For an evening in with your gal pals, sometimes there’s nothing more fun than a good ol’ fashioned game night. Here are five games that promise to make the evening a real hoot. Game on!

 

 

Number of players: 4 to 8

Remember playing broken telephone with your school chums? That recess-time favourite has since evolved into a fun party game. How it works: each player has a sketch pad on which they jot down a secret word. The pads then get passed from player to player, with everyone required to draw the secret word, or guess the illustration, they’re looking at before each pad is returned to its original owner. Maximum hilarity ensues with players who are awful at drawing (how did “dog” turn into “astronaut”?!). An added bonus: everyone plays at the same time, so there’s no waiting for turns.

 

 

Time’s Up!

Number of players: 4 or more

Lovers of pop culture will enjoy playing this game of who’s who in the world of celebrities and other well-known personalities. Hints are given to your teammates to help them guess as many famous people as possible in 30 seconds. The team that has the most correct guesses wins. Though it sounds easy, there are three 30-second rounds, and each successive round has a different set of rules on how the clues can be presented. With a strictly miming-only round three, players will be amused and baffled by how quickly half a minute can pass.

Number of players: 3 or 4

Imagine this: you’ve just disembarked on an uncolonized island (Catan) and you now have to build roads, settlements, and cities in order to establish more colonies than the other new “settlers” (players), thus becoming the island’s largest nation. Achieve this, and victory is yours. Get everyone’s competitive juices flowing with this ultimate strategy game. Each player will be so caught up in thinking of how other settlers’ plans will affect their own strategy that the game is likely to take longer than the suggested 90-minute completion time. Highly recommended for a slumber party—though don’t count on getting any sleep.

 

Taboo

Number of players: 4 or more

Would you be able to get someone to say “cutlery” if you weren’t allowed to use the words “knife”, “fork”, “spoon”, “eating”, and “utensils”? This is the premise of this fun, word-guessing game where you try to get members of your team to guess as many secret words as possible in one minute—without using the forbidden words. Your team gets one point for each correctly-guessed secret word. But watch out—someone from the other team is looking over your shoulder (literally!), ready to press on an electronic buzzer and steal the point if you say one of the taboo words. Play this game with gal pals you’ve known for a really long time, and you’ll all laugh over the anecdotal references that come up.

 

Number of players: 4 or more

Since its release in 2011, this “party game for horrible people” has become a widespread phenomenon. The basic premise: each player is dealt 10 white (answer) cards. One player picks a black (question) card, and the remaining players each decide which one of their white cards would make for an amusing answer. This fill-in-the-blanks game has essentially been designed to result in jarring, often offensive statements that will make even the most politically incorrect of your friends blush. Play for points or just for laughs—either way, it’s a surefire way to spice things up at your next gathering.