It was after 9pm on a recent Wednesday inside the atrium of a sleek glass office building in Midtown Manhattan, and Jacky Yu let out a scream.

She and six other people were playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf — a card game in which players have secret roles and use deduction skills to discover each other’s hidden identities — and there had just been a big reveal.

“We got really excited,” Yu, 31, said.

The room was buzzing. Hundreds of people had gathered for an evening of game playing. Every table was occupied by clusters of people leaning in, laughing and competing.

New York can be expensive, overwhelming and intimidating, and sometimes it is hard for people to connect. A martini can cost $25 in a bar that’s too noisy for conversation, and raucous nightclubs aren’t for everyone. So a free, monthly BYOB (bring your own board game) night in an office building food court has become a big hit.

In addition to Werewolf, people were playing classics, like chess and mahjong, but also relatively newer games, including Catan, Splendour, Hues and Cues, Saboteur, Nertz, Wavelength, Blokus and Camel Up.

Board game events and clubs have grown in popularity in recent years — in New York and across the country. This one is organised by Richard Ye, a 24-year-old who works in finance. He bills the event as New York City’s largest board game meet-up, and a video of Ye celebrating his March gathering — where 500 people were in attendance — was widely shared on social media.

Ye, who grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Michigan, moved to New York City in 2022 and started hosting game nights for friends in his apartment.

“It just completely grew organically,” he said. “We went from 10 people to 25 people. And then once it got to 30 people, I was like, OK, I can’t fit them in my apartment.”

The event moved into a friend’s basement in Williamsburg but quickly outgrew that space too. In 2023, Ye moved it to the Midtown site and slowly expanded the group. “I started inviting people that I thought were interesting or I wanted to get to know better,” he said.

Soon, through word of mouth, social media and friends of friends, attendance expanded into the hundreds. “The growth has been just so magical,” Ye said.

The food hall where Ye and his friends gather is open to anyone, but the after-work crowd filters out as the game players trickle in. By 8pm, the space is filled with board game fans.

The most recent evening included a mix of people, mostly between their 20s and 40s. Many, like Ye, were new to the city, but there were also born-and-bred New Yorkers.

Attendees were drawn by the chance to make real connections, to have fun without alcohol, and to perhaps meet a romantic partner. (Ye said that he knew of at least 17 couples who had met as a result of his game nights.)

Jessica Wong has been coming for the past three years. “I’ve met a lot of my closest and bestest friends from these events,” she said.

Wong, 24, is a fan of word games like Codenames, Decrypto and Wavelength — social guessing games involving clues, secrets and cracking codes. “It’s about keeping your mind challenged,” she said.

The group is welcoming to first-timers, according to Spencer Kim, who moved to the city about 13 months ago. Kim, a 31-year-old software engineer, arrived by himself and didn’t know anyone. “Some people saw me kind of lost, and so they invited me to play Exploding Kittens with them,” he said.

(Exploding Kittens is a card game similar to Russian roulette or Uno, in which players take turns drawing cards from the same deck. Drawing an “Exploding Kitten” card boots you out of the game.)

Kim, who coached some novice mahjong players on the basics, had jumped at the chance to venture out and mingle with strangers in a low-stakes setting. “Anything is better than just being at home stuck on my phone just rotting away.”

The event also drew some game designers.

Brittane Rowe, co-founder of the company Awkward Games, brought two card games she had created: Hella Awkward (an icebreaker game that prompts players to answer awkward personal questions) and Build-A-Bae (a card game that involves mixing and matching traits to create the perfect partner). Rowe, 36, had seen Ye’s video on social media and reached out.

“Anyone that can build community like this, especially so quickly, it’s really kind of fascinating,” she said.

Syed Saud, who goes by the nickname Suede, was there too, teaching attendees how to play a game he had co-created, The Lost Lands of Verne. He described it as a combination of Catan, Risk, Monopoly and Dungeons & Dragons.

Saud, 28, said he saw a bright future for games that are played in person, pointing to Joust Society, an “upscale game night” in hotel lounges around the city. Plus, he said, he’s noticed that people are interested in gatherings that don’t centre on alcohol. “We’ve had a really big spike in the sober movement,” he said.

Case in point: Yale Zhang, who doesn’t like to drink and is the founder of a company that makes animal health monitoring technology.

Zhang, 42, thinks of in-person games as a form of mindfulness: “You have to be present, because if you don’t pay attention, you’re not going to be able to win,” he said. The other reason he attends Ye’s game nights? “It’s also a great networking opportunity, because you get to meet some of the smartest people in the city,” he said.

Ye, who owns more than 100 board games himself, is considering an event that’s even bigger — perhaps a 1,000-person game night. “Just for fun. Just to see. Why not?” he said.

At his recent event, things wrapped up around 10.30pm. Ye and two dozen other players then walked a few blocks over to a Taco Bell, where they played a few last rounds of games as they chomped on chalupas. It was clear that he had tapped into something people are craving.

Yu, the Werewolf screamer, said she would come again, and bring friends. She explained that she considers herself an introvert, except when she’s playing games.

“Sometimes, if you go to other events, or like maybe a party, it’s hard to talk to people,” she said. “This is a great way to either meet up with friends or meet new ones.”

She added: “Everyone loves games, right?”

New York Times News Service