Are you needing entertainment for a big group of people this holiday? I have five easy, fun games that people of all ages can play and some most need little to no equipment!

The Candy Bar Game

I’m sure you’ve heard of this, but in case you haven’t I’ll explain. Everyone who is playing will need a candy bar, but you can throw in some extras to make it more fun. You will also need a timer and some dice. 

Everyone sits in a circle, you set a timer and start rolling. Each person rolls the dice once and passes it to the next player. If you roll doubles then you can take a candy bar from the middle of the pile or steal one from another player. When the timer goes off each player gets to keep the candy bars they have collected. But if your candy bar is stolen from you, you don’t get to take another one out of the pile. This is a great game for kids and adults alike. 

Left Right Center

This is a fun game to play with real money. You need dice and money to play this game. Everyone starts out with five $1 bills and sits in a circle. The number four on the dice means left, five is center and six is right. To start out each player will roll three dice, and see which number is face up. If it is a four, give $1 to the player on the left, a five, $1 goes to the center, and six $1 goes to the player on the right. And if you roll a one, two or three you will keep that amount of $1s. 

After the first round everyone rolls the amount of dice that matches the amount of $1 they have left. If they don’t have any bills, they don’t roll, if they have five bills they roll five dice. The best part of this game is even if you lose your money you aren’t out of the game until there is only one person left with money. It’s a high stakes game that can change at the drop of a hat, or roll.

Ghost

This game doesn’t need any equipment and can be played anywhere, even in line at Disneyland! The goal is to spell a word together, but you don’t know what word you are spelling. Someone chooses a word and starts spelling, then each person after that takes a turn saying a letter out loud, but you can’t say the last letter in the word or you are out. For example you choose the word “Restaurant” to spell and you start by saying “R”, the next person says “E”, the next says “S”, and so on. But the tricky part of the game is if the next person says “T” they would actually be out because they spelled a full word, “Rest”, even if they were trying to spell restaurant.

You can also challenge someone who is spelling a word if it isn’t making sense. If they are making up a word and you call them out, they are out. But if it is a real word and you challenge it you are then out!

Bank

Once again all you need for this game is a set of dice and the app Bank downloaded on your phone. A player rolls and the banker puts in the total of the two dice into the app. You do this for as many rounds as you want. If you roll a seven ends the round so that could skip some of the players and give you an advantage. Rolling doubles gives you double the amount of points that  have already been collected on the cumulative Bank screen. The first three players can get extra points if they roll a seven and collect 70 points, however they also have the disadvantage of not getting a lot of points if they roll doubles. 

Scoring: Any time during the game any player can call out “Bank” which pauses the game, the banker then clicks on the “Bank” tile and adds that amount to the player’s total who called out “Bank”. There is no limit to how many people bank points on the screen, but once they do that they will sit out the remainder of the round and cannot call bank again in that round. Once a seven is rolled or all players have banked points into their accounts the round is over and the person with the highest number of points at the end of the round wins!

Get Down Mr. President

Now this game is funny and can be a little dangerous. One person raises two fingers to their ear pretending to get intel from an earpiece. If you notice this happening you must also raise two fingers to your ear. The trick is doing this in silence. Once everyone but one person in the room has raised their fingers to their ear, that person is deemed the president and everyone yells “GET DOWN MR. PRESIDENT” or “Mrs. President” if it’s a girl and you tackle that person to the floor. Like I said, very fun, but definitely be aware of your surroundings and don’t tackle grandma maybe…

I hope these games bring fun, new traditions to your holidays this year!