Games for large groups of friends (10 to 30 people)
Games that work when there are ten, twenty or thirty of you, from everyone-at-once games and team relays to hidden-role games and a game that runs all weekend.
Most party games are designed for four to eight people. With twelve, they slow down. With twenty, they fall apart: one person takes their turn, nineteen people check their phones, and by the time the game comes back round, half the room has wandered off to the kitchen.
Big groups need a different kind of game. This post is about those games: for a holiday house with fifteen friends, a reunion, a big birthday, a wedding weekend or any evening where the guest list got out of hand. If your group is closer to six or eight, our post on party games to play with friends is the better place to start.
What works with a big group
Three rules decide almost everything.
- Everyone plays at once, or in teams. Games where one person acts while everyone else watches are fine for a few minutes, never for an evening. Look for games where every player answers at the same time, or where the group splits into teams that all play together.
- Nobody sits out for long. Elimination games are cruel at this size: the first person out spends forty minutes watching. If a game eliminates people, give them a job, like voting, judging or narrating.
- Short rounds. With a big crowd, attention lasts about five minutes per round. A game made of many short rounds survives people arriving, leaving and refilling their drinks.
One more practical rule: the bigger the group, the more it matters that somebody runs the game. Pick a host who explains the rules once, loudly, keeps time and announces scores. It doesn’t have to be the same person all night.
Splitting into teams
For most big-group games you’ll want teams of four to six. How you split them changes the whole evening.
- Mix the friend groups. At a wedding weekend or a big birthday, there are usually two or three groups who don’t know each other: school friends, work friends, family. Teams made only of people who already know each other turn the night into a competition between cliques. Mixed teams turn it into a party.
- Draw names, don’t pick captains. Captains picking teams is a playground memory nobody wants to relive. Write the names on paper and draw them from a bowl, or count off round the room: one, two, three, four.
- Give the teams a name and a spot. Each team gets a corner of the room or a table, and two minutes to choose a name. It sounds silly and it works, because people start to feel part of something.
- Keep the same teams for a while. Swapping teams after every game wastes time. Keep them for an hour, then reshuffle if you want to mix people again.
Games where everyone plays at once
These need no preparation at all and get a big room moving in minutes.
Who am I?, everyone at once. Each person writes a famous name on a sticky note and sticks it on the forehead of the person to their left, without showing them. Then everyone walks around the room at the same time, asking other players yes-or-no questions about their own name. First person to guess correctly wins, but let it run until most people have got theirs. With twenty people it’s loud, chaotic and a brilliant icebreaker. The full rules are in our classic party game rules.
Wink murder. Everyone sits in a circle and draws a slip of paper. One slip says murderer, one says detective, the rest are blank. The murderer kills people by winking at them, and the victims die as dramatically as they like, a few seconds later. The detective has three guesses to name the murderer. It works with ten to thirty people and needs nothing but paper.
Telephone pictures. Each person gets a small stack of paper. They write a sentence on the top sheet and pass the stack to the left. The next person draws the sentence and folds the writing away. The next writes what they think the drawing shows, and so on. After six or seven passes, unfold every stack and read them out. With fifteen people you get fifteen stacks running at the same time, and fifteen ridiculous stories at the end.
The big quiz, played with fingers. The host reads a question with four possible answers, and everyone holds up one to four fingers at once. Wrong answers sit down. Last one standing wins. Five minutes, any group size, no materials.
Team games
When the group has split into teams, these are the games that make the most noise.
Fishbowl. Everyone writes three names on slips of paper, which all go into a bowl. Two teams take turns, one player at a time, trying to get their team to guess as many names as possible in a minute. Round one: describe with words. Round two: one word only. Round three: act it out, no words. The same names come back each round, so the jokes build on each other. It’s the best team game we know for fifteen people or more.
Charades relay. The host stands in the middle with a list of things to act out. One player from each team runs up, gets the first item whispered to them, runs back and acts it out for their team. When the team guesses, the next player runs up for the second item. First team through the list wins. It’s charades for impatient people, and it works best outdoors or in a big room.
Pictionary relay. Same idea, but with a big sheet of paper per team instead of acting. Good for groups where not everyone wants to perform.
Team quiz. A pub quiz in someone’s living room. Five rounds of five questions, one answer sheet per team. A music round, a picture round and a round about the people in the room (who’s been to the most countries, who has the oldest phone) make it feel like your quiz, not one off the internet.
