Which game to pick for a small or large group

Alone

Seven games can be started with a single player: Classic Quiz, Copycat King, Aim Arena, Color Match, Flash Memory, Eagle Eye and Invisible Hunt. They are ideal for practice or for beating your own score. In Aim Arena, Color Match and Flash Memory the Frenzy mode is a good personal challenge: alone, it counts how many rounds or colors you clear.

In pairs

With two people you can play all the games that start alone and also Draw and Guess and Bomb Relay, which need at least two players. In pairs Draw and Guess becomes a duel of understanding: one draws, the other guesses. Bomb Relay with two is very fast.

With three or four

From three people on, Impostor, Broken Telephone and Fill the Gap are added. With three or four, Impostor is a game of logic and glances; Broken Telephone has short chains, so it plays quickly; Fill the Gap has few votes, but the sentences are easy to comment on.

Beware of voting games with few players: remember that nobody can vote for their own sentence or drawing, so the vote depends on only a few opinions.

With five, six, seven or eight

Large groups do well with games where everyone plays at the same time: Classic Quiz (also in teams, from 2 to 8, using the average of scores), Aim Arena, Copycat King and Eagle Eye. Impostor becomes more uncertain and with at least six players the host can set two impostors.

Broken Telephone with many players produces long chains and more surprising stories, but a longer match: there are as many turns as players.

By kind of evening

• To laugh: Fill the Gap and Broken Telephone.
• To talk and suspect: Impostor.
• To compete: Aim Arena, Classic Quiz, Copycat King, Bomb Relay.
• To relax and concentrate: Flash Memory, Color Match, Invisible Hunt.
• To be creative: Draw and Guess and Broken Telephone.

When the group has different skill levels

Not every game rewards skill in the same way. When some people play a lot and others hardly ever, choose carefully:

• Where raw skill matters less: Fill the Gap (the sentence the group likes best wins), Broken Telephone (drawings are voted on and the stories are funny even when they turn out badly), Impostor (observing and persuading count) and Invisible Hunt (it is about listening).
• Where reflexes and precision matter: Aim Arena, Eagle Eye and Color Match. Here the settings help: more time, fewer rounds, fixed-size targets in Aim Arena.
• Where memory and knowledge matter: Classic Quiz and Flash Memory. In the quiz you can lower the difficulty or pick a category that interests everyone.
• For anyone who wants an extra challenge: the Frenzy difficulty of Aim Arena, Color Match and Flash Memory is an elimination race, with a single resume per match.

If someone is late

Anyone who joins while a match is already under way watches as a spectator and plays from the next match. If you are still waiting for someone, start with a game made of short rounds such as Aim Arena or Bomb Relay: once it ends, the latecomer is in from the start of the following game.

If you cannot decide

When the group is undecided, start from the number of people in front of you and how much time you have. With little time pick a game with short rounds, such as Aim Arena or Classic Quiz with few questions. With a whole evening, alternate a word or logic game with a reflex one, so nobody is always stuck on their weak spot.

If some people in the group do not enjoy competition, pick games where the fun comes from comparing ideas more than from the score, such as Broken Telephone, Fill the Gap and Draw and Guess.

Three ready-made combinations

If you would rather start from an outline that is already made, these three work for different groups:

• Four friends and a little over an hour: Classic Quiz with a few questions, Draw and Guess with one turn each, and Impostor with a few rounds.
• Two people: Bomb Relay, Draw and Guess and Flash Memory, to mix speed, understanding and memory.
• Eight people: Aim Arena to start everyone together, Copycat King, Impostor (with the option of two impostors, since there are at least six of you) and Broken Telephone to finish with laughs.

The final tip

You do not need to choose the perfect game: in «Choose a game» you can sort and filter the list and the group can vote. Changing game often is part of the fun. The full rules of each game are on the How to play page.