Party game

Party games are games which share several features suitable to entertaining a social gathering of moderate size.

• The number of participants is indefinite and fairly large. Traditional multiplayer board games tend to accommodate anywhere from four to six or seven players at most, whereas party games generally have no fixed upper limit. Some games become unwieldy if more than twelve or fifteen play, but even for these the upper limit is flexible. Many party games simply divide everyone into two roughly equal teams.
• The players can take part at varying levels. Not everyone enjoys straining themselves to the utmost to win, so good party games have multiple ways to play along and contribute to everyone's enjoyment. For example, in Fictionary not everyone needs to create plausible dictionary definitions; humorous submissions are at least as welcome. In Charades, players can actively participate in guessing without taking a turn at acting.
• Player elimination is rare. Monopoly makes a poor party game, because bankrupt players must sit out while the remaining players continue. In contrast, no matter how far behind a team is in Pictionary, all players can participate until the very end.
• Some games are largely non-competitive, e.g. Murder mystery games which are mainly group roleplays. Some party games, particularly lighthearted or adult games, introduce forfeits for losing players.

Common party games include

• 1000 blank white cards
• Apples to Apples
• Articulate
• Catch Phrase
• Categories (related to the commercial Scattergories and Facts in Five)
• Charades
• Couch Of Power
• Cranium
• Eat Poop You Cat
• Fictionary (related to the commercial Balderdash)
• Guess Who's You
• Mafia
• Murder Mystery Games
  • A Village Murder Mystery
  • How to Host a Murder series
  • Murder A'la Carte series
• Nuclear Name Game
• Outburst
• Pictionary
• Scissors
• Snaps
• Spin the bottle
• Taboo
• Truth or Dare? and related games such as "Strip or Dare?" and "Drink or Dare?"
• Stupid Ninja Game
• Trivial Pursuit
• Twenty questions
• Wink

Not all of the above are suitable for children's parties. Traditional children's party games (some of which are also popular with teenagers and adults) include:

• The Bear and the Honeypot
• Blind Man's Bluff
• Farmer Wants a Wife
• Hunt the Thimble (or slipper, or other object)
• Oranges and Lemons
• Pass the Parcel
• Pin the tail on the Donkey
• Poor Jenny
• Poor Pussy
• Postman's Knock
• Spinning the Plate
• Wink Murder

See also: Drinking game

See also: Party game, 1000 blank white cards, A village murder mystery game, Apples to Apples, Balderdash, Blind Man's Bluff (game), Board games, Catch Phrase (game), Categories, Charades