Party games are a great way to bring people together, break the ice or just provide old friends with new tricks. From easy, no-frills fun to entertaining electronics, here’s a roundup of some of our favorite party games to help you keep your soirees lively and spirited this holiday season.
1. White Elephant Gift Exchange
This game makes for great holiday parties - but watch out, because things can get ugly when Marla from Marketing and Bill the mail-guy have it out over that Sex and the City 2 DVD. via Wikipedia
2. Holiday Sticker Stalker
A great game to keep everyone on their toes, but not for the paranoid party-goer. Everyone at the party has 10 holiday stickers and must get rid of the whole sheet by sticking them to the other guests without them noticing. If someone catches you, they can stick one of his/her stickers on you. First one to empty their sticker sheet wins! via Party 411
3. Camera Hot Potato
A fun and quick around-the-table game that provides you with some hilarious pictures your friends will be begging you not to tag. via Party Plan
4. “Smile Shutter” Mode on the Sony Cyber-shot Camera
A great tool for a party host, this particular digital camera function will automatically capture an image only when it detects the subject smiling. You can even prioritize adult or child faces and set the level of smile to ensure a picture will only be taken upon the toothiest of grins. The album you are left with at the end of the night of party guests smiling ear-to-ear is endlessly amusing. Available at sonystyle.com
5. Cracker
This is one of those good, unsuspecting games you can play throughout the night, and great way of interrupting Uncle Willy’s endless yammering. via Party Plan
6. Scene It?
An interactive head-to-head battle in which players answer trivia questions about films or pop culture. You can even design your virtual-self to look just like you! Available for the iPhone, iPad, Xbox, Playstation and Wii. Find out more at www.sceneit.com
7. Electronic Catchphrase
An instant-classic and a riotous good time - especially if incorporated into a drinking game. Luckily Electronic Catchphrase is outfitted with rubber bumpers, because we’ve definitely seen a few whiz by our heads when rounds take a turn for the worse. Available at Target.com
8. Who am I?
Pick one name for each person playing and stick that name on each persons back or forehead. Each person gets 20 "yes or no" questions to find out who they are. This game is really funny as each person starts recounting what they know about themselves before asking their next question. via eHow.com
9. Honey I Love You
This one is totally silly, but any game that tries to crack people up is fun in our book. Also, the sentence “Honey I love you, won’t you give me a smile,” when spoken to somebody you may have just met is exactly the kind of creepy, diabolical ice-breaker that usually brings people together. via University of Illinois
10. Mafia
If you have enough people and the time to play, this one will quickly become a cult favorite amongst your friends - especially if you have a charismatic and animated moderator to keep things original and move things along. Read the full directions on wikihow.com
Image: Mat Sanders
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This is a cute post! My friends and I just played the "Who am I?". I was Mr. Clean! This game is fun all year long. Another similar game is to take popular song names, put them in a hat and make your friends Hum them until people can guess what it is.
Another fun one is where everyone has a piece of paper and they write a sentance on the top. Then you pass it to the next person and they have to draw a picture that represents the sentance. They then fold the paper so that you can only see the picture, then pass it to the next person who has to guess the sentance from the picture. After there are a few iterations of the sentances/drawings, it usually turns out really funny. It's best to end with a sentance so that you can compare the beginning and ending sentances. It's basically a cross between Telephone and Pictionary.
I think one of the board game companies actually just came out with this as a packaged game, but all you really need is paper and pens.
I threw a 70s themed party for my friend last year and we played a 70s edition of "Who Am I?" The one that took the longest to guess was "Carrie", haha!
Skategories! I love this game and it's a blast with big groups.
Pictionary, always!
Mafia is awesome in big groups, especially if you've all known each other for some time.
On a side note, I think there's a version of mafia (either a little different or just a different name) called werewolf or something like that. Can anyone fact check me on that?
We did this for my White Party many years ago - White meaning..all the food was white (Popcorn, Big Hunks, cauliflower and ranch dip, White Russians, etc), you had to wear white, etc. Every one had a slip of paper on their back with something todo with 'white' on it "Snow White, White Snake, The White Cliffs of Dover, Average White Band...
It was fun at the time!! Guess you could do it with any color?
@ Mastorpatt:
According to the link provided, Mafia IS also known as Werewolf and Assassin and has a few different versions.
Who What Where - as soon as people arrive, give them slips of paper to write a person, place and activity on seperate slips. Put them in seperate marked baskets. When you have a good pile of each built up start playing. A person picks one from each basket and then has to draw or act it out for their team to guess. Whats fun about it is a lot of times it incorporates people/places/things you were discussing before the game. Also fun when someone wrote a hard one and ends up having to draw or act it out. An example of that is a friend who put 'the second to the last of the mohicans' as a who - it was hilarious.
If there are going to be games, I agree with Lisa Hunter that you should let people know ahead of time. We're not big game people in my house and usually get together with people to talk and catch up. I have enjoyed game nights on occasion, but is it not the primary way I'd like to spend my limited free time.
In high school, my youth group would always get together twice a year at my house just to play Mafia... some of the funnest nights ever! (but you need at least 10 people for it to be any fun)
Oh, and I just learned a hilarious game called fishbowl... look it up!
My favorite party game is the Mallory Family Fun Game:
Give each player 2 or 3 slips of paper and have them write a word, phrase or sentence on each slip (if you want it to be easier you can stick to just one word per card). Fold all the cards in half and place in a bowl. Then divide the players into two teams.
For the first round, a player from team 1 takes the bowl and has one minute to get his/her team to guess as many of the cards as possible. The player may say anything except the words on the card to get the team to guess. After one minute, the bowl passes to team 2 who then has one minute to guess as many cards as possible. Turns alternate between teams until all the cards have been guessed. Each team counts the number of cards they guessed in round 1 and then all cards are put back in the bowl.
Round 2 is just like round 1, except that the players must use charades (no words or sounds) to get their team to guess. After all the cards have been guessed with charades, teams tally their scores and put all the cards back in the bowl.
For round 3, players may only do ONE action or make ONE sound (no words) to get their team to guess. After round 3, tally scores and declare a winner!
We play this all the time with my boyfriend's comedy group and it is hilarious both sober and after alcohol consumption. One of our perennial favorite things to write is "Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture" (the title of a book that a friend used for his thesis).