When everything shut down in the middle of March, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had to suddenly cancel my birthday plans and have almost no human contact.
In the beginning, I Facetimed my friends often and talked about what was happening. Soon enough my friends introduced me to the application Discord and said it’d be easier to interact this way. I knew about Discord but had never really used it until quarantine. At first, we used it to play Jackbox Party games every other night. Jackbox is a pack that contains several games to play with friends and can vary on what pack you buy. We could rack up about 5-8 players each night.
We also made sure to plan movie nights, which took place on Thursday or Friday nights. My friends and I would discuss what genre we were feeling and everyone could put in as many suggestions as they wanted in our Discord server. Then we would all vote on 1-3 films, depending on how many movies were suggested and watch the top pick. Everyone would get some popcorn or chips and then someone would volunteer to stream it on our channel. It was a perfect way to escape reality and just relax.
After a few more weeks, I eventually caved in and built my very own PC, just so I could play actual video games with my friends instead of just watching them play these games. I think this is something that really helped me cope socially during this pandemic and I don’t regret it.
Currently, Among Us is all the hype, even people at my job play it. The objective of the game is to finish tasks and find the imposter(s), that is if you’re a crewmate. But as an imposter, you have to get away with killing most of the crewmates, prevent them from finishing their tasks and bluff your way out of them voting you off. I find this game to be best played with 9-10 people (10 being the max) and with two imposters. It’s a mind game that’ll have you over-analyzing and being ‘sus’ of your friends.
More recently though, the game Phasmophobia was released with early access, right on time for the spooky season. There’s nothing like spending your night gathering up 4 friends to hunt ghosts together with. It makes you feel like you’re a Ghostbuster in real life. Definitely recommend playing in the dark!
Recently places have opened up so my friends have become open to doing simple, socially distanced activities. We mainly go for walks or hikes at parks, picnic dates, or even study dates. This helped us get some face-to-face interaction and brought a strange sense of reassurance, for a moment I believed everything would be okay.
Stay healthy and safe! Make sure to keep your distance!