35 Fun Party Games That Are [Actually] Worth Playing

Whether it’s your birthday, the holidays, or a random get together, there are so many fun party games that’ll make any gathering so much better.

Because sometimes you’re not always gonna know everyone there, or things are just going to start off a bit slow. And if you’re with friends, family, and/or acquaintances, the perfect game can make an ok event memorable.

Even some of my favorite memories have been playing all kinds of games with my friends during the holidays or over at my family’s house. It’s a great activity to throw into the mix of the party.

So write a few of these party games down and teach them to everyone the next time you have a get together!

1. Mafia

“Mafia is a fun one if you have a good number of people. You basically have a narrator, citizens, mafia members, a doctor, a police officer, and there may be other roles or one of these roles removed depending on house rules. You decide who’s who by picking your role out of a hat. The point of the game is to figure out who the mafia members are as they kill different players each round. Mafia members have to lie to keep their cover so the gameplay is that everyone is getting accused, some are lying bc they are mafia others are telling the truth. You’ll have two people saying they’re not mafia because “I’m the doctor.” Who’s lying? gasp someone killed the police officer who we thought was mafia this whole time.”

—Unknown Reddit User

2. Anomia

“Anomia is a really fun card game that doesn’t take a lot of mental stamina. The basic concept is who can say the name of a specific thing (Basketball teams, mountain ranges, Hitchcock movies, etc.) that first comes to mind. The game is most fun when people blurt out the wrong brain-fart answer and makes everybody laugh.”

—willk95

3. Fake Artist Goes to New York

Every player is given the same word, expect just one player. So for example, everyone might get the word “castle.”

And to play this game, everyone in the group needs to contribute to drawing just one line at a time. But the single person who has been made “the fake artist” doesn’t know what the word even is (so they need to fake it).

Then after each players does two lines each, they can guess who the fake artist is. If they’re found out, they lose the game unless they’re able to guess what the object was that they were trying to draw.

4. Would You Rather

Would you rather is probably one of the best games to play with friends.

You grab a list of Would You Rather questions, and each player in the circle takes turns asking questions.

It’s a great way to get people to think, laugh, create some shock, and have good conversations. And it can range anywhere from funny, deep, or just kind of weird.

You can definitely improv with this one!

5. Comedian

“Everyone fills their mouth with a beverage of their choosing, except for one person, who gets to be the comedian. The comedian’s job is to try to make their friends laugh. If everyone spits out their drinks, the comedian wins. If one person doesn’t spit up their drink, they win. They then have to be the comedian for the next round. If the original comedian wins then who ever was the closest to winning goes.”

—SirGanjaSpliffington

6. Blind Chicken

“BLIND CHICKEN!!!!! Well, at least that’s what I know it as (from my father). So basically you blindfold someone and turn them around 10 times then they have to find someone using only their sense of touch and hearing and after they find a person they’re the Bind Chicken and it just keeps going like that ‘till you don’t wanna play it anymore. It sounds boring but it’s REALLY fun! Just…don’t play it outside, you don’t wanna fall anywhere outside.”

—Noisemaker

7. Telestrations

“It’s basically whisper down the lane except with pictures and drawing. First person gets a word, draws it, passes it, next person guesses what it is, then passes it and the next person has to draw what the other person guessed. Pretty fun to see where things go.”

—TheEbonySky

8. Mirror Charades

“Just like charades, but two people go up instead of one. One person knows what they are acting out and performs the charade behind everyone trying to guess. The other person does not know, and simply mimics the first person, since they are the only one who can see them. It’s odd how much harder this version is.”

—PlatonicTroglodyte

9. Before and After

“Me and my brother in law play “before and after”.

Basically, someone starts off with a phrase, say “Going to school”. You will then use the last word of that phrase to start a new one, while including the original, and keeping it going as long as possible. The first one to [mess] it up loses.”

—Pantzzzzless

10. Spoons

“It’s like a kinda violent musical chairs. All you need is some spoons and a pack of cards.

