Life can get pretty boring being stuck inside. With most services being closed, the amount of fun a group can have together is limited. Here are five party games that you can purchase to entertain yourself and some friends/family from the comfort of your own home.
Cards Against Humanity
Cards Against Humanity is a game where each round, a card czar is selected. This card czar will draw a black card with a fill-in-the-blank statement which they read aloud. Then, the other players will each play a white card with a word or phrase that could be considered offensive, risqué, or politically incorrect. The card czar will then read the prompt with each players’ answer and select the card they feel fits best or made them laugh the most. The game is a lot of fun for groups that enjoy all types of humor and finding the best and most random ways to make their friends laugh.
The Jackbox Party Packs 1-7
The Jackbox Party Packs are a series of game packs that are available on all major gaming systems, PCs, and smart TVs. Each pack contains 5 different games that range from Pictionary-esque drawing games to trivia to creating your own rap lyrics for a rap battle. The games allow for endless fun and the best part is that only one person needs to purchase the game for everyone to play. The owner of the game starts a server which the other players join via a web browser and then the fun can begin. My personal recommendation would be to select packs that contain Quiplash (a comedic ‘this or that’ game where the winner is chosen by the audience) or Fibbage (a trivia game where everyone answers a prompt with a fake reply and the goal for each player is to select the true answer from the lies).
Exploding Kittens
Exploding Kittens is a Russian Roulette style card game starring kittens. The deck is shuffled, and each player then draws 7 cards. Within the deck are Defuse cards and Exploding Kitten cards. Players will then discard any number of cards they wish before drawing a card from the deck. If a player draws an Exploding Kitten but does not have a Defuse card, they are out. If a player draws an Exploding Kitten but does have a Defuse, they discard the two cards and continue play. The game creates a dynamic atmosphere with the intensity rising as the deck shrinks and the Exploding Kitten cards yet to be drawn.
Taboo (Midnight Taboo)
Taboo has been around for a while now, releasing back in 1989. Even though it has been around for some time, it still holds up as a fun game for a group of friends stuck indoors. The aim of the game is for a player to have their partner guess a word on the 1st player’s card by giving hints. However, the hints cannot include the word on the card, or the five additional words written on the card. The player giving hints must come up with creative ways to enable their partner to guess the word. Midnight Taboo is a 2016 entry that is the same as regular Taboo but with recent slang terms and phrases. The game is fun to play in a group and it is always fun to see how teams come up with the right answer or completely fail.
Mario Party
I don’t think I need to explain who Mario is to those of you reading this. Mario Party is a Nintendo game that features the Mario characters in a board game on your television. If you have a Nintendo Switch or even the older Wii system, this game would be perfect for a game night with friends. The objective of the game is to roll a dice and travel the in-game map collecting coins and stars. At the end of the game, the player with the most stars is declared the winner. After all four players take their roll and move, there is a mini-game before the next set of rolls. These mini-games can be every man for himself, 2 on 2s, or 3 vs. 1s. This can create a team-up aspect within the already free for all race to collect stars on the board.
With the possibility of another lockdown occurring soon and the fact that many services might not be open for some time, it may be smart to invest in one or two of these games to play indoors with friends and family.
