Often the best drinking games are all you need to have a brilliant time, but sometimes you’re after something just a ~little~ bit more civilised. Step forward: the best house party games for adults.
So, as the hot weather continues and your weekends are filled with hosting summer BBQs that linger on well into the evening, you may be after some ideas to pick up the pace a little after eating (slightly too much) food.
Whether you’re feeling savage, (hello, most likely to questions) or you want to see your best mates drink too much prosecco, (Ring of Fire, we see you) here are our 15 favourite house party game suggestions.
Head’s Up
A real crowd pleaser, the Head’s Up app makes party games a doddle. Once you’ve downloaded it, one person picks a category (whether that’s Superstars, Act It Out, Animals or more), and puts the phone to their head. The phone will then display words within that category, and the other players on that person’s team have to describe the word without actually saying it, within a time limit. Once the person guesses correctly, they nod the phone forward, and it moves on to the next word. The winning team is the one that guesses the most words in the time limit.
Charades
Everyone knows how to play charades, it’s a universal classic. Start by dividing your party into teams, and have one person from your team try and act out a book, film, song, etc. while you try and guess what it is as quickly as possible. The more competitive your group is, the louder it will get, so only go for this one if you can handle being shouted at by your best mate.
Two Truths and a Lie
If you want to learn some or your mates’ deepest and darkest secrets, this is the perfect game to play, especially after a few wines. (It’s the perfect party piece for your oversharing friend.)
Pretty self-explanatory, each guest has to write two truths and lie about themselves on a piece of paper, fold it up and throw it in a bowl. You, (the host) then randomly pull them out, one at a time, and read them to your group. Everyone must then identify who the person is, and what their lie is.
Mystery Word
This is a great game to start at the beginning of a dinner party. Everybody has to put their own name into a pot, and a ridiculous phrase / word / sentence into another pot. Each person around the table then pulls a name and phrase out of the respective pots (hopefully not their own!), and then has to work that phrase into conversation with the chosen person, without being called out for it. For example, if one person pulled out ‘I applied for Love Island’ and ‘Sarah’, they’d have to find a way to tell Sarah about their ITV2 application without her suspecting.
Human Cluedo
Take Mystery Word one step further with Human Cluedo, which is a great game to play over the course of a weekend. Everybody involved writes their own name down and puts it into one pot, and then a household item to put into another pot. Finally, you write as many locations as there are people down (i.e. kitchen, bathroom, garden).
Everyone picks a person, item and location. Over the weekend, each person is tasked with giving their chosen person the thing in the location. If someone does it to you, you’re dead and out of the game, so can’t try and ‘do it’ to someone else. For example, if someone manages to give you the pepper grinder on the balcony. Last person standing wins.
Cards Against Humanity
Everybody knows this one, don’t they? It’s an absolute classic (just maybe not one for Christmas Dinner with your parents!) The rules follow a simple ‘Fill in the blank’ format. Everyone is dealt 10 white cards, which are the options for ‘filling of the blank’. One black card is then drawn, which contains the blank that people have to fill. Each player then chooses one of their white cards which they think best fills the gap, and puts them face down on the table. The person who drew the black cards reads the sentence aloud, filling in the blank with the different options each time, and then chooses the funniest as the winner of that round. The person who wins the most rounds, wins.
Psych
Like Head’s Up, Psych is an app. Once downloaded, you enter the names of everyone playing. The app will then ask questions about different players, and everyone in the room has to anonymously submit an answer. Everybody playing then picks the funniest answer to the question, and the player who wins the most rounds, wins. It’s a bit like Cards Against Humanity, but you’re able to tailor the questions and answers to the people you’re playing with, which makes it a little more interactive.
Cereal Box Game
This house party game calls for some good old fashioned physical activity. Get an empty cereal box and put it in the middle of the room. All participating players must try and pick the cereal box up using their mouth in any means necessary, providing they don’t put their hands on the floor, or any supporting furniture. Once everyone has had a go at picking up the cereal box, cut an inch off the box. Continue trying to pick it up with your mouth, and cutting an inch off each time, until someone is crowned the surviving winner.
Sheet Mime
There are many different ways to play The Sheet Mime game, but the basic rules are the same. Every person playing puts a couple of nouns into a hat (typically, the more in-jokey, personal and ridiculous, the better!), and takes it in turns to play four different rounds. In the first round, each player pulls out a word and has to articulate what it says without saying the word. In the next round, pull a ~different~ word out of the bowl, and act it out. In the third round, try to describe the word using only one word. And in the fourth? Each player has to act it out under a sheet. Yeah, it gets pretty silly.
Other variations of the game involve a round trying to explain the word only using your eyes, or using slightly easier words in the hat – think people or objects.
