Whether you’re hosting a family-friendly gathering or a lively evening with friends, we have a bunch of game night ideas guaranteed to keep everyone entertained. From classic board games to interactive experiences, we have something for every age, interest, skill, and group size.
In this article:
- Ideas for family game nights
- Ideas for adult game nights
- Ideas for interactive game nights
- Game recommendations for small groups
- Game recommendations for bigger groups
Family Game Night Ideas
Family game nights are perfect for bonding with loved ones and creating lasting memories. These games are suitable for all ages and will bring plenty of joy and laughter to your gathering.
🎲 Board Game Olympics
Create a series of mini-games using different classic board games. For example, use Jenga for a tower-building challenge, Twister for a flexibility test, and Pictionary for a drawing competition. Award points for each game and crown a family champion at the end.
⏲️ Minute-to-Win-It Tournament
Set up a series of minute-to-win-it games using household items. Challenges can include stacking cups, moving cookies from your forehead to your mouth, and shaking ping pong balls out of a Kleenex box tried around your waist. Each challenge must be completed in one minute. See who comes out with the most wins by the end of the party.
🎪 Midway Matchup
Host your own mini-carnival in the backyard with homemade carnival games. Test those DIY skills to create games like ring toss, bean bag toss, and bottle knockdown. Family members can compete for prizes and bragging rights. This game night idea would be great for a circus-themed birthday party!
🎤 Family Talent Show
See what hidden talents your family has been hiding. Whether it’s singing, dancing, magic tricks, or stand-up comedy, encourage everyone to show off something new no one has seen before. This family game night idea is particularly well-suited for family reunions! As there will surely be some people who do not want to participate, have them serve as judges to score each act and choose a winner.
⛳ DIY Mini-Golf
Create a mini-golf course in your living room or backyard using things like cups, pool noodles, and cardboard boxes. Family members can take turns navigating the course and keeping score. Remember to add small tunnels and moving features to make the game a bit more challenging.
Adult Game Night Ideas
You’ll want to choose some adult games if you’re hanging with a more mature crowd. These are fun games to play with friends that will add a lot of laughs to your evening and a little friendly competition.
🍺 Drinking Game Shake-ups
Put a twist on your classic drinking games. Add different rules to Beer Pong or combine Never Have I Ever with a movie night. Choose popular party flicks like The Hangover or Old School and yell, “Never have I ever done that” during outrageous moments.
You could also add drink rules to other party games, like Cards Against Humanity. Judges could pick their least favorite card before choosing the winner, and the person who played the worst card drinks.
🙊 Try Not to Laugh
If you have a bunch of jokesters in your friend group, test their comedic skills. The YouTube sketch comedy group Smosh has made a whole brand out of try-not-to-laugh challenges. The basic game is one person puts water in their mouth, and other players take turns trying to make them laugh hard enough to spit out the water.
To combine this challenge with a board game, play Try Not to Laugh Trivial Pursuit. Answer questions incorrectly and be as funny as possible. If you make the question reader laugh, you go again or collect your pie piece.
🎰 Casino Night
Instead of planning an impromptu weekend in Las Vegas with your friends, bring Vegas to you! Set up a casino night at home with poker, blackjack, and roulette. Provide guests with play money and chips for wagering, and let the competition begin.
Pull out all the stops and book actual casino party rentals with professional dealers. Invite guests to dress up in your best casino attire and enjoy an evening of high-stakes fun with friends. This would actually be a perfect game night idea for a company event!
🔥 Truth or Dab
Get to know your friends better, or punish their taste buds! This twist on the classic Truth or Dare game has players choosing to either answer an imploring question or take a spicy bite of food. Purchase the official Truth or Dab game created by the Hot Ones show, which comes with a Last Dab Hot Sauce.
Or, create your own set of questions and buy a few hot sauces. If your group can handle it, choose ones that increase in hotness. Then, each time they skip an answer, they must eat something hotter.
♟️ Sniper Chess
Another idea borrowed from our friends over at Smosh. They’ve played Sniper Chess a couple of times on the Smosh Games channel, and it looks like a lot of fun. You play a traditional chess game, but after each set of turns, the players move to a designated shooting area and take 1-3 shots (decide in advance how many attempts you want to allow) with a Nerf gun to try and hit the opponent’s pieces to take them out.
Interactive Game Night Ideas
All games have an interactive element, but these great game night ideas will give you a more immersive experience. With these activities, players can truly be a part of the action.
