Virtual housewarming party ideas for a new place far from your friends

You have the keys, the boxes are half unpacked and the kettle finally has a home. The only thing missing is the people. When you move to a new city or a new country, the housewarming is often the first thing that falls away: your friends are an ocean or a long train ride away, and nobody can just pop round with a plant.

A virtual housewarming party will not replace a doorbell ringing, but it can do the main job: let your people see where you live now, celebrate the move with you, and spend an evening together. Here are ideas that work for adults.

1. Give the tour, properly

Start the call with a walk round the new place on your phone camera. Make it a show: the view from the window, the cupboard that does not close, the neighbour’s cat. Let guests ask questions as you go, and keep it to ten minutes; a tour that drags turns into an estate agent viewing.

Make it a game: before the tour, ask everyone to guess one thing (how many steps to the front door, the colour of the bathroom tiles, what is in the fridge). Whoever is closest picks the first game.

2. Play games about the new place

The housewarming Pictionary. skribbl.io is a free online drawing and guessing game, and its private rooms take 2 to 20 players. The host can add custom words. Fill the list with the move: the van that was late, the sofa that would not fit, your new street name, the corner shop. Everyone will learn about your new life one terrible drawing at a time.

The moving-in telephone. Gartic Phone, free in the browser, is the telephone game with drawings. Start every chain with a line about the move and watch “we carried the wardrobe up four floors” turn into something much odder to look at.

Teams by room. Codenames Online, free in a browser from the board game’s publisher, takes up to 64 players a session. Name the two teams after rooms in the new place. The losing team has to choose your next piece of furniture.

3. Raise a toast, together

A housewarming needs one moment where everyone stops and says something nice. Go round the call and ask each guest for one wish for the new home: good neighbours, a landlord who fixes things, a fridge that is never empty. Keep a note of them. It is a good thing to read back in a year.

4. Then go out, virtually

After the tour and the games, the evening usually ends the same way: everyone on a call, talking over each other, drifting off. A better ending is to go somewhere together, the way you would head out after a real housewarming.

That is what party mode in AJ Cities is for. It is our free open-world browser game, set on the edge of Ajegunle, Lagos, and its party mode is a live, virtual night out at a walled estate. To say it plainly: the party is inside the game. There is no real venue, no real date and no real ticket.

There is something fitting about it: you have just shown everyone your new street, so now you all go to a different one together.

• Meet at the gate. Everyone arrives at the main gate of Abraham Adesyan Estate. Ask the police to let you in; most nights about four in five who ask get in free.
• Dress up. The salon and clothes shop next to the gate change hair, skin tone and clothes for free.
• Walk June 12 Street. The estate’s one main street, where everybody meets, with a restaurant, a rooming house, a clinic and a club. The compound gates stay locked; the street belongs to everyone.
• Go to Prizm. The club at No. 1145, where Joe-Izzy plays every night from 9 pm to 1 am Lagos time. Every ticket opens the ground floor.
• Or the beach. Past the bush, the beach party opens with tickets from ₦400.
• Same song. The estate radio plays the same song at the same moment for every player.

How to set it up

1. Send one invitation with the start time in each guest’s time zone and the call link.
2. When it is time to go out, send the party link. It runs in a browser on a phone or a computer, with nothing to download.
3. Everyone signs in with their email; they must be 18 or over.
4. Everyone picks the same world: always day, always night or real Lagos time. Same world, usually the same estate; each holds up to 60 players.
5. Meet at the gate and go in together.

If your friends are spread across time zones, pick always night. It is 10 pm there all the time, so the club is open whenever you all arrive.

What about presents?

Nobody needs to bring anything to a virtual housewarming. If friends ask, a shared playlist for the new place, a recipe from home or a handwritten card in the post goes further than most gifts. In the game, a ticket is a small treat for the host: tickets last 24 hours and open more of the estate, from ₦250. They are optional, and most guests get in free by asking. Every price is on the tickets page.

A running order

More ideas: how to host a virtual party and virtual birthday party ideas.

How do you throw a virtual housewarming party?

Give a short video tour of the new place, play a couple of games about the move, go round for wishes for the new home, then head somewhere together, such as a virtual night out in a browser game.

What games work for a virtual housewarming?

Our picks: skribbl.io with custom words about the move, Gartic Phone, and Codenames Online with teams named after rooms. All three are free in a browser.

Is the AJ Cities estate party a real place?

No. It is a virtual party inside the game. There is no real venue, date or ticket.