Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)

You’d be forgiven for wondering just what the heck Sony’s PlayLink is. Rumoured to have been pulled from the publisher’s E3 2017 press conference at the last-minute due to Wi-Fi issues (a problem that the poor souls trying to liveblog the event can attest to), PlayLink was instead pushed out via a press release, whereupon it was completely subsumed by the maelstrom of E3. That’s a shame, because Sony’s latest take on the so-called “second screen” experience—where games are played using phones and tablets alongside a TV and a PlayStation 4—is lots of fun, so long as you have some like-minded buddies to play with.

Using a phone or a tablet to enhance a film, video game, or TV show played out on a big-screen certainly isn’t a new idea, though it hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm either. The feature all but disappeared from the PlayStation Vita, while the most high-profile use on the Xbox (where it’s called Smartglass) died a death alongside Lionhead’s Fable Legends.

PlayLink differs in that it isn’t an add-on to an existing game, but a collection of smaller party games explicitly designed for group play—kind of like the Jackbox series of trivia games, but much more involved. Up to five players—each with their own Android or iOS device and a copy of the free PlayLink app—can play together. All you have to do is make sure they’re all on the same Wi-Fi network.