30 Fun, Hilarious Games To Play With Friends Once You’re Actually In Person Again

Telestrations never fails to make me laugh until I cry.

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If you’re seeing your friends in person for the first time in a year, here are some game suggestions from Ask Reddit!

1. Snake Oil is fun if you have friends who are good at improv.

2. Poetry for Neanderthals is a good one, where you try to describe a word on a card using only single-syllable words. If you accidentally blow it, someone hits you with an inflatable club.

3. Overcooked. You play a bunch of chefs in a kitchen who have to run around doing various tasks to prepare meals. There are always more things to be done than people who can do them, and it quickly turns into frantic shouting mayhem. It’s great fun.

4. Cornhole is a great outdoor game for a friendly get-together. I was addicted the first time I played at a friend’s house.

5. Gartic Phone is basically a game of online Telefone, except you’re given a random person’s prompt (from within your group) and you have to draw their prompt. The next person after has to figure out what the prompt was and write it out again, then it goes back to drawing and so on.

You go back and forth until every person has seen every prompt, then the game does something like a super cut of how the prompt evolved, with optional text to speech of the written prompts (totally worth it).

6. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.

7. Secret Hitler is a personal favorite of mine.

8. Ticket to Ride has become the default at my parents’ for when a bunch of adult children/ spouses/ friends are at home. Mainly because it’s not that tough to learn and it sure is fun.

9. There is this older, esoteric board game that is great. It’s called Balderdash.

10. Mario Party. Just as long as you don’t steal my star. It was MY star, Sarah!! Mine!

11. Kan Jam is where it’s at! We originally purchased spikeball I think and it was dumb as hell. We took it back and got Kan Jam and holiday dinners have never been the same.

12. Jack Box games are a lot of fun. Pretty inexpensive and easy to learn and play.

13. Cards Against Humanity – if you love a good laugh and have a terrible sense of humor.

14. Code Names is such a fun party game with friends.

15. My family and I play a game called Unstable Unicorns. It is a card game, but with some difficulty. It takes a while to learn. By the end you betray everyone. Basically, there are certain types of cards you can play to your advantage and other cards you can play to other people’s disadvantage.

The object of the game is to get 5 or 7 ‘unicorn’ cards (depending on how many people play.) You play cards in order to prevent someone else to all of their unicorn cards. It takes a while to learn how to play, but it is really enjoyable once you know.

16. That’s What She Said — hilarious adult card game. My aunt actually peed herself when we played and my brother almost passed out from laughing so hard.

17. Beat That! — a bunch of physical and mental challenges, all ages. Easy to turn into a great drinking game too.

18. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza – super easy game for all ages, nice icebreaker for groups.

19. Sequence. A lot of fun overall but in some cases, you may find that you no longer have any friends after playing. Fun game most of time, though.

20. Electronic Catch Phrase. Easy to learn, it plays quick, you can easily switch teams and play many games in a row. Always a good time. The only drawback is that it’s better with an even number of people.

21. Rocket league if you have the controllers for it.

22. Magic: The Gathering – it’s a fun card game to learn especially if you have a patient teacher.

23. Trial by Trolley. Basically takes the classic trolley conundrum but instead of “one person on one track and five people on the other track”, the two teams play several Good and Bad cards to create their tracks and then argue over which would be the ethical choice. After the two teams make their arguments the conductor then chooses which track to ram through, and the team that didn’t get killed gets tokens. This goes on for a few rounds until one team gets 3 tokens. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s definitely a “party” game; playing this with just a few people just doesn’t work.

24. Evolution the board game! It’s all about eating the most food. It’s pretty, cute, fun to create your creatures and you can eat your friends. Easy to learn too!

25. Space Team is a great little mobile game that will have you yelling instructions across the room. Recent – ish update takes the game to groups of 8.

26. Telestrations never fails to make me laugh until I cry. Best with at least 6 people. 8 is ideal.

27. When I have large groups of people over and many haven’t met each other before, I like to play a game called Table Topics. It’s based on an actual game my sister and brother-in-law had that was basically thought-provoking-but-non-intrusive questions printed on a deck of cards, and you would pull a card and answer whatever question you got. I don’t own that deck of cards, so in the version at my house I just whip out index cards and pens and everybody writes at least 3 questions down and puts them in a bowl. Then we pass the bowl around and everybody answers a question. It’s actually a really great way to get conversations started and introduce people to each other! I swear by it.

28. Uno. You might not still be friends after all the backstabbing, but it’s fun while you’re playing.

29. Quiplash is incredibly fun. You hook your computer up to a TV (the game is on steam) then you get a code on the TV, and just like Kahoot, you type it in and join the game. It asks a bunch of funny questions and you put in your own answer.

30. As for board games, we came across a fun one called Codenames that was a lot of fun for a pretty good-sized group of people. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

January Nelson

January Nelson

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.