone can download it and the game involves up to eight players in a space shuttle that is falling apart while outrunning a collapsing star and each player having a different control panel on their device while simultaneously being given instructions which they must yell out to other players. This leads to everyone yelling complete nonsense at each other as you all attempt to explain your instructions at once to stop the spaceship from being destroyed. Hilarity ensues as your neighbours in the flat above wonder why they can hear people screaming ‘Engage the Eigenthrottle’ from the floor below, but the puzzled looks are worth it as your flatmates comes closer together. The cherry on the top of this cake is that the game has a wide variety of language options so many international students from across the globe can enjoy this game as well.

Flickr, BagoGames

Mario Kart

Does this even need an explination? The charm, the competion, the complete lack of control as you sail off Rainbow Road yet again. No matter what age you are, where you come from or even your experience with videogames, everyone enjoys a game of Mariokart. And, if your relationship with your flatmates survives a blue-egg onslaught, then you know this is a friendship set for life.