It’s my daughters 21st soon and we’ve rented a couple of lodges at a local holiday park (not Centre Parcs) to get family members from all over the country together. And we’ve got two days to fill without killing each other! 🙂

I’m not a party games type of person so looking for some fun ideas – don’t mind rude or stupid but not intimate as it’s family! 🤣

Age 17 > 55

Dominoes

Triominoes

Cards Against Humanity.

You could have an actual real life game of Cluedo, with all the characters, rooms and weapons. needs a bit of planning, obvs.

Seriously though, we like Secret Hitler, Dobble is fun (and dead easy to learn) then it’s just traditional card games – Newmarket is always a winner, but Pontoon/21 or whatever you want to call it is good, Find the Queen, Rummy, Cheat etc.

Everyone writes the names of 10famous people on slips of paper
Than in teams you have to describe the person, no names rhymes etc.
Round 2 is all names back in the hat but 1 words description.
Round 3 mime.

Mexican train dominos always goes down well with the in-laws, as above I also like secret Hitler but only played that with mates not family. Herd mentality was also a good one

Throw throw Burrito

Chaos Reborn, a modern remake of the Spectrum classic?

Decades ago, we had fun and games claiming to be looking away from the screen, while someone chose their spell and whether it was real or an illusion.

Everyone writes the names of 10famous people on slips of paper
Than in teams you have to describe the person, no names rhymes etc.
Round 2 is all names back in the hat but 1 words description.
Round 3 mime.

Round 2 is mime in our version, round 3 one word.

And it doesn’t have to be famous people in our version either.

Another vote for Mexican train,

Spoons (card game, take one number of each suit, for each number of players, shuffle and deal, everyone passes a card to their left at the same time, first person to get all 4 of a kind in hand grabs a spoon, of which there is one fewer than players, loser doesn’t get a spoon. If a spoon is grabbed but no one has all 4 of a kind, that person loses. Gets pretty savage, not advisable for wooden tables)

Or if you can find it on EBay, monopoly empire

Spoons is hilarious. Avoid Monopoly at all costs.

The great dalmuit. For up to 8, quick, perfect when waiting for people.

https://www.waylandgames.co.uk/the-great-dalmuti-dungeons-dragons-card-game-wtcc91840000?gclid=Cj0KCQiApOyqBhDlARIsAGfnyMo8j975k6Gdp5JtowowrFbr1IQ5dRPfQvv9iVsGHzaPqX_bsVvuMuQaAltwEALw_wcB

My parents in law party games. These probably have better names, they just seem to happen rather than being announced.

Grapefruit. Needs 2 or 3 grapefruits depending on numbers.
Two teams in a line. First person puts grapefruit under chin, the it’s passed from chin to chin down the line. If it’s dropped, back to first person in line.Competitive, frustrating, cheering/ jeering your team their team. Takes about 10 min with 15 people.

Key And thread. Needs a long ball of string (ideally garden and itchy for cheap laughs) and 2 massive keys. The keys cand be in the freezer for added laughs.

Two teams in a line. Key has string tied to it. It goes down the first person’s top and trousers, then up the next person’s trousers and top. First team to the end wins. Skirts/ tights/ jumpsuits are all by negotiation. You need 2 meters of string per person. So at my in-laws parties of 20 you need 40 meters of string! It has to go up then to the best person and you are now tied together. Takes 10 min. Again lots of shouting people getting it wrong, people getting confused/ shouting 😁

Scottish dancing. If you’ve got space.
This cd is a bit fast, but it calls all the dances. As in they tell you what to do.

NOO! That’s Whit Ah Ca’ Ceilidh by the Hooley Ganzband

Taskmaster board game 

Herd Mentality

Exploding Kittens, especially if you can get the streaking kittens expansion pack

Unstable Unicorns

Dungeon Mayhem 

40k

@tall_martin That’s my idea of hell! 😖

@dakuan and that’s many more people’s idea of hell 😂

Avoid Monopoly at all cost

Agreed. Monopoly Empire is completely different, it’s all about brands, and each full game takes around 30 mins each.

I’m not a party games type of person so looking for some fun ideas – don’t mind rude or stupid but not intimate as it’s family!

personally I hate contrived party games; but we quite enjoy some Dobble or Mexican train when on a family holiday and the weather is crap.  I’d add Flotsam Fight to that mix too (other games we’ve tried from the same maker are ok too – but flotsam fight seems to have enthusiasm for “one more round”).   Fake Artist is a take on Pictionary which I think is much better than the original.