You all sit round a table, and lay out spoons in the middle, one less than the total number of players. You then deal out all the cards in the deck. On ‘GO’, you pass one card from your hand to the person on your left.

The idea is to keep it moving quickly, almost rhythmically, and the objective is to get four cards in your hand that are the same eg 4 Kings etc.

Once you have four of the same cards, you can make a grab for the spoons in the middle. As soon as someone makes a grab, every other player can make the grab. Think of it as the music stopping in musical chairs.

At the end, one person will be left without a spoon and they are out. One spoon is taken away, and the game begins again until only one winner remains. The overall winner gets great glory and riches.

Things degenerate quickly into a minor brawl once that first spoon is grabbed.”

—chewbaccasdadd

11. Protect the President

“It’s a game for outside, that can be started at any time, it starts with one person putting their finger to their ear like they’re talking into an earpiece, when the other people in the group notice they have to do the same, the last person to do so becomes the ‘president’. The other players shout: “MR.PRESIDENT, GET DOWN” and start to jump on top of him and others can form a perimeter making finger guns and the like.”

—DerangedPickle

12. The Movie Game

“The movie game, everyone stands in a circle, first person names a movie. The person next to them names an actor or actress in that movie, next person names a different movie the actor/actress was in, and so on. You get eliminated if you can’t name an actor or movie.”

—ForToday

Reddit user, salaryprotection, responded to this one,

“Or a variation of that, name an actor, and then list all the movies he/she has been in. I like that variation because it can get intense (we play teams too) as you get into the weeds and start listing obscure movies. Then you trashtalk as one team is seemingly stumped and you go “I got 2 more movies I can think of”.”

13. Telephone Pictionary

“The first one is called Telephone Pictionary by my friends, but I bet it’s got some other, more official name. It’s essentially a mashup of telephone and Pictionary, as the name implies.

You will need:

• A pad of paper for each player
• Writing instruments

Say you have a table of people like so: Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Rory

Everybody starts out with a pad and a pencil, and thinks of a phrase. Everyone will be passing pads clockwise, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll focus on one person’s pad (Rose’s).

1. Rose writes her phrase down on the top page and labels the top “ROSE 1.” Then she passes it to Martha.
2. Martha flips to the next page and tries to draw Rose’s phrase, then labels the top “ROSE 2.” She signs her drawing and passes the pad to Donna.
3. Donna, looking ONLY at Martha’s drawing, flips to the next page and writes down what she thinks the phrase is, then labels the top “ROSE 3.” She signs her phrase and passes the pad to Amy.
4. Amy, looking ONLY at Donna’s phrase, flips to the next page and tries to draw what Donna wrote down, then labels the top “ROSE 4.” She signs her drawing, then passes the pad to Rory.
5. Rory, looking ONLY at Amy’s drawing, flips to the next page and writes down what he thinks the phrase is, then labels the top “ROSE 5.” He signs his phrase and passes the pad to Rose, who will probably recognize 0% of the end result.

Everyone at the table gets a pad, so everyone at the table is working on someone’s chain of phrases/pictures at any given moment. A time limit of 1 minute for the phrases and 2 minutes for the drawings is usually encouraged. This game is suitable for literally any level of drawing skill — in fact, the more people who can’t draw, the better it gets, because the most fun part of this game is the show-and-tell afterward. The game also improves the more people you add to the table, but you have to make sure the number of players is odd, so it ends on a phrase.”

—Jon Sung

14. Never Have I Ever

For this one, each player holds up one or both of their hands and takes turns saying something they have never done before. For example, they’ll say something like, “Never have I ever eaten a whole pizza in one go.”

And then if anyone in the group has done that specific action, they can put their finger down.

It’s a simple game, and a funny way to find out crazy or silly things about people.

Also, if you want a ready-made list, then here are some Never Have I Ever Questions you can use the next time you do group games.

15. The Paperback Game

“You will need:

• Index cards or index-card-sized pieces of paper
• A writing instrument for each player
• A stack of [cruddy] genre novels (it works incredibly well with any combination of young adult / vampire / romance / science fiction)

Everybody gets some paper and a pencil. One person acts as the moderator, generally.

