What could be better than spending a Saturday night with a group of friends, some pizza and a few glasses of wine accompanied by a box full of politically incorrect questions and some downright suggestive and always politically incorrect answers?
If you and your friends have ever forgone a night out on the town for an evening at home with the wildly popular game Cards Against Humanity, then you know there aren’t many things that will ensure a night of laughter like an adults-only game night. Think Mad Libs made over for Millennials. Remember the old paperback books that had a story minus a few key verbs, adverbs and adjectives that you got to fill in, and the result was a hilarious story that made absolutely no sense? Yeah, we do too!
What Do You Meme? is another popular game where participants match sayings with photos to see who can create the funniest meme. According to the game’s website, the rules are simple: “Compete to create the funniest meme by pairing Caption Cards with the Photo Card in play. A rotating judge picks the best combination each round. Play until you’re hungry, at which point stop playing and order a pizza.”
But those are only a few of dozens of games that are gaining in popularity with adults who are opting to stay in and play games with friends in lieu of going out.
Tammy Hooper lives in Greeneville, S.C., and said she and her husband get together with friends on a monthly basis to play games. “It’s such a great way to meet other people, friends of friends, in a smaller venue,” Tammy says. “It is less costly than a night out because everyone brings food and drinks, and games really help break the ice when you are socializing with people you may not know all that well.”
She added that her neighborhood trades off game nights so nobody has to drive anywhere. “We walk to each other’s houses and don’t have to worry about how much anyone has had to drink. Also, you don’t have to worry about dressing up, either.”
Some old-school games such as Clue or Uno (Spicy Uno is a fun twist on the original) are popular among the adult crowd as well as the kids, but so are the more technology-driven games such as the Jackbox Party Pack, which uses an iPad or computer, and each person’s smartphone becomes their controller.
Birmingham, AL-based graphic designer Kelsey Justice and her friends gather every couple of months to hit up the newest Jackbox games.
“There are different kinds of games in the party pack that resemble trivia games, charades and Balderdash,” Kelsey shares. “Oftentimes, it leaves us laughing for hours. We love to take photos and videos of each other when we are playing it so we can look back and laugh about how silly we look. Some of the games are very challenging and we all get super into it! My best friend and I like to team up so we can beat the boys so badly. We are practically twins, so we have a special power of knowing what the other is thinking!”
If you are looking for a reason to look into your friend or spouse’s face and just bust out laughing at them, then look no further than a game of Speak Out, where a dentist-like device inserted into your mouth makes it nearly impossible to say the phrases on the card. Even more challenging is trying to understand what the speaker is saying. Watch Khloe Kardashian, Kevin Hart and Ellen Degeneres play it here, and you’ll see what we mean. Who knew it was so hard to say (or understand) the phrase “perfectly popped purple popcorn.”
So, if an entertaining and more affordable alternative to a night on the town sounds good to you, take a look at our list of top grown-up game night choices and invite some friends over for a beer, some party snacks and a big helping of good, hearty laughter.
Here are our top picks for your next laughter-filled game night:
Cards Against Humanity
Description from website: Cards Against Humanity is a party game for horrible people. Unlike most of the party games you’ve played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends.
The game is simple. Each round, one player asks a question from a black card, and everyone else answers with their funniest white card.
What Do You Meme
Description from website: The rules are simple. Compete to create the funniest meme by pairing Caption Cards with the Photo Card in play. A rotating judge picks the best combination each round.
Play until you’re hungry, at which point stop playing and order a pizza.
Speak Out
Description from website: The Speak Out game brings friends and family together for laugh-out-loud fun as players try to say different phrases while wearing a mouthpiece that won’t let them shut their mouth. In the Speak Out game, players draw from the deck and read the phrase as best as they can, but it’s not so easy to do when the mouthpiece is hindering them from forming words correctly. The timer counts down as players try to say phrases such as “He’s my stealthy pet ferret named Garrett”, “Slow down, you careless clown”, or “Pelicans love pollywog falafels.” The laughter continues as players try to decipher what in the world their teammate is trying to say, and must correctly guess the phrase in order to earn the card. The team with the most cards at the end of the game wins.
Balderdash
Description from website: Categories contain real but unbelievable content about People, Words, Initials, and Movies. Players make up phony answers, read them off along with the correct answer, and others vote on which answer is real. Score points for guessing correctly and for bluffing the other players. Grab the bull by the horns and play Balderdash, the game that’s hilarious beyond belief.
Telestrations
Description from website: The award-winning game Telestrations will keep your family and friends entertained and laughing! Draw what you see then guess what you saw for hilarious and unpredictable outcomes.
Anomia
Description from website: The award-winning party game is back — with bad manners and an oversized martini. ANOMIA X pokes a stick at the underbelly of society, and the results are decidedly NSFW!
Cranium
Description from website: The Cranium Game is outrageous fun and gives players a chance to show off their talents! Players team up to cruise around the board completing activities in 4 color-coded categories: Creative Cat, Data Head, Star Performer and Word Worm. One team picks a card from the category that matches their space on the board and must successfully complete the activity before time runs out. Spelling a word backwards, drawing with their eyes closed, and solving a puzzle are just of few of the activities they might do. The first team to reach the Cranium Central space and complete one last challenge wins!
Kwizniak
Description from website: Kwizniac, The Trivia Countdown Game, is a take-anywhere twist on trivia games designed to test your knowledge. The object of Kwizniac is to accumulate as many points as possible by correctly answering trivia questions with as few clues as possible. Unlike most trivia games that give you a single question about a subject, each Kwizniac clue card has a set of 10 clues in decreasing order of difficulty. The more clues it takes to answer the question, the less points you receive. Kwizniac offers a more enjoyable trivia experience where you’ll always get the answer — eventually.
Orijinz
Description from website: The fun and fascinating game about why we say the things we do!
Codenames
Description from website: Two rival spymasters know the secret identities of 25 agents. Their teammates know the agents only by their codenames. In Codenames, two teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin. Win or lose, it’s fun to figure out the clues.
Have fun on your next game night in!
**********
Keep up with the very best of life in the South — subscribe to StyleBlueprint!