Hidden-role games for ten to twenty
Big groups are where hidden-role games are at their best, because there are more people to suspect.
Mafia (Werewolf). A narrator secretly picks two or three Mafia members among the players. At night, everyone closes their eyes and the Mafia silently choose a victim. During the day, everyone argues about who the Mafia are and votes someone out. It needs at least seven players and gets better up to fifteen or so. Players who are out stay at the table and watch, which is half the fun. The full rules, with how many Mafia to use and optional roles like the Doctor, are in our classic party game rules.
Two-room Mafia. With more than twenty, run two games side by side, each with its own narrator, and swap the survivors at half-time. It keeps every game small enough that people still get to speak.
A tip for both: the narrator makes or breaks the game. Pick someone who enjoys telling a story and can keep the arguing moving.
Games that run all weekend
On a group holiday, a ski trip or a wedding weekend, the best games aren’t played in one evening. They run in the background for two or three days.
Assassin. On the first evening, everyone secretly draws the name of a target, plus a harmless “weapon”: a spoon, a sticker, a word. To eliminate your target, you have to hand them the spoon, put the sticker on them without being noticed, or get them to say the word. When you get someone out, you take over their target. The last player standing wins on the final night. It turns breakfast into a minefield, in the best way.
Secret missions. Everyone draws a small secret mission for the weekend: get three people to high-five you, make someone say “absolutely”, be the last to bed on Saturday. At the final dinner, everyone reveals their mission and the group votes on who pulled it off best.
Sardines. Hide-and-seek in reverse: one person hides, everyone searches, and whoever finds the hider squeezes in with them quietly. The last person still searching is the loser. It works brilliantly in a big holiday house after dark.
Phone games for a big group
Phone games solve one big-group problem very well: everyone can answer at the same time, and the game keeps the score.
- Closest Wins and Price Check take up to 20 players each. Everyone guesses at once, the closest guess scores, and the results appear after every question. They’re the easiest way to get twenty people playing the same game in two minutes.
- Song Battles takes 3 to 16 players. It’s a knockout tournament where players pick songs for a theme and everyone else votes blind, so even players who are knocked out keep voting.
- Off the List takes 3 to 12 players and can split the room into 2 or 3 random teams, each with its own chat. Good for mixing people who don’t know each other.
- Faker, the impostor word game, takes 3 to 12. For a bigger group, run two rooms side by side.
With more than twenty people, play in pairs or small teams with one phone each, and let them argue their answer out loud. Nothing needs to be installed: one person opens a room on play.guezzer.com and the others join with the room code in their phone’s browser.
Which game for which size
10 to 12 people. Almost anything played in teams, plus Wink murder and Who am I?. Mafia starts to shine. On the phones, any game for up to 12 works in a single room.
13 to 20 people. Fishbowl, the team quiz, Mafia with a good narrator. On the phones, Closest Wins and Price Check fit everyone in one game; Song Battles fits up to 16.
20 to 30 people. Teams of five or six, or two games side by side. Charades and Pictionary relays, the finger quiz, two-room Mafia. On the phones, play in pairs or teams, one phone each.
Running the evening
Some things that make a big group game night go smoothly:
- Explain once, with a demo. Play one practice round instead of explaining the rules three times. People learn by watching.
- Start with something easy. Who am I? or the finger quiz first. Save Mafia for when people are warmed up.
- Alternate loud and calm. After a charades relay, play something where people sit down. After Mafia, something short and silly.
- Watch the edges. In a big group there’s always someone standing at the side, not sure whether to join. Make it easy: “We need one more for this team.”
- Stop at the peak. End a game while people are still enjoying it. They’ll ask for it again tomorrow.
What goes wrong, and how to fix it
- Nobody can hear the rules. Get everyone into one circle before you explain. Turn the music down for two minutes.
- One team wins everything. Reshuffle the teams. It’s not cheating, it’s hosting.
- People drift away. That’s fine. Big groups naturally split into a game corner and a talking corner. Don’t force the talkers back.
- A game drags. Cut it short and move on. A big group’s patience runs out faster than a small group’s.
- Someone feels left out. Hidden-role and elimination games can leave people sitting out for a long time. Give them a job: narrator, judge, scorekeeper.
The best part
With a big group, the game is really an excuse. It gets the school friends talking to the work friends, gives the shy cousin a team to belong to and turns twenty people into one party. Pick games where everyone plays at once, keep the rounds short, and let the noise do the rest.