🕵️ Live-Action Clue
Turn your house into your game board for a live-action Clue game! Follow the regular rules, like choosing a character and handing out Clue cards. But then, players will move through labeled rooms to make suggestions, take notes, and solve the mystery. Get creative with your own house rules for how people get from room to room. You could even add a scavenger hunt element to make them find actual clues.
🕶️ Virtual Reality Showcase
Break out VR headsets and watch friends navigate various virtual worlds if you want guaranteed laughs. There are many great virtual reality games perfect for a party scenario. Acron: Attack of the Squirrels puts one player in the VR headset as a tree protecting acorns while everyone else uses their phones to become rebel squirrels trying to steal them.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is another fun one that requires teamwork. Only the VR person can see a bomb, while the other players have the instructions manual for diffusing it. This one will really challenge your communication skills!
🔪 Murder Mystery Dinner
Host a murder mystery party where guests assume fully-fleshed-out characters—costumes strongly encouraged—and investigate a fictional murder. Write your own unique story and characters, or find a box game to pull from.
To really go all out, hire a professional murder mystery company to run your game night for you. They’ll provide a story, help you navigate the game, and even bring professional actors to assist!
🗝️ Escape Room
If you’ve ever gone to an escape room with your friends, you know how fun they can be. Bring that excitement to your next game night without leaving the house. Create your own DIY escape room by setting up a series of puzzles and challenges around your home. Players must solve each puzzle to uncover the code to unlock the final challenge and “escape.” within a time limit.
If you want an easier setup, you can buy escape room games in a box for a more low-key game night.
🔎 Scavenger Hunt
Turn your game night into an excursion out on the town! Create a list of locations and prompts for things to see and do around your neighborhood or across the whole city. Break up into teams to see who can complete everything first. Photo and video evidence, or it didn’t happen! For something more challenging, create clues with riddles to solve to find the locations. Use ChatGPT to help you write them!
Game Night Ideas for Small Groups
If you’re hosting a game night with a small group of friends or family, you may want to adjust your game selections to fit a more intimate setting. We have some unique game suggestions to get you started!
😁 BYOGame Marathon
Have your guests each bring a new game and try them all together. Hopefully, you’ll find a new favorite for your future game nights! We have a few popular party games to explore.
Sounds Fishy – A bluffing game where one person gives the right answer to a strange question, and everyone else makes something up. Can you find the red herrings?
4-10 players
Dixit – Storytellers describe one of their image cards with one word, and everyone chooses a card from their own hand that fits. Shuffle and vote to identify the storyteller’s card.
3-6 players
Carcassonne – Tile-placement game where you build farms, roads, and cities to score points with your knights, thieves, and farmers. It’s more fun than it sounds!
2-5 players (more with expansions)
🤝 Cooperative Gameplay
Game nights should be about building friendships! Put the competition aside and test your ability to collaborate as a team. These co-op games will have you winning or losing together.
Pandemic – Maybe a little too real now, but still fun! Work together to treat infections worldwide while gathering resources for cures.
2-4 players
Betrayal at House on the Hill – Explore a haunted house as a team…until one of you turns against the others. Okay, so this one has a little bit of a competitive element.
3-6 players
Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle – Work together to build decks of characters and spells to take on increasingly difficult villains.
2-4 players
🧩 Puzzling Excitement
Who said doing puzzles can’t be a thrilling game night idea? Not us. Try one of these unique puzzles to turn what could be a boring activity into a fun game to play with friends.
Movie puzzle – A 1000-piece puzzle with 101 movie riddles hidden within you can solve alone or with family and friends!
1+ players
Magic puzzles – Puzzles created by artists and magicians. You get unique shapes, intricate art, hidden easter eggs, and a surprise ending with each one!
1+ players
The Uzzle – This is a perfect family game night idea because it has unique puzzles with different difficulty levels, so everyone can get involved.
1-4 players
🗣️ Wordplay Adventure
Communication is the key to winning many games, but it’s absolutely necessary for word association or clue-giving games. Everyone’s played Catchphrase and Taboo, so here are a few new ones to try!
Codenames – Spymasters give one-word clues to point their team to multiple cards on the board. There are many themed editions to this game you can try, too.
4-8+ players
Hues and Cues – Give 1-2 word clues to get other players to identify the color you picked on the beautiful game board. You need to know your words and colors for this one!
3-10 players
Poetry for Neanderthals – A competitive word-guessing game where you can only speak in one-syllable words, or you’ll get hit with an inflatable stick.