Cereal box game:

Empty cereal box on the floor, everyone takes it in turns to pick it up with their mouth. You’re not allowed to use your hands, feet only on the floor – no knees, hands, elbows etc for support. If you fail to pick it up, you’re out. Rip an inch off the top, repeat. Eventually – if you’re flexible – you be picking up just the bottom of the box from the floor. Lot of contorting to get there!

Couch of power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couch_of_power

Werewolf https://www.wikihow.com/Play-Werewolf-(Party-Game)

We’ve also enjoyed some of the escape room type games, although these are one time play only usually.

Round 3 mime.

Just be warned that statistically the worst time to have a heart attack, or choke on a twiglet, is during your turn in a game of charades.

Avoid Monopoly at all costs.

I had a tooth kicked out in a game of monopoly, and 40 odd years later when theres one of those once in a long while get togethers having my tooth kicked out in that game always comes up in conversation.

we had fun and games claiming to be looking away from the screen, while someone chose their spell

I played Pictionary, with me and my brother as a team – other players weren’t sure whether it was some sort of brotherly psychic connection or that we’d both been to art school and therefore had some sort of highly attuned visual literacy, but from a few scant marks we could get the answers in seconds. We were just blatantly showing each other the cards. Literally just drawing with one hand and holding up the card in the other.

Talk shit and drink. 

If you’ve access to a laptop + phone per player then drawful2 is good – a bit like pictionary but each player draws / guesses what’s been drawn.

Spaceteam (it’s an app that everyone has to download).

Very simple game, you each have a control panel and some instructions, so the first one might be “start engines”, and someone else presses the button marked “start engine”. Then it all goes downhill from there as the instructions come thick and fast and get more and more bizzare.

Munchkin – for people who like the concept of D&D / MtG etc, but have a shorter attention span and like cartoon violence.

If you think you will be able to get outside then Molkky is good fun and will while away an hour or so whilst not needing much space.

Another card game we like to play is ‘My Ship Has Sailed’ – it’s really easy to learn and very quickfire/quick to finish (a game only lasts 2-5 minutes, sometimes much less) so you can play several rounds in a sitting then move onto something else when you start to get bored of it.

And Newmarket (that I mentioned last night) – I forgot to say you can play for money which makes it more exciting – you’ll just need a whole load of 10p coins or whatever (each game requires two bets so with 10p coins, each player would wager 20p per game). Of course you could up the stakes if you wish…

Newmarket rules

Empty cereal box on the floor…..

is that a command – could get messy

Twister.
😉😁

Farkle (aka 10,000 – though you can stop at 5000 for instance). All you need is 6 dice, and the scoring (google it). Dunno how old your kids are, but my two loved it when they were younger, as they got to swear whenever I failed to score (Dad, you got  f*** all..!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_(game) is a good bluffing game using dice.

https://www.dominorules.com/threes-and-fives is a good variation on dominoes

Just One is dead simple co-op game and has been a hit whenever I’ve brought it out. Non-gamers actively request it when I visit.

You get little stands, whiteboard markers and a stack of cards with words on. In turns, a player takes a card without looking at it, everyone else has to then write down one word to clue it for them. The catch, if they duplicate a clue then they get wiped out so the guesser doesn’t see it.

There’s enough pens in the box for 7 players but it scales, you just need extra pens (I got a catering pack of markers from eBay). The first time I ever played it there was well over a dozen of us. You’re supposed to play to 13 rounds and then count score but I house-rule it as a multiple of the number of players so that everyone gets the same number of turns (scoring isn’t really the point anyway).

Also, there’s seven pages of ideas here:

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/board-games-whatre-you-currently-playing

+1 Herd Mentality https://bigpotato.co.uk/products/herd-mentality. Doesn’t require any great thinking power which works for some of our family. Any number of people can play.

+1 Dobble

Can play in pairs if loads of you

Monopoly Deal is a good card game. Much better than the real game.

This is great stuff.  Keeping an eye out for games that don’t need too many resources as it’d be good to do as a non-drinking drinking game when in the pub with mates.   Couch of Power is closest to hitting the mark.

Scrawl the adult version is fun. Also the chameleon is a great game.