I hope everyone had a restful and productive weekend. If you didn’t, we’re not here to judge.
The holidays can be stresssful, especially if you have a bunch of people in your house. But, we can help with keeping them occupied while you do other things like hide in the bathroom.
Just kidding. You’ll likely want to play with your friends and family. We’ll make some suggestions that are easy-ish and require/encourage varying levels of inebriation to provide the desired effect.
First off, Monopoly is NOT your friend in these situations. Unless, of course, you’re looking to decrease the number of people you have to buy gifts for by making them violently angry with you.
The first up is one of my favorite games for inexperienced players/people who may have had one too many or can’t be bothered to learn anything too complicated. I taught my dad how to play it in less than five minutes.
Zombie Dice – The game uses dice (either physical, or there is an app for your phone) that have a brain, an explosion looking icon and feet. The brains are the objective, as you want to obtain as many as possible before you get shot three times (the explosion looking things). Footsteps are those meddlesome humans that got away and are therefore useless to you. You can continue to test your luck by rolling more dice and risk losing all your brains if you collect three gunshots per round.
The game retails for less than $15 and comes in a handy tube if you go for the physical edition, and fits in your pocket if you are doing the digital version. The app is free to download with in app purchases and is available for iOS and Windows Phone (sorry Androids!). The physical game can be purchased any number of places, but you should definitely support your local game shop if they have it. There are also expansions and different versions of the game, but the base game suits my target audience just fine.
Our next recommendations will require a basic knowledge of how offend able your guests are and if you will be in the presence of minors (that will be drinking sodas and juice, not alcohol. Let’s make that clear). One will be better than the other for certain circumstances, which should be clear shortly.
Apples to Apples – This game is a perennial favorite and also very easily obtained. Each player is given a cache of nouns to pair with a dealer’s adjective card. So, for example, the dealer may present a card that reads “arrogance,” to which you can anonymously pair something along the lines of “Potbellied pigs” or “George Washington.” The dealer then reviews the cards for their suitability, and entirely at their discretion, determine a winner. The player who obtains the most adjective cards is the winner. Simple. This is better for company who may be easily upset by drinking, profanity or inappropriate topics. It’s still a ton of fun.
Cards Against Humanity – This game, and its seemingly infinite expansions, is quite possibly one of my favorite games to play with people while drinking. The rules are basically the same as Apples to Apples but the cards are more along the lines of sex acts, slang terms, and truly politically incorrect statements. If you’ve ever played, you know what I’m referring to. That being said, this is probably not the game for you to play with grandma or Aunt Maybel, unless they’re the tolerant fun kind of relatives.
Apples to Apples is probably the priciest of the bunch, but very easy to find. Cards Against Humanity (with a bit of planning) is actually free to print out and play.
If you’re lazy, pressed for time, or impatient, you can buy the cards at a lot of places, including Target. The base deck is going to run you around $25 and expansions run around $5-10 a piece.
It’s also worth mentioning that these make great gifts as well and won’t break the bank.
We’ll report back with some other fun games you can play during the holidays later in the Advent Calendar. Is there a game you’re a huge fan of? Something we should check out? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
**image is from sjgames.com