Sometimes there is one phone and two people. These are the 2 player games on Arena13 that you can play on one device, passing it back and forth: no accounts, no download, no second screen. At the end there is a way to play against a friend who is not in the room.
Tic Tac Toe: two ways to play
Tic Tac Toe has a "2 players" button on its start card. X and O take turns on the same screen, and the game tells you whose move it is. Who goes first swaps every match, so nobody keeps the advantage, and a tally keeps count of X wins, O wins and draws.
The classic game ends in a draw if both players are careful, so there is a second rule set, Vanishing. Each player can only have three marks on the board. When you place a fourth, your oldest mark disappears, and the next one to go flickers so you can see it coming. It changes everything: a line you are about to block may vanish on its own, and a fork can appear out of nowhere. If 60 moves pass without a line, it is a draw. For the strategy behind the classic version, see how to win tic tac toe.
Four in a Row: red against gold
Four in a Row also has a "2 players" button. Red and Gold take turns dropping discs into a seven-column, six-row board, and the first to line up four in any direction wins. The starting colour alternates each match, and the game tells you how many drops the win took.
Two habits win most games between friends: take the middle column early, because more winning lines pass through it, and before every drop, check whether your opponent has three in a row with a gap you are about to give them.
Checkers: the long game
Checkers has a Mode choice in its New game dialog: "vs Computer" or "Two players". Black always moves first, and captures are mandatory: if you can jump, you must. Undo steps back one move when two people are playing. A game takes longer than the others here, which makes it the one for a train ride rather than a coffee break. The rules, kings and strategy are in how to play checkers.
Playing a friend who is somewhere else
The other games on Arena13 are single-player, but almost all of them keep a score, and that means you can still play against a friend. After a round, the game-over panel has a button that says "Battle a friend: beat" and your score. It shares a link to the same game. When your friend opens it, the page says who challenged them and the score to beat. If they beat it, they win the battle and 50 coins.
A few that work well as battles:
- Blind Ten: stop a hidden stopwatch on the target. Whoever is closer wins, and rounds take seconds.
- Stack Up: stack sliding blocks as high as you can. Easy to understand, hard to beat a good score.
- Daily Trivia: everyone gets the same 10 questions each day, so if your friend plays it the same day, you are both answering the same quiz.
Battles are kept in your browser, so a battle you started on your phone stays on your phone.
Which one to pick
- Two minutes: Tic Tac Toe, Vanishing rules.
- Ten minutes: a best of five at Four in a Row.
- Half an hour: Checkers.
- Not in the same room: a battle link on Blind Ten.
How it was made
I wrote this with help from Claude, an AI assistant, and checked every rule against the games' code. If something here does not match what you see in a game, tell me.
