35 Adult Party Games That Are Anything But Boring

Group of friends playing an adult party game

Just because you’re officially all grown up doesn’t mean you can’t still be a kid at heart. And that is especially true when it comes to hosting parties. Because, despite what you might see in movies or on social media where adult get-togethers consist of people getting dressed up to go sit around a picture-perfect table where they eat fancy d'oeuvres and chat about sophisticated topics all night, that isn’t super realistic.

So if you’ve never actually hosted a soiree at your home before, don’t let the pressure of Instagram or Hollywood stress you out. To put together a great party as an adult, you just have to be yourself and find things that you and your guests will enjoy—which can include channeling your inner child and being inspired by things you used to love doing, like playing games.

From classics like Truth or Dare and Name That Tune, to college favorites like Champagne Pong, there are countless options to choose from. To help you narrow down the right ones to incorporate at your upcoming bash, we rounded up 35 adult party games, below.

No matter which ones you decide to play, you can’t go wrong. Before you know it, you’ll be known as the queen/king of parties, thanks to the fun and inviting atmosphere you create.

Related: 35 Best Online Games To Play With Friends for Fun

35 Adult Party Games

1. Movie ID

Calling all Film Buffs! To play this game, as a host, you’ll have to prepare ahead of time by making a playlist of audio tracks from different chick flicks, horror films, comedies and Disney classics. When everyone is at your party, play each song and see who can answer the most correctly. Reward the person who gets the most right with a surprise movie pass!

2. Mystery Shot

Warning: This game is not for anyone with a weak stomach. Have partygoers divide into two teams. Then tell each team to create a mystery shot using any three items in your kitchen. Once each team makes their drink, have someone from the opposite team try it and guess what was used. Each correct ingredient they guess, earns their team a point. The team with the most points after everyone has had a shot, wins!

3. Name That Tune

Your childhood dream of becoming a DJ can come true when you play this party game. All you have to do is turn on a song and have your friends guess its name and who sings it. Whoever does it the fastest gets a point. Play until your set comes to an end and see who has the most points.

4. Text Message

If you have ever played Telephone as a kid, you’ll be good at this because it’s basically the same thing, but with a modern twist. To play, tell everyone to sit in a circle with their cell phones. Have one person write a three-sentence text message and show it to the person on their right. That person gets 10 seconds to memorize it and then they have to write the text on their phone and show it to the next person. Keep this up with every person and have the last player repeat the text out loud to see it matches the original one.

5. Saran Wrap Game

As the host, you need to do a little shopping beforehand so you can get an assortment of small items, like chocolate coins, lottery tickets, ribbon, dollar bills, packs of gum, hair accessories, makeup, earrings, gift cards and other tiny trinkets. Once you have them all, you’ll need to DIY the ball of prizes before your guests arrive.

To do that, cover one item with Saran Wrap and roll it up so it creates a circle shape, then add another item in a new layer on top of it and wrap it the same way. Keep going until all of the goodies you bought are hidden within the Saran Wrap ball. Then, during your party, gather your friends in a circle and give one person the ball and the person next to them some dice. The person with the ball should try to unwrap as much Saran Wrap as they can until the person beside them rolls a double.

Any prizes they unwrap, they get to keep and the ball and dice are then passed to the following people. This continues until it’s completely unwrapped.

6. Two Truths and a Lie

Each party guest has to take a turn sharing two fun facts about themselves and one lie. Then, everyone else has to try to correctly guess which statement is a lie.This is a fun way to get to know a little more about all of your friends.

7. Champagne Pong

If you’re hosting a NYE party, a girls’ night or a bachelorette party, you’ll want to add this to your list of activities! You just need twelve plastic champagne flutes, your favorite champagne and a ping pong ball to play. Arrange six of the glasses at each side of a table in a triangle shape. Fill them all up with champagne and then have players take turns trying to toss a ping pong ball into them. Whenever it lands in a glass, the other person has to drink from it and then remove it from the table. Keep playing until all six of the champagne flutes from one side of the table are eliminated.

8. Oreo Mystery

Have each guest bring their favorite Oreos to your party. As the host, it’s your job to collect the Oreo boxes and write down the order of the Oreos that you’ll be handing out to your guests so you can keep track of what’s what. After you give each person a cookie, they can bite into it and write what flavor they think it is on a piece of paper. When you’ve gone through all the different kinds, reveal what they each were and see who guessed the most right. Let whoever wins take home the remaining Oreos.

