(Credits: Netflix)

Netflix just found a new way to take over your living room, and this time, it’s not with a new show. For the first time ever, the platform is bringing its games to television screens, and this will turn your next movie night into a full-blown game night.

Hard to believe, right? But it is happening, and the timing couldn’t be better. With the holidays around the corner, Netflix is dropping a bunch of party-ready titles you can play right on your TV.

And that’s not even the best part. The best part is that you can use your phone as the controller. You don’t need consoles or downloads. Basically, none of that technical nonsense. All you need is your friends and family and a healthy amount of yelling over who guessed the Pictionary drawing first.

You’ll find familiar names in the lineup, too. Starting with LEGO® Party, which will let you jump through mini-games in blocky worlds. Then you have Boggle Party, which will test your word skills against the clock, and Tetris Time Warp, which’ll take you through different eras of the iconic puzzle.

The highlight game is Pictionary: Game Night, the perfect game for running game nights since 1985. It is for the secretly competitive artist in your group, and then there is Party Crashers: Fool Your Friends. It’s a bluffing game that’s basically made to ruin friendships in the best way.

What makes this update even cooler is how low-effort it is. You don’t have to buy or install anything new; it all lives inside Netflix. The Games tab will sit right there on your TV’s main menu; all you need to do is scroll into it. The interface feels exactly like picking a series, except instead of pressing “play”, you literally “play”. It’s the kind of setup that makes it easy to convince even the most stubborn non-gamer in the room to join.

How do Netflix video games work?

It is surprising how ridiculously simple this is. Just open Netflix on your smart TV, scroll to the Games tab, and pick what you want to play. When a QR code pops up, scan it with your phone, and boom, you’ve got an instant controller. Everyone can join in, and every game is free with your Netflix subscription.

This move marks a big shift for Netflix. Until now, its gaming experiments were mostly on mobile, but now it’s going for the biggest screen in the house. As Co-CEO Greg Peters said, Netflix wants to create “social gaming experiences that show up on your TV.”

And honestly, it’s kind of genius. No one’s trying to replace PlayStation here. Instead, Netflix is going for that sweet spot between board games and casual fun. And you don’t need to prepare yourself for these games. This thing will work when everyone’s full of dessert, half asleep on the couch, and somehow still arguing about who spelt “quiz” wrong in Boggle.

So this holiday season, you don’t need to plan a game night. All you need to do is just open Netflix. Your TV’s already invited everyone. And if this first batch lands the way it should, you can expect more games pretty soon.