Most lists of party games for adults are just children's games with swearing bolted on. The problem is not the games, it is that adults arrive at a party carrying a fear of looking silly that children have not developed yet. The whole job of a good game is to take that fear off them in the first ten minutes.
These are the ones that reliably do it.
Fun party games for adults with no equipment
1. Fishbowl. Three rounds on the same slips of paper: describe, act, one word. The best group game ever invented and it needs a pen.
2. Contact. One player holds a secret word, everyone else works towards it out loud. Rewards cleverness rather than confidence, so it suits quieter groups.
3. Never Have I Ever. Five fingers down. Calibrate to the group and it is warm rather than excruciating.
4. Categories. Fast, loud, and impossible to be bad at, which is exactly what you want in round one.
Party games for adults with one phone
5. Word karaoke. A word appears, whoever grabs the phone sings any song containing it for fifteen seconds, and the group votes. Our app Grab The Phone Karaoke runs this on one device, or use the free word generator with a hairbrush as a mic.
6. Song intros. Two seconds of a track, first to name it wins. Ruthlessly exposes everyone's actual taste.
7. Forehead charades. Phone on your forehead, the room acts out the word you cannot see.
8. Wavelength-style guessing. One person rates something on a spectrum, the group guesses where. Better with people who know each other well.
Bigger party games for adults with a group of eight or more
9. Werewolf or Mafia. The best game here and the most likely to cause a genuine argument. Needs a good narrator.
10. Paper Telephone. Write a phrase, pass, draw it, pass, describe the drawing. Read the stacks out at the end.
11. PowerPoint night. Everyone presents five slides on an absurd thesis. A lot of prep, an enormous payoff.
12. The Hat Game. Team charades with a deadline. Chaotic and reliably the loudest thing you will do all evening.
The three rules that decide whether any of this works
The game matters less than how you start it. Almost every failed party game failed for one of the same three reasons.
Start early. The instinct is to save games for later, once people have "warmed up", but a group that has settled into corners will not come out of them. Ten minutes in, while everyone is standing awkwardly with a drink, is the moment.
Assign the turns. "Who wants to go first?" is how a game dies. Games that hand out turns and tasks are easier on the nervous, because the fear lives in the choosing, not the doing.
Make the host a player. If someone is refereeing, explaining, and keeping score all night, they are working, not celebrating. Pick something that runs itself. This matters most at birthdays, where the guest of honour is usually the one stuck doing it.
Get those three right and almost anything on this list will work. Get them wrong and the best game in the world will not save the evening.
One exception worth knowing: if the room is colleagues rather than friends, hierarchy changes the maths and a few of these stop being safe. Office party games covers what to use instead.
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