Phone party games for New Year's Eve: getting a big crowd into one game
Phone party games for a New Year's Eve with six to twenty people, which ones suit which group size, ten minutes of setup and the small things that keep the night going.
If there are fifteen people round the table on New Year’s Eve, getting everyone into one game is hard work. Most board games stop at six or eight players, and with pen and paper games someone is always handing out slips, someone is keeping score and someone is explaining the rules for the third time. Meanwhile everyone at that table already has a games controller in their pocket.
This post is about how phone games work on New Year’s Eve. For the shape of the night and games you play with paper and a pen, see New Year’s Eve games that keep the party going until midnight. Here we’re looking at what the phone makes easier.
Why phones?
The first reaction is usually “everyone’s on their phone anyway, why add a game?” But it isn’t the same thing. Someone scrolling on their own and someone answering the same question as everyone else in the room are doing very different things. In the second case people look up at each other, because the result doesn’t happen on the screen, it happens in the room: who the faker was, whose guess was ridiculous, who turns out not to know their own mum at all.
There’s a practical side too:
- No cutting up paper, no keeping score, no rules lecture. The game does all of that.
- Late arrivals join easily. Someone comes through the door, types in the code and is in for the next game.
- The quiet ones play too. Someone who’d never shout an answer in front of the room types it into their phone, and laughs along when the results come up.
Before the night: ten minutes of setup
None of this is difficult, but it’s annoying once the evening has started.
- Write the Wi-Fi password down and put it somewhere obvious. On the fridge, by the door, under a glass. Otherwise “what’s the Wi-Fi?” gets asked again with every new arrival.
- Gather the chargers in one corner. By midnight everyone is on fifteen per cent. An extension lead and two or three different cables are enough.
- Think about who hasn’t got a phone. Grandad’s phone might be ancient, one of the kids might not have one. That’s fine, two people can share a phone and play as a team. It’s often funnier.
- Try it once. Open a room before the guests arrive and play a round on your own phone. Knowing which game you’ll open and where means nobody waits around later.
Nobody needs to download an app to join. The person who opens the room reads out the four-letter code or shows the QR code, and everyone else scans it with their phone camera and joins in the browser. Anyone who turns up halfway through a game comes in as a spectator and plays from the next game.
Picking a game for the size of the group
On New Year’s Eve the size of the group changes all night. At nine there are twelve of you, at half one there are four. So it pays to pick the game for the crowd you’ve actually got.
A big crowd (12 or more)
With this many people, games where you take turns drag on. Games where everyone plays at once work much better.
- Closest Wins: everyone writes a guess for the same number question and whoever gets closest wins. It works with up to 20 people and nobody needs to know anything. When the answers come up, someone will always shout “you said a million?”
- Price Check: you guess the price of real products. Brilliant for seeing the gap between generations. One person is still thinking in old money, another thinks everything costs a fortune.
- Song Battles: everyone picks a song that fits a theme, the songs play without names and the room votes. It fits a party where the music’s already on and the Hootenanny is waiting in the background.
A medium group (6 to 12)
This is the sweet spot. It’s where the talking, the arguing and the accusations start.
- Faker: everyone gets the same word except one person. You take turns giving one-word clues, and the faker tries to blend in without knowing the word. After a couple of glasses everyone becomes a terrible liar, which only makes it better.
- Doodle Gallery: everyone draws the same thing, the drawings go up anonymously and the room picks a favourite. The people who can’t draw laugh the most.
- Tier List: everyone secretly ranks the same category from best to worst. The fun starts when the results come up: “how can you put pigs in blankets at the bottom?”
A small, close group (under 6)
For the ones still up after midnight, or a group that’s known each other for years.
- How Well Do You Know Me?: one person takes the hot seat and answers a question about themselves, and everyone else guesses what they said. This is the game that exposes people who’ve been married twenty years and can’t name their partner’s favourite dinner.
- Hot & Cold: everyone hunts the same secret word at once, and every guess is ranked by how close it is in meaning. All the guesses go on one shared board, so someone else’s hot guess helps you too. Calmer, and a bit more thinking.
Mixed ages
It’s hard for a ten-year-old and a seventy-year-old to have an equal chance in the same game. These two are good at it:
- Timeline: you put events in the right place on a timeline. The older guests know the old events, the younger ones know the new ones. Mix the ages when you make teams and everyone’s useful.
- Higher or Lower: you guess which song or artist has been played more. The teenagers win this easily, while the grandparents ask “who?” for every second name. That’s half the fun.
Picking a game for the time of night
When you open a game matters as much as which game you open.
- After dinner: everyone is full but still sharp. This is the best time for a game with a bit of thinking and plenty of talking. Faker, or Number Bluff, where everyone writes a fake answer to a real number question and then tries to spot the true one.
- Around eleven: the slowest hour of any New Year’s Eve party. Open something short and loud with a one-sentence rule. Closest Wins or Price Check works well here. Nobody has to know anything, everyone writes a guess, and the room warms up again when the answers come in.
- Quarter to twelve: put the phones down. You don’t want to spend the bongs looking at a screen. Fill the glasses and get everyone into the same room.
- After midnight: if the crowd has thinned out, slow down with How Well Do You Know Me?. People answer more honestly at this hour.
Family and friends who aren’t there
Not everyone can be in the same house on New Year’s Eve. A sister in another city or a friend abroad can join on a video call and play in the same room. You just tell them the code on the call. If you put the video call on the TV or a laptop, they can see the whole table while playing on their own phone. If they’re somewhere it’s still teatime at midnight, all the better: they can join your countdown and then do their own.
There’s more on this in Games to play on a video call with friends who live far away.
When phones get in the way
Not everything will go smoothly. A few common problems and what to do:
- Someone stays on their phone after the game ends. Make it a rule that phones go face down on the table between games. If a rule feels a bit much, just start the next game straight away.
- Your aunt’s phone won’t get into the room. Probably an old browser or she isn’t on the Wi-Fi. Don’t lose ten minutes on it, team her up with whoever’s sitting next to her.
- Battery’s dead. Good thing you sorted the chargers.
- Nobody wants to play. Don’t push it. Start a round yourself with two or three people. The laughing usually brings the rest over.
Free or Pass?
All the games on Guezzer are free to play. In free rooms the games are shorter: the number of rounds and the timers stay at their defaults. For one or two games that’s usually plenty.
If you’re planning to play all night, the person who opens the room only needs a Party Pass. The Pass belongs to the host, so nobody else who joins has to buy anything. Everyone in that room plays without ads and with every setting open: more rounds, the timers you want.
The Party Pass is a one-off payment, not a subscription, and it doesn’t renew. It lasts 24 hours from the moment you buy it, so buy it just before the guests arrive, not the day before. A Pass bought at eight in the evening also covers everything after midnight and New Year’s Day lunch. The details are on the Guezzer Pass page.
When the night’s over
The next morning, the group chat rarely talks about who won. It’s about who gave themselves away in the first round as the faker, who put an extra zero on a price, and who couldn’t remember their own husband’s birthday. What people remember isn’t the games, it’s what happened in the room while you played them.
Happy New Year.