1. The mod picks a book.
2. The mod shows everybody the front cover and reads the back jacket copy aloud.
3. Everyone writes down what they think the first sentence of the book is. At the same time, the mod writes down the REAL first sentence of the book.
4. Everyone passes their paper to the mod.
5. The mod shuffles the stack of papers and reads each entry aloud.
6. Once every sentence has been read, the mod goes through and reads them again one more time. On this pass, players vote for the sentence they think is real.
7. Scoring!
– One point for everyone who voted for the real sentence.
– One point for each person who wrote a sentence that got a vote.

Whoever gathers the most points by whatever means wins!”

—Jon Sung

16. This or That

“Everybody sits in a circle. The first person gives you a choice of things. You have to vote on it, and the thing that you don’t vote gets ‘deleted’ from the world forever. The thing you do keep then gets compared to another thing by the next person. For example, one person says ‘sugar or video games,’ and everybody has to vote on if you would rather live in a world without sugar or without video games. Once something is voted out, it doesn’t exist in the world any more. Keep going until you have created a really weird world.”

—mbinder

17. Psychiatrist

“You get everyone in the room to sit in a circle and you send one person (the psychiatrist) out of the room and out of earshot while the rest of the group thinks up what their “problem” will be. It’s not really a psychiatric problem — it’s a problem like, “Whenever you answer a question, cross your legs. Then uncross when you are finished.” Or, “Everytime you answer a question, answer the way you think the person next to you would answer.” Or “When you answer a question, answer like you think you are five.”
The psychiatrist is brought in the room and encouraged to ask questions and interview people to figure out what the “problem” is, without anyone telling him/her directly. The questioning goes on for as long as it takes for the psychiatrist to catch on to the pattern of what everyone is doing when they answer.”

—Heather Goodman

18. Funemployed

“My favorite party game is one we call Salad Bowl. You cut up strips of paper (3 or so per person) and everyone writes something on each strip. It can be anything. A word, sentence, absolute nonsense, whatever. The strips get folded and put into a salad bowl. The players get divided into two teams.

Round 1 – Taboo: Someone from the first team picks a paper from the bowl and gets 1 minute to describe the contents of the paper in any way they can without using any word on the paper. Their team has to guess the contents exactly. If they get it, remove the paper and pick a new strip. When the times up, someone from the other team tries. The round continues until all the strips have been pulled, and teams get points for each strip they got.

Round 2 – Charades: Put all paper back in. Repeat in the same way as round 1, except with charades.

Round 3 – 1 word clue: Put all paper back in. Repeat in the same way, except each person only gets to say a single word to clue their team.”

—driver1676

19. Minute to Win It

“you give everyone chopsticks and a container and put a big pile of marshmallows in the center of a table and they whoever gets the most mellows in the container at the end wins. Its pretty frantic and funny.”

—Logan Matthews

20. Balloon Duel

“Two people tape a balloon to one leg. The first person to bust the other person’s balloon is the winner.”

—Unknown Reddit User

21. What Are the Odds

“One person will say “hey what are the odds that (persons name) will eat dog food” or whatever ridiculous thing you want to say. That person can say the odds are between 1 and any number as long as it doesn’t exceed 300. If they’re feeling risky they might say 1-5. Then the person that asked the question to and the person that was challenged both have to say a number in that range on the count of three. If their number matches the challenged person has to do whatever it was. Playing this game resulted in a girl cutting her hair off 😂

Edit: forgot a rule we use. If someone doesn’t say a number on the count of three or says a number not in the called range then the odds are halved. So if it was 1-10 it becomes 1-5″

—kking0411

22. Murder Wink ‘Em

“Everyone sits in a circle and draws a piece of paper from a bucket. Most are blank, but one will have an M or something to identify the ‘murderer’. A person is killed when the murderer makes eye contact and winks. The more dramatic and drawn out the death the better. The murderer tries to ‘kill’ as many people as they can without anyone seeing who they are and identifying them.”

