Hotseat or hot seat, also known as pass-and-play,[1] is a multiplayer mode provided by some turn-based video games, which allows two or more players to play on the same device by taking turns playing the game.
The term was first used as a reference to playing a PC game and trading seats with the other player, but the mode dates back to early 1980s arcade games.
[2] A notable example of games that use this mode is the Heroes of Might and Magic series, which allows up to 8 players to play locally on the same computer.
Since hotseat play is usually defined as turn-based by nature, the duration of a game may extend beyond that of a comparable real-time networked multiplayer game where each player can take action at the same time.
In those cases, hotseat enables N players to play on fewer than N physical computers.