9. Line ‘Em Up

Split up everyone into equal teams and have each team form a line so that everyone is standing in front of one another holding a sheet of paper. Instruct the last person in each line to draw the same simple illustration, like a rainbow. Then, on the count of three, that person should place their sheet of paper on the back of the person in front of them and draw what you told them to. When they are finished, they must say “Done!” to instruct the person in front of them to then draw what they think it was. This continues all the way until the first person in line completes their drawing. Compare the first person and the last person’s sketches and whichever team has the drawing closest to the original, wins!

10. Telephone Reveal

This is a great way to tell your friends that you invited them over for a special announcement, like you’re having a baby, or you just got engaged! Start by whispering your exciting news into one person’s ear and have them repeat it to the person next to them and so on. The last person to hear it should say what they heard out loud and see if it’s correct or not.

11. Press Conference

Your guests can put their acting skills to the test with this game! Have one person at a time “hold a press conference” as a celebrity or a cartoon character of their choice. Everyone else in the room can act as a reporter and ask them questions to try to figure out who they are pretending to be. Tip: This game is even funnier if you have a little wine before playing.

12. The Sticker Stalker Game

Who doesn’t like stickers? When your guests enter your house, give them a sheet of stickers that are all one color, so nobody ends up having the same color. Let them know that throughout the night, the goal is to secretly place their stickers on other guests. By the time your friends are about to go home, see which color of stickers were placed on the most guests and give that person a fun prize!

13. Post-it Note Game

Before your guests arrive, grab some Post-its and write a name of a famous person or movie character on each one. When your friends show up, have each person grab a Post-it without looking at it and stick it on their forehead. Everyone then has to talk with one another and try to figure out who they are by asking questions. The first few people to guess who they are correctly, can win a prize.

14. Most Likely To

If you and your guests have all known each other for a long time, this is the perfect game to play. To get started, have one person at a time ask a question and then everyone has to point to the person they think would be most likely to do that. Whoever has the most fingers pointed at them is out. Continue playing until there is one person left standing.

15. Kiss, Marry or Kill?

Change up this classic party game by adding a wacky element to it and using book characters or movie characters for your choices.Then see who everyone would choose to kiss, marry or kill.

16. Hot Ones

You’ll have to break out your hot sauces and some chicken wings for this one! Starting with the mildest hot sauce you have, instruct each player to take a bite from a chicken wing and swallow it. Once everyone has successfully done it, do the same with the next sauce, and so on. If a player is unable to eat and swallow it, they are out. Keep going until there is one person left or until players have taken a bite with the hottest sauce you have. Things will heat up pretty quickly with this game!

17. Camera Hot Potato

Want to get some silly pics of some of your friends? Play this and you’ll have a hilarious party keepsake. Start by setting one phone to a 10 second timer using the regular photo mode, not the selfie mode.Then, pass it around. If you’re not holding the camera, you have to strike different poses, or make silly faces until it’s passed to you. Whoever is holding the phone when the timer goes off has to take a sneaky photo of someone, then quickly reset the timer to whatever they want. Play as long as you want and by the end, you’ll have some entertaining and candid shots to commemorate your event.

18. Movie Drinking Game

If you’re having a movie night with your friends, they will love this activity. Pick out a film beforehand and tell everyone who wants to participate that whenever the main character says a certain phrase or whenever there is a taxi on the screen, they have to take a shot.

19. Charades

The best part about this game is that it can be super simple, or incredibly complex—it all depends on what you end up writing down on pieces of paper that will have to be acted out. To play, have everyone split into teams. Then, one person at a time has to select a piece of paper and act out what it says to their teammates. Set a timer and if their team doesn’t guess it, it’s the other team’s turn. The team that guesses it right, gets a point.

20. Straight Face

Start by having everyone write a silly, slightly outrageous phrase on a slip of paper and then put them all in a hat. Then, one person at a time needs to draw a piece of paper from it and read the statement out loud. Whoever laughs when it’s read is out.

21. Minute To Win It

If you and your friends are completive, this will be right up your alley! Brainstorm a few games beforehand to play, like picking up Fruit Loops with toothpicks that you hold with your mouth, counting backwards from 20 in Spanish, sorting out Skittles by color from a big bowl, or bouncing ping pong balls into an egg carton. Then have several stations set up so you can have multiple people go head-to-head for each game to see who does the best in one minute.

