The traditional salu-salo goes digital!

‘Tis the season once again for overeating, overbearing Christmas lights and attending get-togethers with family members you barely know. It can, however, get a little repetitive to just eat and have your titas mention that you’ve gotten fatter again and again. Here’s a weird suggestion though: Why not play mobile games with your relatives? For sure half of them are already addicted to Candy Crush—what could possibly go wrong? Here’s a list of our best family-friendly (but not necessarily PG) suggestions.

1.  Smule [ Android | iOS ]

Filipinos love to sing Karaoke and Smule provides that experience with the added bonus of getting to sing with your music idols! Smule lets people have duets with the singers of many popular contemporary songs. While it’s all pre-recorded of course, your Tita Baby doesn’t need to know that when you show her Enrique Iglesias next to her on the screen. Just be careful not to let the mic hogs monopolize your phone!

2. Evil Apples [ Android | iOS ]

Be sure to send the children to the kiddie table for this one because this game isn’t really kid-friendly, though it can be fun for the titas and titos. Getting most of its inspiration from Cards Against Humanity, the game plays almost the same except without the hassle of bringing along physical cards! Just pick the best phrase that could fill-in the blank in the sentence from the naughty hand dealt to you and finally figure out which family member has the same screwed-up sense of humor as you.

3. Heads Up [ Android | iOS ]

Another version of Pinoy Henyo (a game popularized by Eat Bulaga!) where a designated person has to guess the word on the screen while it’s on his or her forehead, based on how the other contestants describe the word. It’s a lot faster-paced than many apps of its kind because you already get to choose the word category beforehand. It also offers a wider variety of words that geeks and buffs of each category will appreciate. It’s an easy app for anyone to operate as you only need to tilt the phone up when you want to pass and tilt it down when you want to get it right. Trust us when we say that with a group, this can get addicting very quickly.

4. Bomba Drink [ Android ]

Warning: also not for the chikitings. Now here’s a mobile game even your tito will enjoy. Bomba Drink is a very simple drinking app where the only goal is to pass the phone to the next person before the time runs out, lest you want to take a shot. For you to successfully pass the phone to the next person, you must be able to answer a fairly easy question provided by the phone. Of course, as the game goes on and people start getting a bit woozy, the questions will be more difficult to answer and that’s when the game really starts getting fun. The only tip we have is to have it installed on someone else’s phone because it’s going to get sticky.