How to Play a Family Feud Style Survey Game Online With Friends

The appeal of Family Feud is simple: a hundred people were asked a question, and you have to guess what they said. You can play that with nothing more than friends and a phone each. Noillirk, our free browser game, is built on exactly that idea. Every prompt is a survey question, the board ranks what people said, and the most common answer scores most. Its private rooms turn it into a game night with no host and nobody keeping score.

• A phone, tablet or computer for each player, or one shared screen for each team.
• A web browser. There is nothing to download and nobody needs an account.
• For friends in different places, any video call, so you can hear each other groan.

1. One person opens playdaily.org/noillirk and presses Play multiplayer.
2. Press Create a room and pick the number of prompts. Seven is a quick round; 15 or 25 fills an evening.
3. Set the time to guess. The standard 15 seconds is quick. Thirty to forty-five gives a team time to argue.
4. Choose Private, then share the six-digit code or the invite link in your group chat.
5. Everyone types the code into Join a private room and picks a name, and the next climb starts by itself.

Everyone gets the same prompt at the same moment, and after each one the reveal shows every answer in the room and how many points it scored. The room keeps the standings. Our Noillirk multiplayer guide covers rooms in more detail.

Noillirk scores players, not teams, so teams are a house rule, and an easy one.

• One device per team. Each team gathers round one phone and agrees on a single answer. The room's standings become the team standings.
• Name the device after the team. The name box takes anything you like, and the room shows it beside every answer.
• Give teams more time. Agreeing takes longer than answering alone, so set the clock to 30 seconds or more when you create the room.
• Decide who types. One typist per team, chosen before the first prompt, saves a lot of shouting.

For a family round the television, put Noillirk on the big screen, a laptop plugged in or a browser tab cast to the TV, and play a solo Classic climb. The room shouts answers, one person types, and everyone watches the krill climb. Take turns at the keyboard, or split into two teams playing alternate climbs and compare altitudes at the end. A classic climb is seven prompts, so a round takes only a few minutes.

The instinct that wins on the television show wins here too: say what ordinary people say first, not what is true or clever. The general word beats the specific one, and the joke everybody makes is often number one. Only the single top answer scores the full 100 points, so the arguing is usually about which of three obvious answers comes first. Our Noillirk tips go into it properly, and how to play Noillirk covers the scoring.

If your group would rather be contrarian, try Krillion, where the rarest answer wins. We wrote up a whole rarest-answer game night for that.

Printed survey games run out. Once a group has played through the cards, everyone knows the answers. Noillirk deals from about 2,400 survey prompts, so the questions do not run out after one evening, and its judge accepts typos and plurals, so nobody argues about spelling.

One last thing before you send the code round: make sure everyone joins at the official playdaily.org/noillirk. Other sites use the name, and a friend on a different site cannot join your room. Here is how to check.