Drinking games are a sacred and fundamental human activity. Whether you’re breaking the ice with strangers or having fun with friends, when an evening involves drinking, a good drinking game always helps to grease the wheels.
There are plenty of drinking board games you can buy in 2023 to whet your whistle, as well as limitless drinking card games for anyone with a deck and a knack for playing card games. But what if you want to keep your drinking games even simpler? When you’re becoming too pissed to pilot your counter-filled control deck, and far too muddled to read through a multi-page rulebook (even if it is for one of the best board games there is), what you need is simple, silly entertainment.
We’ve put together the best drinking games full stop, ones that you can play with no components or things lying around your house. Many of these are party card game classics, but you might just find a new one to impress and intoxicate your friends. So, grab your friends, your cups, and your beverage of choice – these are the best drinking games of the year. You’ll be downing pints, shots, or a responsible glass of soda in no time.
So make sure you’re above the legal drinking age where you are, then crack a bottle, read on, and bottoms up!
These are the best drinking games in 2023:
- Beer Pong
- Flip Cup
- Never Have I Ever
- Sevens, Elevens, and Doubles
- Mr and Mrs
- Quarters
Beer Pong
Kicking things off with one from the Drinking Game Hall of Fame, Beer Pong has a little bit of everything. Skill. Drama. Spectacle. We’ve all enjoyed this game before, and that’s because it’s super solid and requires virtually no setup. You just need a ping pong ball, a bunch of plastic cups standing in two groups, some beer to fill them with, and away you go.
Bounce the ball and sink your shot into a beer, your opponent drinks. They land theirs, you drink. Beer Pong is always a hit because, at any given party, no matter the size, there’s always at least two people who reckon themselves Beer Pong pros, and will be itching to prove their prowess the second they get a glimpse of those distinctive shiny red cups. It’s also a drinking game where everyone gets worse as the night goes on, and hand-eye coordination steadily goes out the window, which is always a laugh. Sometimes you can’t beat the classics!
Flip Cup
How lucky were you when they were handing out Dexterity scores? The classic drinking game of Flip Cup is the best way to find out. The rules are straightforward, simply down your drink as quickly as possible, place your cup on the edge of the table and hit its base as many times as it takes in order to ‘flip’ it and have it land, balancing, face down. Then move onto the next one – the first to complete a whole row of cups is the winner.
Unless you’re planning on drinking an ungodly amount (or only pour a little alcohol into each cup) Flip Cup works best as a team game, played as a relay race. This multiplies the excitement and also the stress of the race, as your teammates cheer you on or (more probably) belittle you and your lack of flipping talent.
Never have I ever
Never Have I Ever is such a famous game that you may have played it long before you were old enough to drink. However, the concept works far better with alcohol-related consequences attached.
In this game, players take turns beginning a sentence with “never have I ever”. They must finish the sentence by naming an activity of their choice, and anyone who has ever done the activity must take a sip of their drink. If no one has done the said activity, the person who suggested it must drink instead. Rinse and repeat until you’re all drunk – it really is that simple.
Sevens, elevens, and doubles
You don’t hear about drinking dice games as often as card and board games. But worry not – Sevens, Elevens, and Doubles (also known as ‘sloppy dice’ or ‘hero’) is here to broaden your beer-based horizons.
Start the game by placing a glass of alcohol in the middle of a table, then take it in turns to roll two dice. The first person to roll a seven, an 11, or any double gets to choose another player to drink – and we’re not talking about baby sips.
The person chosen must attempt to down the entire glass before the person who made them drink is able to roll another seven, 11, or double. If the glass isn’t empty by the time another seven, 11, or double is rolled, the process begins again – and again, and again, until the drinker can beat the roller.
Several versions of this game have extra rules to make the odds a little fairer. You might agree to only fill the glass a quarter full, or you might agree to carry the game on after the drinker fails more than five times. Wargamer always encourages you to drink responsibly, so use this knowledge wisely.
Mr and Mrs
This game is typically played by new spouses at their weddings, but it can be a great drinking game for any occasion. There are two main ways to play.
In version one, seat two players who know each other well back to back so they can’t see each other. This could be two romantic partners, for example, or just two good friends. Someone else needs to ask the pair questions like ‘who is the funniest?’, or ‘who is the most likely to end up in jail?’ – get as creative as you like.
The pair put on the spot will need two ways to signal their answer (written cards or a hand signal can work fine), as they’ll have to indicate to the other players whether their answer is ‘me’ or ‘them’. If both players choose the same person, they’re safe – if not, both drink.
Now onto version two. In this game, two players take turns answering personal questions about each other. This might be ‘if your partner could go anywhere on holiday, where would they go?’, or ‘who does your partner hate more than anyone in the world?’. If a player guesses incorrectly about their partner, they take a drink.
Quarters
Quarters is one of the most popular drinking games around, so there are a lot of variants with slightly different rules. To keep things simple, here’s just one that we think you’ll enjoy.
All you need to play Quarters is a coin and some cups (or glasses, or shot glasses – you can use whatever works for you). Place one container of your choice in the middle of the table, and fill it with an alcoholic drink. Everyone playing gets a coin (typically a quarter, if you’re in the States). Two people on opposite ends of the table each get an empty glass, and they must attempt to land a coin in the glass by bouncing it off the table.
Once they’ve shot their coin into the glass, they pass the glass to the next person, who then has to land their coin in the glass. This continues until someone at the table ends up with both glasses in front of them – when this happens, they must drink from the glass in the centre of the table and refill it. They then pass one glass to someone else at the table, and they must land a shot in their remaining glass before the second glass gets back to them.
There’s no way to ‘win’ Quarters – the only objective is to drink until your group doesn’t want to drink anymore. So have fun, and good luck bouncing those coins!
Source: Wargamer
