For a pair of video-game-loving best friends who live hundreds of miles apart, some online multiplayer gaming should be just the ticket for casual hangouts and catch-ups.
But if you don’t enjoy battle royale games or FPS games, your options are a little more limited. There are some options that are doing something a little more interesting, such as It Takes Two and Split Fiction, but it’s easy to find yourself casting around for a game to play together.
Luckily, for PC gamers, there exists a combination of fan-made modifications and modes that turn a range of games into multiplayer experiences you can revisit time and time again.
The first part of the combo is BingoSync. BingoSync is a website that generates interactive bingo boards with a random selection of goals. You create a room with your chosen game, send the name and password to however many of your friends who want to join in, and load up your game.
You then compete to be the first to achieve the goals on the board. You can play lockout, where one person getting a goal ‘locks out’ the other person from getting it and is usually a race to 13 goals (half plus one); or non-lockout, where you race to a line or a full board blackout.
BingoSync comes preloaded with a tonne of games (including 12 different Zelda games) but also includes the option for the determined gamer to import a custom list of goals to race any game their heart desires.
The second part of the combo is a little more limited in game options, but where it exists, it’s some of the most enjoyable time you can spend with a game – randomiser. Randomisers (or randos) are mods that mix up the locations of key items within a game, essentially making it a new experience every single time.
The mod will ensure there is an internally consistent logic that means you can always get enough progression items to never get stuck, but you never know what you’ll find where. Many of them have a range of rule sets that randomise smaller or larger sets of things, so it might just be the upgrades and keys, or it might be every single interactable object in the game.
These can be enjoyed independently, of course, but the real fun begins when you combine the two. Racing to complete bingo goals with other players while not knowing if they might have found a movement upgrade before you is thrilling and fun every single time.
Hollow Knight bingo rando racing with your long-distance best friend never gets old. What if he found Mothwing Cloak (an upgrade that lets you dash) while you’ve just found a bunch of lore tablets?
The Metroidvania nature of Hollow Knight means there are tonnes of movement options, and it’s really fun to work out how to subvert the expected requirements to get to locations with unusual combinations of upgrades.
Whatever your preferred game, adding in a bingo race or randomising all the items (or preferably both) and jumping on a Discord call with your friends is an excellent way to share even traditionally single-player games and have a great time no matter how far away from one another you might be.
Featured image credit: Team Cherry/Nintendo
Student journalist & freelance writer. Check out Quick Play, where I review video games that are 10 hours or less.
