Games to play other than board games

[Chouxpastryishard]

Any recommendations for family games/quizzes/things to keep everyone occupied other than board games? We have lots of those already.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/game-night-free-all-2022-decklists-2022-09-29

more of a card game

Name game. Everyone puts 10 names
in a hat (real or tv/film/book character etc.) split into teams. 45 seconds to describe as many as you can, you get one pass. When all names done next round is one word to describe. Final round is mime/actions to describe.

works well because by the miming round you’ve already heard the names twice so should just prompt. Lots of funny miming and also getting annoyed at each other for the obscure entries!

'Heads up' is alway a winner amongst both the adults and children in my family when we have big gatherings. You can get free version of the app (to assist with the game) from the play or App Store.

Search Victorian parkour games. Are You There, Moriarty? is a brilliant one.

If this isn't an advert, it certainly sounds as if it's been written by somebody who wants to be a copywriter when they grow up.

We’re doing a mini D&D campaign in our house over the holiday

Just A Minute. Write some topics (eg, the moon, cats, apples, Norway, Eurovision) on pieces of paper, then fold them up. Participants take turns to pick a piece of paper and talk for one minute on that topic without repetition, hesitation or deviation (words like "the" can be repeated). Other participants look out for any repetition, hesitation or deviation and call out when they hear it, at which point the talkers turn is finished and the next person starts.

Take turns to be blindfolded, and be asked a question about things in the room, or even about what you are wearing. This is surprisingly tricky. It can help to limit the questions to a particular topic: what you are wearing, what is on the table, something about your Christmas presents, and so on. Points are scored for any correct answers. Children can get bonus points for choosing questions which the adults can't answer.

We play a game where there are four "presents" wrapped in the centre of the table.
Each player is dealt the same number of playing cards then a second set of playing cards is turned over one by one.
As one of your cards matches the one turned over on the second deck you can take a parcel.
The last four people to keep hold of their parcels at the end of the game win them.

The surprise twist is that not all of the parcels will contain a good present.
Some might be a bar of chocolate or a mini bottle of wine but others might be a toilet brush or a carrot.

It's a good game because pretty much any age can play and there's no strategy involved.
It does require a bit of preparation before hand though.

The tray game. Put 12 items on a tray, go in the kitchen. Bring the tray into the room and let people look, Cover the tray up and see how many people remember the items.

The family Christmas essential. Charades

I work for the police and boy do we love acronyms. I thought a mini drunk and disorderly campaign sounded fantastic 🤣

is it dungeons and dragons ?

How do you feel about computer games? We all got stuck into among us last year, it was so much fun when we al knew each other!

Old fashioned Guess Who - with family pictures instead of the ones in the set?

The Taskmaster board game isn't really a board game - you have to complete challenges a bit like the TV programme - it's very funny! There's also a Taskmaster book that you can just choose activities from. Dh is always the taskmaster and very much enjoys the power (he loathes board games)

The Mars bar game: Mars bar (wrapped) on a plate with a knife and fork. A pile of clothes eg hat, gloves (essential), scarf, jacket. Take it in turns to roll a dice. If you get a 6, you put on all the clothes and try to unwrap the Mars Bar using the knife and fork. Once it's unwrapped you can slice off a small piece and eat it. Meanwhile the others keep rolling the dice. As soon as anyone else rolls a 6, they have to put on all the clothes and keep going with unwrapping / eating

The After Eight game: everyone puts an unwrapped After Eight on their forehead (head tilted back) and using only facial wiggles, work the chocolate down to their mouth. No hands, apart from putting the AE back on the forehead if it drops off.

Good old fashioned charades with Christmas themed topics is always a laugh.

Yes! this is an incredible idea, i'm here for the suggestions

The flour game! Get a relatively large glass bowl and pack it full of flour…put it in the freezer for a couple of days beforehand. Remove it when you’re ready to play, pop a plate over the top of it and then turn it over so that the flour dome ends up on the plate. Pop a selection box-sized chocolate in the middle, grab a large kitchen knife and a dice and start rolling. If you get a 6, you have to slice of a piece of the flour. Whoever makes the chocolate fall has to retrieve it with their mouth (absolutely no hands allowed)…

…might just be our family, but you’ll be surprised how people rush in to push the person’s face right in it 🤦🏽‍♀️😂

We loved Mindtrap, the game of lateral thinking puzzles. One of my favourite riddles is a one about a traditional cassette recorder.

"The dead man's head was on the stop button of the cassette recorder. The detective pressed the play button, heard a suicide message, followed by a gunshot. The detective was certain that somebody had imitated the victim's voice, and murdered him. Why was he so sure?"

Not many teenagers or children would get this.

What’s the answer? 🧐

My sister's family always play Bingo at Christmas. She bought a kit of Amazon, and it's always lots of fun. Plenty of chocolate prizes!
Friends always used to play Roulette. Again, bought a big spinning wheel and mat from Amazon.
Charades.
Print some of those quizzes off Google. Don't have a link, but those ones where you are given a picture of a partial logo of a brand, or a car, or a chocolate bar and each team, or I guess individual, has 10 minutes to complete. There is also now which I enjoyed giving jokey clues relating to London tube station names.
Or taste testing! I have done crisps, jelly beans and flavours of Wckd. All interesting, and not as easy as it might seem if you have plenty of time to search for unusual flavours.

Console games are fab. We love the ones which are quizzes or how well do you know someone

Pass the pigs 🐷🐷

Empires is a great game. One person is incharge. Everyone else writes a famous person/character on a paper and gives it to the person incharge. That person then reads out all the names.
Then you take turns to guess who is who. If you guess correctly that person joins your 'empire' team.
The only person not revealed wins.
One challenge is remembering all the names.