25 party games for small groups

Most party game lists are written for a school hall. Forty people, a whistle, something involving balloons. That is not your Friday.

Small groups fail differently. With eight people in a flat, the risk is not boredom — it is the excruciating minute where one person tries to start a game and everyone else has to publicly decide whether to go along with it. Kill that minute and almost anything works.

So this list is sorted by how loudly each game announces itself. Start at the top. Move down only when the room is clearly up for it.

Games you never have to announce

These run underneath the conversation. Nobody gathers. Nobody stops talking. They work when everyone is stood around the kitchen, which is where the party actually is.

• Secret missions Everyone gets one task nobody else knows about. Get someone to teach you a dance move. Get three people to agree on the worst film they have ever sat through. Find out where two people in this room first met. You pull it off mid-conversation and nobody clocks it until you confess. Best game on this list for a small room, and the one this site is built around.
• The banned word Pick one word before anyone arrives. "Actually." "Literally." Someone's name. You are trying to make other people say it. Costs nothing, runs all night, sends conversations to genuinely strange places.
• Two truths and a lie, stretched out Everyone knows the circle version. It is fine for six minutes. Better: each person gets three claims to drop into conversation across the whole night, and you all guess at the end. Nobody has to stop doing anything.
• The compliment chain Each person is quietly given one other person's name. Some time tonight, you pay them a compliment specific enough that it could not apply to anyone else. That specificity is the entire game. Nobody ever works out who had them, and the room is noticeably warmer an hour later.
• Fortunately, unfortunately One sentence each, alternating "fortunately" and "unfortunately", building one stupid story. Works standing. Works with people wandering in and out. Dies the second anyone tries to be clever.
• Questions only You can only speak in questions. Answer normally and you are out. Nearly impossible after 11pm, which is the point.
• The photographer One person is secretly given the job of getting a candid shot of every single guest before the night ends, without being caught doing it. You finish with a game and an album.

Games for when everyone finally sits down

There is a window — usually after food, before anyone leaves — where the room will actually give you its attention. It lasts about forty minutes. Use it on one thing.

• The hat game Everyone writes five names on scraps — real people, characters, anyone — and folds them into a bowl. Three rounds, same scraps: describe without saying the name, then one word only, then mime. The best group game ever invented. It costs a pen.
• Wavelength, no board One person picks a secret point on a scale — hot to cold, overrated to underrated — and gives a clue. Everyone else guesses where it sits. The argument about whether a lukewarm shower is a 4 or a 6 is the game.
• Escalating would-you-rather Each round has to be harder than the last, and anyone can veto a question for being too easy. Vetoing turns out to be more fun than answering.
• The alphabet game Pick a category, go round naming something in it from A to Z, five seconds each. The category is everything. "Excuses for leaving early" beats "animals" every time.
• Who said it Everyone anonymously writes down one confession. Read them out, guess the author. Agree how far this goes before you start, and hold that line.
• Story from an object Grab something random off a shelf, hand it to someone, give them sixty seconds to explain its tragic backstory. Pass it on. Reliably the funniest thing in a flat.
• Reverse charades The group acts, one person guesses. Far better than normal charades under ten people, because nobody has to stand up alone.
• Rank it Name five things. Sandwich fillings. Decades. Ways to be woken up. The group has to agree one ranking out loud, no voting. You will learn things about your friends.

Games using one thing you already own

• Pass the phone Front camera on, passed round, each person adds one thing to a collective face. Or a note app, one line of a story each, only the last line visible.
• Playlist duel Two people, one speaker, each queueing a track to beat the other's. The room votes by whether anyone starts moving. Runs itself for an hour and then quietly becomes the music.
• Blind drawing One person describes a picture without naming what it is. Everyone else draws it. Comparing the results is the payoff.
• Five random objects Grab five things from around the flat. Teams get five minutes to invent and pitch a product using all of them. Works brilliantly on people who insist they hate games.
• Guess the price Someone finds an inexplicable listing online. Everyone guesses what it costs. Closest wins. Infinite rounds, zero setup.
• A deck with no rules Deal three cards each. Before you start, the group invents what each card means. Red means you have to agree with the next thing said. Face card means you can veto a song. Writing the rules is most of the fun.

Games for a group that knows each other far too well

• Predictions Everyone writes a prediction about tonight. Who leaves first. What gets spilled. Which argument happens. Sealed, opened at the end. Unsettlingly accurate.
• Most likely to Point on three. Old, still lethal, so keep the prompts affectionate rather than sharp.
• The court One person is accused of a trivial crime. Always taking the good chair. Never replying in the group chat. Two prosecute, two defend, everyone else is the jury. Five-minute trials. Unbeatable with old friends.
• Retell the story Someone tells a well-worn group anecdote deliberately wrong. Everyone corrects them. You will discover four people remember four different nights.

Three rules that matter more than the game

• Match the room you have, not the room you wanted. A game that needs performance will die in a room that is still settling. Start invisible. Escalate later.
• Nobody should have to run it. The moment one person is explaining rules and keeping score, that person has left the party. Pick games that run themselves.
• Stop one round early. The most common mistake is playing until it dies. Finish while people still want more and they will ask for it next time — which is the only score that counts.