Party Game Time, Excellent
Picking the perfect party game is stressful as hell. The right pick can brighten up the mood and get the evening started right, or the wrong one can make things strained and unbearably awkward. It’s a big responsibility, but you don’t have to go in alone. These are some games that have usually done me right:
Werewords
Social deduction games can be popular for big groups, but I find that they often fall victim to the problem of being hard for newbies to intuit a strategy, and it can also be intimidating to try to hide your role over the course of a full game session. Werewords is a nice spin on social deduction because games are over in a matter of minutes (however long you want the timer to run) so it’s easy to get the hang of a game quickly. The light Twenty Questions veneer on the surface hides a surprising amount of strategy: As the werewolf, do you start leading everyone astray from the beginning, or try to piggyback off a slight detour that another townsfolk mistakenly leads everyone down? When do you decide that the guessing game is lost and try to narrow down the werewolf or seer? An evolving metagame can even form as you play several games in a row, and it’s fun that doesn’t stick around too long.
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
More social deduction! But not too much! The forensic scientist has the most bits to manage and jobs to do. Everyone else can survey their fellow investigators’ clues and try to piece together a plausible pair of evidence and murder weapon, whether to actually pin down the murderer or place the blame on some poor mark.
Cockroach Poker
The simplest bluffing game this side of Win, Lose, or Banana. One loser, many winners, so only play with good sports. There is more trickiness than meets the eye, on top of testing your ability to confidently proclaim “This is a stinkbug” without betraying the toad you’ve just slid across the table.
Just One
A nice one to end the night. A co-op party game, imagine that! About the simplest word guessing game you can imagine, where the non-guessers each write a word on their whiteboard, dupes are hidden, and then the guesser has one guess of the word using the remaining clues. The rounds with a generic word like “house” are easily the funniest when they go six different ways. Protip: You can play with eight people by rotating the whiteboards and pens.
Go forth, and may your guests be proclaiming “We’re not worthy!” in honor of your game selections by the end of the night.