—ChaoticV

23. Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

“There’s a game on Steam called Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. One player grabs a laptop and gets to play with a time bomb while the rest of the people get to tell them how to disarm it through various puzzles from a manual. Neither the disarmer or the helpers get to see each other’s stuff so it’s purely about effective communication-

I’ve played it at a number of parties. So much fun!”

—Kitanax

24. Sardines

“Sardines! It’s reverse hide-n-seek. Best played at night. The person who’s It hides. Everyone counts. Then, when you find It, you hide with them. Last person to find everyone is the new It.

It can be a challenge to find a spot good enough to fit in a bunch of people. And not to giggle as you all get packed in.”

—2beagles

25. Truth or Dare

I don’t care if this sounds like something only little kids would play, I think it’s still one of the best adult party games.

Also, when you’re an adult, things can get a lot more funny, deep, or embarrassing depending on the truth or dare questions you choose.

Just make sure you don’t push someone’s comfort zone too far so that the night stays fun!

26. When I Dream

“The game begins with role cards being distributed to each player. The deck of mostly one-word cards is placed in the centre of the table, and one person dons a blindfold and becomes the Dreamer, or soon to be victim of wallet theft. A two-minute sand timer is flipped and the player next to the dreamer begins the round.

Everyone takes turns giving a one-word clue about the card on top of the deck to the dreamer. These clues can’t be a derivative of the word, sound like the word, or be the word itself. If someone breaks these rules, they take a 1-point penalty and the card is discarded.

At this point everyone is throwing words at the dreamer like it’s verbal dodgeball. The dreamer has a choice of guessing what the word is, or passing. If they guess correctly the card is placed in the bright yellow happy box, otherwise it gets placed in the blue nightmare box. Passing also puts the card in the nightmare box, which is fair enough, because you should never give up on your dreams.

The three roles in the game are: the fairies, the boogeymen, and the sandmen. Fairies and the dreamer earn one point for every correctly guessed card. The boogeymen earn one point for each incorrect card. The sandmen work a bit differently. They get bonus points at the end of the round if the number of correct and incorrect cards are equal.

After two minutes, the dreamer gets a bonus round where they must name all correctly guessed cards in the form of Martin Luther King’s ‘I had a dream’ speech. Doing so gives them +1 to their speech proficiency and awards them a couple extra points. The next person becomes the dreamer and a new round begins. Once everyone has had a dream, add up the points and declare a winner.”

—Skombie

27. Puzzle Relay

“Rules: Split participants into teams. Each team member can place one piece at a time before passing it on. The first team to complete the puzzle wins.

Objective: Complete a jigsaw puzzle in a relay race format.”

—AsAb0veSoBel0w

Honestly, this one sounds like such a fun idea and should definitely be added to your list of birthday games for adults (or for any occasion really).

28. Spyfall

“Spyfall. I think it’s based on a physical game, but this website has a free version that allows everyone to use their phones to play (generates a code that y’all enter to join the same round).

Everyone (save one person) is given the same location, and a different occupation. One person is the Spy, and is NOT given the location. Ultimately, the goal of the main group is to determine who the Spy is, while it is the Spy’s goal to determine the location. To achieve this, players go around in a circle, asking each other questions; the main group trying to determine whether the person they’re asking knows the location, while the Spy tries to determine what the location is (without giving away that they are the spy).”

—sorafan9393

29. Hide ‘n Seek in the Dark

This is definitely one of the most fun group games I’ve ever played as a grown adult.

It’s honestly so much fun to find unique ways to hide since you’re not a small kid anymore, and the darkness really is your ally.

I remember hiding in a dark corner of a hallway, and I was the last person to be found. You can get so creative with it, and there are so many laughs when you play it!

