The Round After Next: Ten Pocket Games Built for the Pub Table

Somewhere between the second round and the crisps, the British pub table quietly changed. It used to be dominoes, a dog-eared deck of cards and a folded racing page. Now it is four adults hunched over one phone, passing it left, groaning in unison, and refusing to let the subject drop until somebody wins.

Pub quiz night has found a rival — and this one needs no projector, no landlord with a tinny microphone and no tiebreak question about obscure railway stations. All it needs is a table, a phone with a bit of battery, and a game that respects the oldest rule in the building: nobody wants a twelve-minute tutorial while their pint goes warm.

That is the argument of this piece. Pocket gaming is quietly reinventing the pub quiz for the handheld generation, and it is doing it one ten-minute round at a time.

The pub table was always a handheld console

Think about what a pub table actually offers. It is small, slightly sticky, badly lit, and shared by people of wildly different skill levels — the mate who finishes the cryptic crossword by eight and the one who still holds their phone like a hot pasty.

That is precisely the spec sheet for local multiplayer on mobile. Short rounds. No installs for the whole group. Hand the device over rather than asking six people to create accounts. And no big screen, because the big screen is showing a match and the landlord has opinions about that.

Pass-and-play is the pub's native format. It is also the politest form of gaming ever invented: you cannot rage-quit a game you have just handed to your sister-in-law.

Ten games that earn their place on the table

Every pick below runs on a phone or a handheld you probably already own, and none needs more than a minute of setup.

1. Spaceteam

Free on iOS and Android. Four phones, one Wi-Fi network and a script of nonsense instructions that must be shouted at close range. It is the closest a game has come to recreating the specific joy of a pub argument over a beer mat. Rounds run about five minutes and the volume rises accordingly.

2. Heads Up!

A couple of quid on mobile. Charades with the phone balanced on your forehead, which sounds undignified and absolutely is. Ideal for a mixed table where not everyone calls themselves a gamer, because anyone can mime a crocodile after two drinks.

3. Psych! Outwit Your Friends

Free with adverts, a small fee to strip them out. Everybody writes a fake answer to a daft question, then everyone votes for the one they believe. Scoring rewards lying convincingly, a skill the pub table has always honoured.

4. Codenames

Around a fiver, and it supports proper pass-and-play on one device. Two teams, a grid of words, and a spymaster trying not to say the obvious thing. Ten minutes a round, and at least one friendship tested per game.

5. Ticket to Ride: Pocket

The pocket edition exists for exactly this scenario. Build routes, block your mate's line to Edinburgh, argue about the rules card. A full game outlasts a round, so keep it as the nightcap option for when the table has thinned out.

6. Carcassonne

Under a tenner, and its pass-and-play mode is quietly excellent. Place a tile, claim a field, watch somebody steal your city. Turns come round fast enough that nobody is left staring at the ceiling.

7. Really Bad Chess

Free with an unlock. Chess with randomised pieces, which means the friend who has been smug about their opening repertoire since university gets flattened by a stray rook. Short, funny and perfect for settling debates.

8. Evil Apples

Free. A fill-in-the-blank card game in the tradition of Cards Against Humanity, so check the table's sense of humour and age range before you deal. Set up a private room rather than passing one phone if you want to keep the worst answers deniable.

9. Among Us

Free on mobile. If four or more of the group already have it installed, a round in a noisy pub becomes a social experiment in itself. Impostor accusations land harder across a table than they ever do through a headset.

10. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Around a fiver on mobile, with the manual printed off or loaded on a second phone. One player defuses, everybody else shouts instructions. It is a co-operative shouting match and it will empty your table's lungs in ten minutes flat.

House rules for the pocket pub table

A few things we have learned the hard way.

Screen brightness down, notifications off. Nobody wants your group chat flashing up mid-round.

One device per pair, at most. Six people crowded around a six-inch screen is not a game, it is a scrum.

Agree the stakes before the first round. Loser buys the pork scratchings is traditional. Loser buys the next round is a fast route to financial ruin.

And keep a paper backup. A deck of cards fits in a coat pocket and never asks for a software update. Pocket gaming is the headline act, not the whole gig.

Last orders, first levels

None of this replaces the pub quiz. It sits alongside it — the warm-up, the filler, the bit of the evening that used to be dead air between ordering and the food turning up.

But watch a table of thirty-somethings pass a phone around and argue about a fake answer to a stupid question, and you will see something a clipboard quiz never quite manages: everybody playing at once, nobody keeping score on a sheet, and no compere with a microphone.

That is a decent night out. And it fits in a pocket.