Codenames was designed by Vlaada Chvátil and published by Czech Games Edition in 2015. The following year it won the Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s famous game-of-the-year award, and it has been a staple of board game shelves ever since. The official online version lives at codenames.game, made by the same team, and it is free to open in a browser.
The setup is simple. Twenty-five word cards sit in a five-by-five grid. Two teams each have a spymaster who can see which words belong to their side. Spymasters take turns giving one-word clues plus a number, and their teammates try to pick the right cards. Hit the other team’s word and you help them. Hit the single assassin card and you lose instantly.
The beautiful agony of being spymaster
Being spymaster is the best seat in the house and the most stressful. The starting team has nine agents to find, the other eight, and seven neutral bystanders sit among them. You are hunting for one word that connects several of your cards without pointing at the assassin or the enemy. Finding a clue that links three of your words is a genuine thrill.
Then you have to watch your team. You cannot speak, cannot hint, and must sit silently while they debate whether “ocean” could possibly mean the card you never intended. The rules allow your team one extra guess beyond your number, which encourages ambitious play. Every group we played with had at least one moment of collective groaning when a confident guess turned out catastrophically wrong.
Setting up a remote game
Codenames Online makes the room link the centre of everything. You enter a nickname, create a game, and share the URL with your group. Players then pick a team and a role. It took our least technical tester about two minutes to get from link to playing, which is very respectable for a team game with hidden information.
The site sensibly suggests running a separate voice or video call alongside the game, and we agree completely. Codenames is a conversation game. Field operatives need to argue out loud about what a clue might mean, and half the fun for the spymaster is hearing the debate. Played in silence through text chat alone, it loses most of its charm.
The daily puzzle for quiet evenings
Beyond the main multiplayer game, the site offers a daily challenge mode. It gives you something to do with Codenames on a night when you cannot gather a group, and it scratches the same itch of finding connections between words. We found it a pleasant warm-up, though it is very different from the noise and argument of a full team game.
There are also mobile apps for Android and iOS, released in 2024, which are useful for players who prefer a phone. In the browser, though, we would keep this one on a laptop or desktop. The grid of twenty-five words reads much better on a bigger screen, and spymasters especially benefit from seeing everything at once.
When the table goes quiet
The thinking is the point, but it can stall. A cautious spymaster might spend several minutes on a single clue, and the opposing team can drift off while they wait. In our sessions, agreeing on a gentle time limit out loud kept the game moving. Groups who love quick, constant action may prefer the drawing games for that reason.
Codenames also needs at least four people to work as intended, two per team, and it is better with six or more. Smaller groups can try it, but the conversation that makes it special needs voices. On the other hand, the skill headroom is enormous; experienced groups develop their own shorthand and start pulling off clues that link four or five cards at once.
Your first few sessions with Codenames Online
- Gather at least four people on a voice call and share the room link so everyone can pick a team.
- Let the most confident wordsmith be spymaster first; it helps newcomers see how clues are built.
- Rotate the spymaster role every game so everyone gets to feel the pressure and the glory.
- Agree a friendly time limit for clues out loud to keep the opposing team engaged.
- On a quiet night, try the daily challenge on your own to sharpen your word associations.
What had us cheering
- Finding a clue that links three cards is one of the best feelings in party games.
- The room link makes setting up a remote team game unusually painless.
- Enormous skill headroom; experienced groups keep getting cleverer together.
- The daily challenge gives solo players something to do between game nights.
What made us groan
- Cautious spymasters can leave the other team waiting for minutes at a time.
- Needs at least four players and a voice call to really work.
- The grid feels cramped in a phone browser compared with a laptop screen.
The group Codenames Online suits best
Groups who love conversation, clever links and a bit of friendly argument. It suits book clubs, puzzle fans and families with teenagers, and it is our pick for a long-distance game night where everyone is already on a video call together.
Where we land on Codenames Online
Codenames Online is the deepest game on our shelf and the one that rewards repeat play most. It is a little slower and needs more people than the drawing games, so it sits third rather than first. But for groups who like to think, it delivers the biggest moments of triumph of anything here, and the free browser version is excellent.