22. Heads Up!

As long as your phone is fully charged and you’ve downloaded the game “Heads Up!,” you’ll be good to go. For each round, have the guesser hold the phone against their forehead so everyone else can see the word displayed on it. Then give them clues to what the word is so they can try to guess as many as possible.

23. How’s Yours?

Select one person to be “It” for this game and send them out of the room. The remaining people then need to pick out one common item as a group, like hair, shoes, eyes, a shirt, etc. When everyone agrees on something, the person who is “It” can return to the room and should start asking everyone the question, “How’s yours?” Whoever is asked that question then has to give a response that relates to the item that was decided upon and describe it. For instance, if the item was “hair,” a response could be anything from “It’s long!” to “It’s curly!” See how many guesses it takes for the person who is “It” to figure out what everyone's referring to.

24. 20 Questions

To begin, pick one person to go first. That person will then need to silently think of an animal, a celebrity, a movie, etc. Once they have something picked out, it’s up to everyone else to ask them yes-or-no questions to try to figure it out. Everyone has to work as a team to guess correctly because they only have 20 questions total to do so.

25. The Newlywed Game

Even though this game sounds like it’s only for married couples, anyone can participate. Prepare questions for it in advance if you’re the host and make sure they have to do with fun facts or a person’s favorite things. Have your guests pair up with someone at your party they know really well and then use the questions you wrote to put them to the test. See which duo answers the most questions right and crown them the ultimate twosome!

26. Never Have I Ever

This game is a classic. Have everyone raise up one hand so you can see all five fingers. Then one-by-one, have each person go around and say something they have never done before, like “Never have I ever…. gone surfing.” Whoever has done whatever that person says has to put a finger down. Once a person puts all five fingers down, they are out. Whoever is left at the end with the most fingers up, wins!

27. Donut Dangle

Your guests will want to video this game because it can get pretty goofy! When it’s time to play, have everyone go outside and help tie donuts to low tree branches with string in your yard. When they are all in place, have everyone stand by one that they didn’t assemble. Then, on your call, tell everyone to eat their donut as fast as they can without using their hands.

28. Truth or Dare

Just because you played this when you were a teenager doesn’t mean you can’t play it as an adult, too! Have each person at your party decide if they want to answer a question truthfully, or perform a dare. It’s a fun icebreaker game to play with new and old friends!

29. Medusa

No matter if you have a big group of friends over, or a small group, this game is an easy one to play. Have everyone sit around a table (or in your living room) and shut their eyes. Then have everyone count down from three out loud and open their eyes and look at someone. If two people end up choosing each other and making eye contact, they are both out. Keep playing until everyone is out.

30. Mystery Drinks

Arrange a line of plastic cups on a table that are each filled with different drinks. They can range from sweet tea, to water, to pickle juice—it’s up to you! Have whoever wants to play, grab a paper straw and sip from each cup. Once they try each one, they have to write down what they think they just tasted. After everyone has had all of your concoctions, reveal what was in them and see who guessed the most right.

31. Don’t Say “Yes”

This game may seem simple, but it’s actually tricky! Tell your guests that you’re playing a game where they can’t say the word “yes.” Throughout your party, it’s everyone’s job to try to make someone else accidently say it. When someone does, they have to add a sticker to their clothing. By the end of the night whoever has the least amount of stickers, wins!

31. Secret Word

As the host, you need to plan a little ahead for this game by selecting a mystery word that is relevant to your party. For instance, if you are having a birthday party, the word could be “cake.” When your friends show up, let them know that there is a secret word they have to try to guess later in the night in order to win a prize. However, let them know there’s a catch, and they can’t just guess a million different words. Instead, they have to weave whatever their guess is into a conversation they have with you over dinner. When the secret word is said by someone, let them know they guessed it and give them a small gift as a reward.

33. Would You Rather?

Take turns making up crazy situations that your friends have to choose between. They can be funny, gross or even two really amazing options that your guests have to pick between.

34. Doo, Doo, Doo

This game may involve singing, but you don’t have to have a good voice to win. After dividing into two teams, have one person choose a song and perform it while only saying “doo.” If their team gets it on the first guess, they get one point. Switch back and forth between teams until everyone has gone the same amount of time.

35. Limbo

Who says this is a kids-only game? Adults can play it too! Find some fun music and take turns seeing how low everyone can go as they try to make it under a broomstick. Each time someone touches the floor, they are out.

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