Voobly

Voobly is a social networking platform that gives you the possibility to chat with other people while playing video games. It has numerous chatrooms as well as an instant messenger. Some classical games that can be played with this tool include Age of Empires II: The Conquerors, Age of Mythology: The Titans, Rainbow Six, Scrabble, and Monopoly 3.

To get started, you have to sign up for an account. Once you're logged in, you can explore the game browser with a long list of currently played games, along with each existing lobby and number of joined users. In the main area, you can check out the popular and most active threads, together with recent announcements and activity by your friends.

To be able to play a game, you have to separately install it outside of this application. Once this step is completed, you can view the different lobbies available and pick one to join (some are password-protected). Otherwise, you can host a public or private lobby yourself and invite friends to join.

Multiplayer information includes the required rating and ladder. You can ask Voobly to automatically join lobbies, change the viewing mode (list, table, browser), configure the default and visible ratings, as well as use diagnostics tools if any game- or network-related issues occur.

The instant messenger minimizes to the systray on close and shows notifications on important events, like when someone writes you a message. You can configure settings related to the messenger (e.g. customized fonts, timestamps), lobby, alerts and sounds, watch and ignore list, NAT Traversal, Universal Plug and Play, chat bridge, and theme.

The app worked smoothly on the latest Windows edition in our tests and low impact on the computer's performance. A bunch of documentation can be studied on Voobly's website.

All aspects considered, Voobly is ideal for users who would like to play classical multiplayer games while chatting with others.