Real-time matches in 13 games. Start a game, or join one below.
You need a free account to play multiplayer, so your opponent knows who beat them.
Thirteen of the twenty games on PlayVersusAI can be played live against another person instead of the computer. There is nothing to install and no separate app: both players sit on an ordinary web page and moves travel between them as they are made.
Pick a game, choose whether you want a move timer, and press Start Game. Your match is then listed under Open games for every other logged-in player, and you wait on this page until somebody takes the empty seat. That is the whole flow — there are no room codes to copy and no separate public or private setting to decide on.
You can hold one open seat at a time. While a game of yours is waiting, this page shows it with a Cancel button instead of the form, so you can call it off and start something else whenever you like. Starting a new game also retires the old seat automatically, which keeps the list free of abandoned rooms nobody is actually sitting at. Leaving the page does not lose your seat: come back and the same game is still waiting for you.
The one option that changes who can join is the optional password. Leave the box empty and your game is open to whoever gets there first, which is the fastest way to find an opponent. Type something in and the second seat is locked: the match still appears in the list, marked with a password badge so people can see at a glance that it is reserved, but only someone who knows the password can sit down. Tell your friend the password however you normally talk to them and they can join straight from the list. It also works nicely the other way round — start a game, post the password to a group chat, and let whoever answers first take the seat. Passwords are stored only as a salted hash, so nobody, including us, can read back what you chose.
Matches can be created with no timer at all, or with a limit of 30 or 60 seconds per move. Untimed games suit Chess and Backgammon, where thinking is half the point. Timers suit quicker games, and they solve the common problem of an opponent wandering off mid-match: if the clock runs out, the game is resolved in favour of the player still at the board. Abandoning a game also counts as a forfeit, so it is worth finishing what you start.
As soon as somebody joins, both players are taken to the board. Moves appear on the other screen as they are played, with no refreshing and no waiting for a turn to load. If your connection drops briefly, the game state is held server-side and reconnecting puts you back in the same position rather than losing the match. Results are written to both players' profiles and count toward the leaderboard, exactly like wins against the AI.
All twelve strategy games plus Crazy Eights: Chess, Checkers, Connect 4, Reversi, Mancala, Gomoku, Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe, Dots and Boxes, Nine Men's Morris, Backgammon, Battleship, Hex and Crazy Eights.
The remaining seven — 2048, Minesweeper, Sudoku, Solitaire, Snake, Blackjack and the daily Word Guess — are single-player by nature. They compete through high-score and fastest-time tables instead, which you will find on the leaderboard page.
Every other part of the site works without signing up, and single-player games genuinely need no account. Multiplayer is the exception, for the practical reason that a live match needs two identifiable, persistent players: someone to hold the seat, someone to notify when it is their turn, and a name to record the result against. Registration needs an email address and nothing more, and it is free.
Playing a person is less forgiving than playing Easy mode, so it is worth knowing the basics first. Every game has a full rules and strategy guide — browse all twenty guides, or warm up against the computer before taking on a human.