Ring Of Fire
There are so many great drinking games around, with the age old classic being ‘Ring Of Fire’. The game involves one pack of cards being spread around a cup in the middle of the table, which each card having a different value. Players take it in turns to draw the cards, which mean the following –
- 2 – You, the player who drew the card picks someone to drink
- 3 – Me, the player who drew the card drinks
- 4 – All those who identify as female drink
- 5 – Thumbmaster, the player who drew the card must put their thumb on the table. The last person to put their thumb on the table must drink
- 6 – All those who identify as male drink
- 7 – Heaven, the player who drew the card must point to the sky, and the last person who points to the sky must drink
- 8 – Mate, the player who drew the card picks a drinking mate, who must drink every time they drink
- 9 – Rhyme, the player who drew the card says a word, and you go around the circle rhyming with that word until someone messes up, and has to drink
- 10 – Categories, the player who drew the card thinks of a category (e.g. dogs, cars, types of alcohol), and you go around the circle naming words in that category until someone messes up, and has to drink
- Jack – Rule, the player who drew the card makes a new rule (e.g. must drink with your left hand, or you can’t call people by their first names) and anyone who breaks the rule has to drink
- Queen – Question master, if anybody answers a question asked by the player who drew the card, they have to drink
- King – the player who drew the card must pour some of their drink into the cup in the middle
- Ace – waterfall, every player continually drinks their drink, and can only stop when the person to their right has stopped drinking, starting with the player who drew the card.
Beer Pong
Another absolute classic. Beer Pong involves attempting to throw a ping pong ball into your opposition’s cup, resulting in them drinking the contents. At either ends of a kitchen table / counter top/ ping pong table, put six cups in a triangle shape. In teams, take it in turns to throw the ball into your opposition’s cups from your end, being sure to be transparent with your rules from the beginning. Is the ball allowed to bounce? Are you allowed to hit the rim? The winning team is the one who lands the ball in all of the opposition’s cups before they do it to you.
Pictionary
While there is a board game you could use for Pictionary, it’s not completely necessary. Ask everyone playing to write down 10 phrases, objects, actions, people or otherwise and put them into a bowl. In teams, one player must help their team guess what the piece of paper says, using only a pen and paper, against a clock. The phrases can be anything from ‘Coleen Rooney versus Rebeckah Vardy’ to ‘Boris Johnson zip-lining’. The winning team is the one who can guess the most rounds of correct answers in your chosen time limit.
Name the tune
Everyone knows how to play this game, and it’s always a winner. All you need is a (semi in-tune) singing voice. To play, someone picks a song and has to hum the tune. Everyone else has to guess what the song is and the first person to get it right, wins. The winner then gets to pick the next song, and so on.
To take it up a notch and turn it into a more ‘adult’ version, you can turn it into a drinking game. So, whoever guesses the song first doesn’t have to drink, but the losers do. It can become very competitive, very quickly!
Chocolate Game
This is a party game classic, isn’t it? You haven’t been to a soiree without a bar of chocolate and some oven gloves being whacked out. If you’ve never played it before, players sit in a circle around a bar of chocolate, a hat, a scarf, a knife and fork, and a pair of oven gloves. Going around the circle, players take it in turns to role a single dice, trying to get a six. When a player gets a six, they put the hat, scarf and oven gloves on, and try to cut up the chocolate (which is meant to start wrapped!) using the knife and fork. Their chance ends when the next person rolls a six, and takes over, putting on the hat, scarf… and so on. The game finishes when the whole bar of chocolate has been eaten.
Articulate
Everybody loves a good game of Articulate, don’t they? If you’ve never played before, the rules are simple. In teams of two or more, one person is the describer, and the remaining people are the guessers. The describer takes a card from the front of the pack and has to describe the word in the category that corresponds to the segment on the board where the team’s counter is, without saying the actual word.
For example, if your category is ‘People’ and the person is ‘Kim Kardashian’, the describer could say, “The full name of Khloe, Kourtney, Kylie and Kendall’s sister.”
Priorities
This game looks *so* fun, and it’s basically self-explanatory, right? Described as “the party game of absurd choices,” you essentially find out how savage (or not) your friends really are. With questions like “What do you care about more: friendship, world peace, or yourself?” and “What’s more offensive: scented candles, Spotify adverts, or reclining your seat back on an aeroplane?” players have to rank these everyday items in order of how important they are to them. The game can be found on Amazon along with the complete list of instructions.
Disclaimer: You’ll probably find out things about your friends that you didn’t realise. Sign us up!
Truth or Dare
If you’re looking for the ultimate throwback to your teenage house party years, there’s nothing better than truth or dare. No props, cards, or game paraphernalia involved, you just need a group of your mates and a sense of humour.
We all know how to play the classic game so we’ll spare you the spiel, but we have recently updated our truth or dares list with some pretty spectacular new additions. Prepare to (responsibly, of course) down a lot of shots.
Snog, Marry, Around the World
This is (in our opinion) a funner take on the classic Snog, Marry, Avoid. Instead of avoiding one of the choices, you have to go on a world cruise with the person and spend every single second of every day with them.
Whether you choose three different celebs to snog, marry, or go around the world with, or you take it closer to home and pick three people in the room, this game is sure to provide all the lols.