30. Ghost

“While not a board game my family has a fun game we call ghost. It’s a verbal spelling game. You go around in a circle spelling a word that no one knows one letter at a time. The object of the game is to not be the one that ends the word or you get “g” then “h” and so on until you get “ghost” and are out of the game. Each time a word is ended a new round starts. So the word might be at g-a-m when it gets to you and perhaps the person before you is trying to get you out by spelling “game” but instead you say the letter “i” intending to spell “gaming.” The other rule is that you can bluff your way out of ending the round. So if as in the above example, the round has so far built the word g-a-m and all you can think of is the letter “e” which would end the word, you can bluff and confidently say another letter that doesn’t make another word. There are no words for example that are spelled gamh if you were to say the letter H. It is then up to the next person in the round to call your bluff if they think you are just making up a word. If a player calls a bluff the previous player has to tell them what word they were thinking of and if it is a real word spelled correctly then they are not out and the person who challenged that player goes out. But if the challenged player cannot come up with a word they go out and end the round.”

—hyrulianpokemaster

31. Betrayal at the House on the Hill

“We love “Betrayal at the house on the hill”, but you can only play with 6 people tops (unless you get the expansion). “Loaded Questions” is also a favorite of mine, good for conversation starters, getting to know others, and just good humor.”

—SassyHiccup

If you like spooky and fun games for adults, then this might be a good one to add to your list.

It’s a board game that starts off with allies exploring a haunted house that’s filled with traps, omens, items, and more. But as the game progresses, something called the “haunt” begins. And in the end, one player normally “betrays” everyone else and teams up with the ghosts and other creepy inhabitants of the house. So it’s up to the group to take them down.

32. Scribblish

“You have a scroll that the paper goes into and you get a card that has three captions on it that you can choose from that is written at the top of the paper. Then a timer starts and you have 30 seconds to draw the caption. A dice is then rolled that determines who gets your scroll next (example: pass your scroll to the player that is 2 people away on your left – 2L) and they have 30 seconds to come up with a caption for your picture. They cannot see the original caption as it is rolled up into the scroll. It continues like this with passing and people drawing pictures for each new caption or drawing each new caption that is written. Kind of like the game telephone from when you were a kid. It’s a lot of fun to see how the original caption gets changed so drastically!”

—aznoneiye

Side Note: Other players have said that you don’t even need cards to play this party game, so it’s up to you!

33. Just One

“Just One is a great cooperative party game for as many players as you need.

Materials. A writing utensil for each player and slips of paper/little whiteboards. A random lost of words for a game like catch phrase or pictionary.

Game play. Someone is deemed the “guesser” of a single word. A word is then drawn from the deck/pile/list and not told to them. They then close their eyes and everyone else writes down a one word clue in secret.

Then while the guesser still has their eyes closed everyone compares the clues silently. If there are any duplicates, remove them. The guesser opens their eyes, looks at all of the unique clues and gets one guess to guess the word.

Then you do it again seeing how many the table can get right.”

—Draconis91

34. Dictionary

“Basically, all you need is paper and a dictionary. Everyone has a piece of paper and one person at a time has the dictionary. That person opens to a random page, finds a word they don’t know, and announces it to the group. If nobody in the group knows the word, they can proceed.

Each person writes the word on a slip of paper and makes up a definition for it, except for the person who found the word (they write the actual definition). After writing, everyone turns in their definitions to the first person who proceeds to read all the definitions (fake and real) aloud to the group.

Everyone but the announcer gets one guess as to which definition is correct. After everyone has guessed, the announcer reveals the correct answer. If you guessed the correct definition, you get a point. If someone guessed your made up definition, you get a point for each time it was guessed. If nobody guesses the correct definition, the person who originally chose the word gets a point. Then the dictionary is passed to the next person and the process is repeated.”

—cptcliche

35. Wiki Top List Trivia

“It’s easy to do with a phone. Choose a random list on Wikipedia, like countries by population. Either do the top 10 or top 20, and each person gets one or two guesses. You get one point for number one on the list, two points for number two, etc. So you’re aiming for the lower half of the list, or safe and pick a easy one at the top. Go through some lists and the one with most points wins.”

—HistoryChannel1