I like game pigeon. It’s an app on the iPhone. You and your friends smdownload it and you can play games like battleship, beer pong, and a bunch of other games via text.

Dominion online. It's an engine builder card game that's incredibly fun and has a ton of different playstyles. There are so many different decks to use so each game is a little bit different

My favorite 3 so far are:

horsepaste.com - this is Codenames, a 2-team game where team captains have to get their team to guess their 'codewords' using 1-word clues.

https://skribbl.io/ - this is similar to Pictionary, but every person for themselves. You get points for guessing the correct answer (the faster you guess, the more points) and when people guess your drawing correctly.

https://swellgarfo.com/scattergories/ - this is Scattergories, where you race against the clock to find words that start with the randomized letter and correspond to the categories.

What do you guys play?

I bought tabletop simulator and it's amazing

https://netgames.io/games/ with Love Letter being my favorite game but you'll have to look instructions of the game first since its a little more complex yet easy on internet

https://colonist.io/ Settlers of Catan on web, 3-4 players go to *create* and put settings

playingcards.io lets you play some games there and custom your own card games (and if you want upload photos and more and create a card game you already know) everything that happens on your screen will happen on theirs so calling out turns will be important

http://coup.thebrown.net/# idk if you know how to play coup...

https://skribbl.io/ create a private room and draw

boardgamearena.com has a pretty good selection, and you don't need to pay to use (paid premium does have some perks). I only found out about it a couple days ago, but I'm liking it so far.

First of all, thank you for your service to your community. Your sacrifices are recognized and appreciated. Thank you. Stay safe.

Many of the online services are overwhelmed because of high demand. I am unsure which of them have the traditional games you listed. I will look around today during my free time and update you on my findings.

My go to service has been Boardgamearena.com. Nothing needs to be downloaded and it should work decently on slower internet connections. As long as your kid's school doesn't block the domain you should be good. Now for the bad. The last time I checked they were blocking access to new users or free accounts. Only premium users have been able to log in. Premium accounts are relatively inexpensive,but not sure if you're able to swing that cost.

I hope others here have some suggestions. There may be posts on r/boardgames that cover this topic. And they have such a larger audience over there.

Best of luck to you.

Tabletopia has some of those games.

Jackbox? It's a pack of part games. You can host it and they only need a phone or tablet to play along with you

I've gotten into Mahjong lately.

Backgammon

Chess for cognitive benefits.

Scrabble.

Chess

As already suggested, board game arena is the way to go.

Board game arena is good if you want a variety of games, but most games in there I wouldn't recommend on a phone. For playing on your phone there are some games with specific apps like codenames and railroad ink

Tabletop Simulator on Steam. The workshop has everything I’ve looked for.

Tabletop sim for sure, I've literally played red dragon inn there

I assume you didn't know about Board Game Arena? Now you know. They don't have Red Dragon Inn, but they have a bunch of others (including King of Tokyo and Carcassonne).

Not sure if it's your speed given the games you mentioned, but I'm part of a Discord community that plays lightweight games over video chat on Ludio (ludio.gg). Daily game nights with 10+ people every night. The networking/socializing is the focus though, not the games. And they don't do heavy board games at all - they do card games (trick-taking, card shedding), party games, social deduction games, push-your-luck games, etc.

Lots of games being organized in the Dads On A Map discord, if you're into heavier stuff like 18xx and Splotter.

I'm on a group that does several events over the week. We currently have events on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. We're called Gamewaves.

Feel free to come check us out!

https://discord.gg/9uzGUv7m

Ooooh if there is a discord count me in too!

You could try playing board games over Tabletop simulator (TTS) and use one of the discord channels associated with it. Make friends and build your own group through meeting people on these. Difference with TTS is that you can chat to the people you're playing against. All the below use TTS.

Some discord board game channels; Main TTS - https://discord.gg/ttsclub-90897972715352064

Eclipse https://discord.gg/PQPJbTXm

Coin games https://discord.gg/9NFcJyMp

Wherligig https://discord.gg/HDmHAYw7

Leder games https://discord.gg/woodland-warriors-476234833572397056

Board Game Arena has an astonishing number of games implemented for free. Hop on your own voice chat together and play stuff!

Edit: https://boardgamearena.com/

Amorello has some really fun mechanics and is essentially a board game.

The civ games can do what you ask if you don't mind spending hours playing it

Sunderfolk

Tabletop simulator! The steam workshop is stacked with board games both common are rarer ones and you can import your own pics and 3D models if there’s something more specific

Jackbox is also really fun, there’s some more intense competitive games but some chill ones as well. There’s such a variety across the packs look into the games in each and hop into streams to see them being played. I would try pick these up in a sale though, they’re not the cheapest but your friends might be willing to split :)

Thanks everyone. I think we will give one of free suggestions (I'll test boardgamearena and tabletopia ) a try first, and if the idea is a success I'll recommend tabletop simulator. Not everyone has a steam account, but I can help set that up.

I appreciate everyone's input, thanks for your responses!

If you want free, check out Board Game Arena.

If you want mind spending a few bucks, check out Tabletop Simulator.

What makes family board games fun is the socializing as much as the playing games. Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator are good ways to play games, they don’t have good ways to talk to each other. You will need to do FaceTime or some other online video chat to get that level of interaction.

Tabletopia can be played with just one person paying as opposed to TS where everyone needs the game. Tabletopia also has a iPad app so that’s a plus for families playing together.

TS has pretty much every game if you look so it has that going for it.

One more thing both of these are just basically the board game on the screen. They don’t do any of the math for you or help you play at all. They are just a simulation of the games. It can be frustrating moving bits around on the screen so I would try it out before trying to get everyone involved.

Tabletop Simluator has almost every game for free.

A lot of games have online play through an app

Tabletop simulator hands down

Most of them I don't know, or not able to recog by the fancy names

Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds comes to mind. It had two game modes last time I played: 1vs8, and a “duo” mode with four teams of 2 players each.

You don’t collect cards in Battlegrounds though. And while you can chat with friends in-game, it’s probably not a great game for making friends? (I haven’t tried really)