Best party games for adults 2025

Codenames makes James Bond’s job look easy. Your partygoers are now spies on two rival teams, trying to suss out intel and spot their allies in a crowd. A grid of word cards is laid out on the table, and one player on a team is appointed Spymaster. This individual gets special info; they can see which words represent a spy from their team, and which are rivals or innocent bystanders.

The Spymaster must give a single-word clue to their team to help them choose the word cards that represent friendly spies. They can also share a number that hints at how many word cards relate to this clue. At this point, half your party will be frantically debating, the other jeering and joking – with the two Spymasters waiting in agonizing, titillating silence.

Codenames is simple, short, and scratches the puzzle itch everyone has in their brains.

Read our Codenames review.

If you want a party game that gets people talking, Wavelength is the perfect pick. In some ways, it’s barely a board game; all you’ll find in the box is a giant wheel with a dial, as well as cards with various phrases on.

The rules are simple: split into two teams and choose a Psychic. On your team’s turn, the Psychic spins the wheel, then secretly peeks behind its hidden door. This shows them a target to hit, and a randomly chosen card gives the team two opposing concepts – think ‘hot and cold’ or ‘hard and soft’.

To convince their team to choose the right spot on the dial, the Psychic must think of a phrase that sits in the right place between the two given binaries. The team must then discuss and guess together. Where does Darth Vader sit on a scale of ‘smells bad’ to ‘smells good’? Does everyone agree that coffee is hot?

Wavelength is a laid-back, rules-light game that encourages players to get to know each other and work together. There are points to win for correct guesses, but most of the fun comes from (often very silly) debates over what’s what. While it’s most fun with the physical dial, there’s also a surprisingly well-done free-to-play mobile version, if you’d rather.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf is low on components, but it’s high on chaos. Betrayal, suspicion, and confusion are perfect ice-breakers, and polite talking will quickly turn to frantic, joyful shouting. If you want a party game that won’t outstay its welcome, this is the top choice. Games last around 10 minutes, but they’re so addictive that you’ll want to play again and again.

The concept of One Night Ultimate Werewolf is simple: some players are villagers, and a remote few are werewolves. At first, each player’s role is secret. Everyone is commanded to close their eyes, and different players will wake in the night to perform special abilities – or, if they’re a werewolf, to kill someone.

Then, everyone awakens to find a corpse. Players have five minutes to investigate the murder, cast accusations, and hang someone for the crime. Werewolves want to stay undercover and get a villager killed in their place, while the villagers want to find and off a werewolf at all costs.

Read our One Night Ultimate Werewolf review.

If you want a deluxe game of deception, we can’t stress just how good Blood on the Clocktower is. This is the game to choose if you want your party board game to be an event. Our advice: set aside an entire evening and multiple rooms for the game, and maybe even set a fun dress code.

Blood on the Clocktower starts with the narrator’s murder. Everyone concludes the deed was did by a demon, and the village must promptly find and eliminate them. Players have a wide variety of secret roles they can perform in the night to investigate, protect, or sabotage their fellows. The demon will also be working with their minions to kill each night when everyone closes their eyes.

Blood on the Clocktower’s creative player roles generate complex and chaotic social situations. It also does one thing most social deduction games don’t; it gives dead players something to do that keeps them engaged. Everyone has an important role to play, making this one of the most satisfying social games out there.

Read our Blood on the Clocktower review.

If partying comes first and games come second at your place, we’d recommend picking up Don’t Get Got. From UK studio Big Potato Games, this is a social game with minimal rules that lets you continue drinking, chatting, and dancing – all without confining you to tables and chairs.

Every player begins with a secret list of objectives they must complete. These range from the simple (get a player to say ‘what’ when you call their name) to the slightly absurd (get players to make specific animal noises or wear their clothes wrong).

If you achieve a goal, you better shout ‘you got got!’ and do a little victory dance. However, if anyone asks you whether what you’re doing is part of the game, you’ve automatically failed. Don’t Get Got balances simplicity, subtlety, and silliness equally.

If you’re holding a more intimate gathering, So Clover! is one of those rare party games that works well with just a handful of players. Heck, it could even be a two-player board game for the right people. This is a simple word deduction game that’s easy to pick up and even smoother to play.

Each player has their own plastic four-leaf clover, and a round begins by dealing everyone four cards face-down. The clovers have space for said cards, and players must place them in secret. Everyone now has four clover leaves with two words alongside it, and they must write a single word that connects these phrases on the leaf with a marker pen.

Each player then removes their cards from the clover, draws a fifth random card, and shuffles them together. Their board and cards are then presented to the rest of the group, who must deduce which cards were originally placed where.

There is a scoring system based on how accurately others can recreate your clover. However, we’ve never played a game of So Clover! Where anyone cares about winning. Instead, the joy comes from solving the wordy mystery together – and laughing at some of the out-there clues your friends give.

If you like party games with a bit more meat on their bones, meet Decrypto. Like Codenames, it’s a team-based word game where you’ll deduce secret words based on clues given by your friends. However, there are a few more steps to decrypt the phrase this time – something that makes Decrypto harder to teach to board-gaming newbies, but also means there’s nothing else out there quite like it.

Split your group as evenly as possible into two teams, and have each sit in front of the two different-colored decryption boards. Four random words are inserted into numbered slots on these boards, producing four phrases only your team can see. One player acts as the clue-giver for the round, and they draw a card that gives them a three-number sequence.

The clue-giver wants their team to correctly guess this sequence, so they must provide one clue for each number. Since you can’t say the number outright, you’ll need to give a clue that relates to the meaning of the word above that number on your team board.

These three clues are said aloud, meaning that your opponents can hear them, too. At the same time, the opposing team will follow the same process. While the decrypters should work hard to decipher their own team’s clues, they should also make a note of the words said by their opponents each round.

If they can successfully guess the other team’s number sequence, they’ll earn an Interception token – and two of these win you the game. Alternatively, a game ends when a team guesses their own sequence wrong twice, earning them two miscommunication tokens. This is a tense game of cat-and-mouse where everyone needs to be on the ball to win.

King’s Cup is a classic for party gamers who win by getting drunk quickly. Place a pint glass on the table, fan out a deck of playing cards face-down around it, and mix a bit of everyone’s drinks into the pints. Players will take turns drawing a card and performing the action associated with it.

These are usually summed up by a single, easy-to-remember word. For example, an ace is a ‘waterfall’. In this case, the person who drew the card begins chugging their drink of choice. The person to their left also starts chugging, and they can’t stop until the card-drawer does. Everyone around the table must follow this rule, drinking until their right-most buddy gives them a break.

There’s no definitive ‘end’ to a game of King’s Cup, but we’d recommend concluding things when the final King card is drawn. The first three Kings command you to add some of your drink into the dirty pint at the center of the table, but pulling the fourth means you must drink the whole thing. We’re not sure anyone will be up for party games after that.

Here are the full King’s Cup rules explained.

You might not have played Truth or Dare since middle school, and maybe it’s not your first pick for mature, adult parties. But if you update the truths and dares to match your age group (and your friends’ sense of humor), it can be a wacky, hilarious, and possibly risque way to spend an evening.

There’s almost no rules to learn here. Players take turns accepting a truth (a question they must answer truthfully) or a dare (an act they must perform, usually difficult or embarrassing). That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s not the most elaborate party game, but it’s also one of the few good options that doesn’t require you to spend money.

If you need some ideas for cheeky Truth or Dare questions, we’ve compiled a spicy list that’s definitely designed for adults.