It's Pioneer Day and everyone is showing up for a party when you realize the one thing that's missing: a fun game. But you don't have a game. There are some games you can play with basically no prep and no supplies but you want to liven things up at your party (regardless of what day it is).
Darin Adams is Instagram's One and Only Game King and has his favorite no-fail, no-props games.
Blindfold Foods
This is best played with different types of candy bars and sweets, but you can do it with any random foods, and even just random objects. Place the 20 or so random items on a tray or cookie sheet. A person puts on a blindfold and is given 30 seconds to identify as many items as they can. They pick up the object, make a guess as they feel it, and then put it down on a second tray. If they guess wrong, quietly put the object back on the original tray. After 30 seconds, count up their number of items they guessed correctly. See who can do the best.
Gargle Name That Tune
Everyone can jot down five songs that everyone should know. When it's your turn, grab a glass of water and see if you can gargle the song so the people on your team can guess it. Set a time limit of 30 seconds. If you want to add a speed element, the "gargler" can keep drawing songs and do as many as they can in 30 seconds.
Herd Mentality
For this game, you want to think of the most popular answer among the group. It doesn't matter if it's the most popular in the world, or even the "right" answer. If just matters if it's the most popular among the group playing. You need 10-20 questions, such as "What's a farm animal?" or "Name a European country." Then the moderator says "3-2-1" and everyone says their answer at the same time. Once you determine what the most popular answer is, everyone who said that answer gets a point. Play through all your questions and see who has the most points. You could also play this outside, and every time someone gets a right answer, they can take a step forward, so you can visibly see who is ahead.
Fishbowl/People in the Pot
Give everyone a piece of paper. Cut an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper lengthwise. Each person gets a paper and writes the names of ten different people that everyone should know. They could be living or dead, real or fictional (even some famous animals could work). Cut each of the pieces off and then fold them and put them in a bowl or pot. When it's your turn, pull out a name and describe it to your team. Get as many as you can in 30 seconds. If you don't know the name or don't want to do it, just put it back in the bowl. Alternate back and forth between two teams and give each person a chance to describe people.
Quarters Up
Divide up into two teams. Have them face off on each side of a table. One team gets a quarter and they all put their hands under the table and begin to pass the quarter back and forth. At some point, a person on the other side says "Quarters Up". At that point, everyone on the 'quarter team" puts their hands up, with elbows resting on the table. Then, the same person says, "Quarters Down." At this point, the team all slams their hands down on the table with open palms flat on the table, hoping they have disguised where the quarter is. The other team then guesses each hand, one by one, trying to avoid the quarter. For each empty hand, they get one point. They want to save the actual "quarter hand" for last. Alternate back and forth between teams.
Ping Pong Ball Soccer
Divide the group into two teams and have them gather around a table. Have a line across the middle of the table. (You could use tape on the edges, or if there is a break in the table, you could use that.). Place the ping pong ball in the middle and each side tries to blow the ball off the other side. You score a point if you can blow the ball off the opponent's side of the table.
Telephone Pictionary
Cut up regular pieces of paper in quarters. Then each person gets a stack of papers. They should have one piece for each person playing. (If there are 8 people playing, each person will have 8 pieces of paper.). On the top sheet, each person writes a sentence describing something that is happening, i.e. a frog jumped over the log to land on the flow, or a troll stomped on the grass hut. They have 30 seconds to write the sentence, and then everyone passes their entire stack to the person next to them. That person silently reads the sentence, then takes that top piece of paper and places it at the bottom of the pile and draws a picture of what the sentence says. They have 30-40 seconds to complete the drawing and then when time is up, they pass that stack to the next person in the circle. That person looks at the drawing, places that piece of paper on the bottom of the pile and the writes a sentence that describes the picture. They have 30 seconds to do this. When the time is up, they pass the entire stack to the next person who will draw a picture. Everyone alternates between drawing the picture of the sentence or write a sentence from the drawing. Eventually the stack gets back to the original author of the sentence and everyone can go through and show how the sentence evolved into something that is normally nothing like it started out.
Lick the Lollipop/Smell the Soap
You'll need a lollipop and a bar of soap. Have a person hold a lollipop in one hand and a bar of soap in the other. Then, the moderator simply tells the person, "lick the lollipop, smell the soap, " and continues to mix things up and gets faster. Invariably, at some point, the person will end up licking the soap. But they try to go as long as they can without messing up. As long as you have multiple lollipops, you can play this with multiple people.
For more game ideas, be sure to follow OneAndOnlyGameKing on Instagram.
