You and your friends could collaborate on a project – such as building a scale model of the Taj Mahal – or play one of the competitive mini-games. Think of it as a cross between a Lego set and a fantasy adventure. Minecraft (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, smartphone) The most popular video game in the world allows groups of eight players to meet online, explore vast blocky worlds and construct amazing buildings together.

So all our recommendations are primarily based on Xbox and PlayStation. Things are a bit more complicated on Nintendo Switch which requires you to download a mobile phone app in order to chat with friends, but even then only a minority of games support the feature. They’re easy to set up online (you’ll need to pay a fee of around £45 a year for access) and they both have very intuitive “Party Chat” functions which let you talk to your friends via a gaming headset while playing – in fact you can chat between games too, or even while watching Netflix on your console.

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are excellent machines for playing with and against remote friends.

Best web games to play with friends