2-6 players
🤔 Trivia Contests
Put those brains to work! When choosing a trivia game, consider your group’s strengths and interests. You want everyone to be able to participate.
Pop Culture Trivia – A game about all things pop culture, from fashion to fads to crazes.
2+ players
Blockbuster Party Game – For all the movie buffs, this game has you act out scenes, give one-word clues, and say quotes to get your teammate(s) to guess the movie.
4+ players
Wits and Wagers – A trivia game that lets you bet on who will most likely answer the question correctly.
3-7 players
Game Night Ideas for Bigger Groups
If you’re gathering with six or more friends, you need to choose games that will keep everyone entertained and engaged. Several of these ideas will work for even larger groups, as well!
🥸 Games of Deception
Seeing who is the best at lying to their friends is always fun. Games like these will put everyone’s poker faces and acting skills to the test.
Werewolf – A social deduction game where players are assigned roles as either villagers or werewolves. The villagers must work together to identify the werewolves before they are all eliminated.
7-35 players
Blood on the Clocktower – Players sit in a circle and receive “good” or “evil” tokens. Good players share info to solve the mystery, while evil players lie about who they are and what they know.
5-20 players
The Chameleon – Everyone knows the secret word except for the player with the chameleon card, who is trying to pretend they know it, too. Can you spot them?
5-10 players
👨👩👧👦 Group Think
The more time you spend with friends and family, the more you tend to say and do the same things. See how true that is with these games where you need to think like other people to win.
Telestrations – A game of Telephone but with drawings! Players guess what others drew, and then the next player draws what was guessed. See how close the final drawing is in the end.
4-12 players
Wavelength – A social guessing game where two teams compete to read each other’s minds.
2-12+ players
Herd Mentality – Match your answers with the most other players and get points. If you’re the odd one out, you get the Pink Cow. So, think like the herd!
4-20 players
🎴 Fun with Cards
Card games are great for family game nights and hanging out with friends. These don’t require much tabletop space, have simple setups, and are usually easy to learn.
The Great Dalmuti – Take turns playing sets of cards counting down from 12 to 1. Get rid of your cards fastest to rise through society from peon to Dalmuti!
4-8 players
Throw Throw Burrito – Earn points by collecting three-of-a-kind while playing Burrito Cards to force your friends into a dodgeball battle with squishy burritos.
2-6 players
Uno – Go with the standard game or one of the many fun variants. Show ‘Em No Mercy is an especially fun game to play with friends if you have a ruthless group.
2-10 players
Pro tip: Add more decks or combine them with other versions of the same game to increase the number of players and create a fun and unique experience.
🎭 Acting Challenges
If you’ve got a group that isn’t scared to get a little silly in front of each other, then have some fun with more performative party games. Don’t be shy and try one of these outgoing games!
Reverse Charades – This take on the classic game has the whole team acting while one person guesses. Or, try Jimmy Fallon’s version for an even more unique twist.
3 or more players
Rabble – Try to get your team to guess the absurd words as quickly as possible, but each round will have restrictions and challenge cards with ridiculous acting prompts.
4-20+ players
First Impressions – This party game from LADbible is super simple and a lot of fun. Draw character and scenario cards to act out for your team and get points for guessing correctly!
2 or more players
🎮 Online Multiplayer Games
With the internet at our fingertips, we aren’t limited to in-person game nights. There are a ton of hilarious and exciting online games you can play both in person and virtually. Try one of these if you haven’t yet!
Among Us – Crewmates work together to complete tasks before one or more Imposters can kill everyone aboard. This can be played across multiple platforms!
4-15 players, online or local play
Fall Guys – Free, cross-platform battle royale game where you compete against each other in mini-games such as obstacle courses and survival challenges.
Up to 32 players, online play only
Jackbox TV – Choose from a variety of party games in different game packs. Players use their phones to play through their web browser while interacting with a host screen.
2-16 players, depending on the game (and even more can participate in the “audience”)
Bonus video game night idea: Add unique twists to popular online and in-person video games to change things up. For example, play Mario Kart with a big group, but you must finish 7th instead of 1st to win.
With these game night ideas, you’re sure to have an unforgettable evening of fun and laughter. Whether you’re playing games with the family or hosting a rowdy gathering with adult games, you’re sure to build stronger connections and create lasting memories! 😁
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Heather is the Content Manager and a GigSalad veteran of 15+ years. She loves helping event planners create unforgettable celebrations and talent make a living doing what they love. When not at work, she enjoys reading romance and fantasy books, bingeing TV shows, playing board games, and spending time with friends.