Shapes for three and four
With three or four devices, how they lie decides the board. Three can lie in a line, a T or a triangle; four in a line, a ring with the top edges inward, a 2 × 2 block or a row. Each game picks the shapes it plays best on, and the drawing on every card shows the one it starts with.
Chess is the game for three: in 3-player chess, three devices in a triangle make a hexagonal board of 96 squares. The rest seat four, and Air Hockey, Hot Potato, Snake, Whack-a-Mole and Tilt Run take up to 12 players at one table when several share a device or bots join.
Free-for-all, teams or co-op
Free-for-all is the default for most: five lives each in 4 player air hockey, a fuse each in Hot Potato, the last snake in. Air Hockey also plays in teams by device, and checkers 2v2 puts two pairs on a 16 × 8 board.
Whack-a-Mole has both: head to head on one tug bar, or Together, waves of moles against five shared lives. Tilt Run is always co-op, a maze for four with one marble for the whole table, so nobody loses alone.
Getting four people going
One person opens bigboard.games and taps Start a table; everyone else opens it too and joins by themselves on the same Wi-Fi, or with the QR code or four-letter code. Phones and tablets mix freely. If you are one device short, two people can share one, or a bot fills the seat.
A fourth player who can't be there joins by link. Their device shows the whole field, turned to them, with their seat at the table's edge: they steer, flick or shoot from there, and in Tilt Run they ride along.
Questions
Can 3 people play chess?
Yes, on a hexagonal board of 96 squares split across three devices; checkmate knocks a player out.
Can 4 people play on phones in one room?
Yes, one phone each: lay the four edge to edge and every game here except Chess becomes one board for four.
Can four people share one tablet?
Yes, in Snake and Whack-a-Mole, a joystick or a zone each.
Are there team games?
Yes, Air Hockey plays teams by device, and Checkers puts two against two.