The best games to play with friends have almost nothing in common with the games you own. No box, no board, no forty-minute rules explanation. What they need is people who are willing to look slightly silly in front of each other, which is the only ingredient that has ever mattered.
This is the full list, sorted by how much equipment you actually have on you. Everything in the first section needs literally nothing.
Games to play with friends without anything
No cards, no phone, no props. These are the ones for a power cut, a long queue, or a beer garden with nothing on the table.
1. Fishbowl. Everyone writes three names or phrases, then you play three rounds with the same slips: describe them, act them, then one word only. The escalating difficulty is what makes it.
2. Contact. One person thinks of a word and gives the first letter. Everyone else tries to guess it by describing candidate words to each other until two people "make contact." Brutal and brilliant.
3. Two Truths and a Lie. Ancient, still undefeated with a new group, because you learn something real about everyone in about four minutes.
4. Story, One Word Each. Build a story going round the circle contributing a single word. Descends into nonsense fast, which is the point.
5. Categories. Pick a category, go round naming items, no repeats, no hesitating. Loser picks the next category.
6. Never Have I Ever. Hold up five fingers, drop one per thing you have done. Calibrate the questions to the group and it stays funny rather than awkward.
7. The Alphabet Game. Name things in a category in alphabetical order. Simple enough to explain while it is already running.
Games to play with friends in real life, with one phone
One device between everyone, used as a shared object rather than seven private screens.
8. Word karaoke. A word appears, someone grabs the phone and sings any song containing it. This is what our own app Grab The Phone Karaoke does: fifteen seconds each, the group votes, and a leaderboard settles it. If you want the format without the app, our free word generator draws the words for you.
9. Charades, phone edition. Hold the phone to your forehead showing a word only the others can see. Works with any word list, including ours.
10. Song intros. One person queues up the first two seconds of a track. First to name it scores. Devastating for anyone who claims good taste.
11. Photo roulette. Someone's camera roll on shuffle, guess whose photo it is. Agree on boundaries first, genuinely.
Games to play with friends that need cards or a pen
12. Cards Against Humanity and its many descendants. Reliable, though it plateaus once a group has seen most of the deck.
13. Paper Telephone. Alternate writing a phrase and drawing it down a stack of paper. The reveal at the end is the whole reward.
14. Werewolf or Mafia. Needs a deck and a confident narrator, and it is the only game on this list that can genuinely damage a friendship.
How to pick one that will actually land
The games that work share three traits, and you can screen for them in about ten seconds. The rules fit in one sentence, so nobody is lost by turn two. Turns are assigned rather than volunteered, because "who wants to go first" produces nothing but silence. And the whole group reacts to each turn together, which is what turns a game into an event instead of a queue.
Start whichever one you pick in the first ten minutes, while people are still standing around holding a drink. The received wisdom is to wait until everyone loosens up, but groups do not loosen up on their own. That is precisely what the ice breaker is for.
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