|
Just what is a party game, anyway? It's not an essential ingredient for a
party, though many a party has featured one. It's not a game without strategy
or tactics for many have some. Despite what you may have heard, it's not
necessarily about love of knowledge or word.
In fact they can take on many guises, witty or otherwises.
But at the bottom, at the end of the day, what you'll find there is a
way, to let down your hair, to reveal a bit of yourself and let others
know you, and have a great laugh too.
But before looking what are the best party games, let's review their many sub-types. | ||
| Sub-type | Description | |
| Communication | This sort is about figuring out how to communicate a word or phrase, but via oblique means. Either there are certain words you cannot use or you cannot use words at all and must rely on gestures. Two rather old games are prime examples: Password and Charades. | |
| Composition | Closely linked to the communication games which require a modicum of ability are these which require quite a bit more. Now you need to actually compose something as sophisticated as a fake definition, a joke or even a proverb. There is something of the skill of the writer in it. Examples: Balderdash, Why Did the Chicken ...? Depending on how much players put into creating match phrases, games like Dixit are blurring the line between Communication and Composition and it may be that these two categories really one and the same. | |
| P e r f o r m a n c e |
acting | The arts are essentially communicative endeavors. Whether one is making music, dancing or painting there is a non-verbal communication between the creator and the appreciator. Consequently a number of the performing arts have been adapted into games. This type includes all games where players need to adopt a specific role, including murder-mystery games and the Mafia/Werewolf sub-genre. |
| body | This could also have been called dance though games about dancing are not so prominent (yet – I'm sure more prominent ones will be arriving one day soon). Essentially any game involving movement of the entire body fits here, e.g. Twister. | |
| drawing | Drawing a picture to communicate a word or idea, on the other hand, is quite popular, Pictionary and Telestrations forming prominent examples. | |
| singing | Possibly this category should be called music, except no games involving non-vocal musicmaking come to mind. There are vocal games, however, e.g. Tunebaya. | |
| Personality | While all of the party games share the goal of getting you to lower one's natural defenses and reserve, some refuse to be subtle about it. A prime example is True Colors in which players are directly asked to vote on what they think of others. But a game like Apples to Apples is in this category too because the essential skill is to figure out the judge and pick a card which will please. | |
| Storytelling | Closely allied to Composition games, these , such as Once Upon a Time require players to make up stories, or at least parts of them, often being inspired by a random card or bit of text. There are so many of these games, and their goal direct entertainment rather than any particular sort of communication, that they really deserve their own category. | |
| Trivia | Although it may not be immediately obvious, even these games give players a chance to reveal themselves, if for no other reason because what one knows can tell quite a lot about who one is. | |
| Title (click for review) | Sub-type | Quick Description |
| Anomia | composistion | This one takes composition down to its most minimal form. Each player has a face up card. Then you reveal a card from a deck. If its symbol matches that of another player's face up card, you try to give an example of a person, place or thing on their card before they can do the same for yours. If you win you score the card. Symbols differ in both color and shape. There are wild cards which can match two different symbols, i.e. multiple players can get involved. There are 200 cards in two decks for this game of speed by Andrew Innes for Anomia Press-2010; 3-6 players; 30 minutes. |
| Apples to Apples | personality | play the card that best matches what the chooser is thinking |
| Attribute | communication | decide which cards are the same and which are opposite |
| Balderdash | composition | try to fool everyone with your fake definition of an obscure word |
| Barbarossa | communication | sculpt a clay figure which is neither too hard nor too easy to guess |
| Bethump'd With Words | trivia | dictionary and history lovers |
| Beyond Balderdash | composition | try to fool everyone with your fake definition of an obscure word, date, movie, etc. |
| Buzzword | communication | guess the intended word from the clues provided |
| California Wine Quiz, Napa Valley Edition | trivia | California wine industry |
| Dixit | communication | try to figure out which card goes with an announced phrase, or, try to come up with a phrase which goes with a card, but not too obviously |
| Dixit 2 | communication | This first, rather large, expansion kit seems a worthy and important addition. Eighty-four cards are added. Several more expansions have appeared subsequently: Dixit Odyssey, Dixit 3, Dixit:Journey and Dixit Jinx (which is something of a different game). |
| Facts in Five | trivia | find words in various categories which start with a particular letter |
| Global Pursuit | trivia | geography |
| Go the Head of the Class | trivia | things you should have learned in school |
| Going Nutz | trivia | come up with a word that fits the randomly-determined category |
| Hart an der Grenze | perform: acting | lie to successfully get items over the border, or call out the liar |
| Linq | communication | try to find your partner using a word that reminds of the word you both know, or guess which two players are doing so |
| Ostrakon | composition | given a random topic, formulate a question on which the table will be evenly divided |
| Outburst | trivia | shout out the top ten answers for a category |
| Password | communication | get your teammate to say a hidden word without using any form of it |
| Pictionary | perform: drawing | draw a word well enough that your teammate can guess it |
| Portrayal (Identik) | perform: acting | one player describes a picture and the rest try to draw it as best they can, in 90 seconds |
| The Resistance | perform: acting | players try to solve several missions, but one or more are secretly traitors and put in failure cards |
| Revenge in Rome | perform: acting | murder mystery party set in the modern city |
| Scattergories | trivia | find words in various categories which start with a particular letter as fast as you can |
| Scene It: Disney Edition | trivia | Disney clips from a DVD |
| Scene It: Friends Deluxe Edition | trivia | DVD clips from the Friends series |
| Taboo | communication | get your teammate to say a hidden word without saying the five best clues |
| Tales of the Arabian Nights | storytelling | make up stories in this game's storytelling variant |
| Telestrations | perform: drawing | draw a picture, write a guess of what it is, draw picture based on this, etc. |
| Time's Up | communication | guess the names of celebrities with increasingly limited clues |
| Travel Buff | trivia | exotic destinations |
| Trivial Pursuit | trivia | the classic all-around |
| True Colors | personality | given a random category vote on which players are the table are most or least like it |
| 20 Questions | trivia | identify a hidden subject via yes-or-no questions |
| Twister | perform: body | contortionist game of awkward body positioning while attempting to stay afoot |
| Werewolf | perform: acting | game of hidden identities, lying and lynching |
| Wise and Otherwise | composition | attempt to fool your friends by making up endings to obscure proverbs |
| Wit's End | trivia | general knowledge, by categories |
| Wits & Wagers | trivia | bet on your confidence with various numerical trivia |
| Wits & Wagers Family | trivia | now the whole family can play |
| You've Been Sentenced! | composition | make a plausible sentence given ten word cards |