Party board games for adults: how to pick one for a games night

A party board game has a different job from a games-night board game. A strategy game wants silence and a clear table for three hours. A party game wants noise, a drink in one hand, and the person who arrived late to pick it up in a minute. Get that wrong and you spend the evening reading the rulebook aloud to people who have stopped listening.

Here is how to pick one for a group of four to eight adults, the types worth knowing, and what we learned making our own, Popularity.

Five questions to ask before you buy

1. Does it fit your group size? Check the box, then check it again. A game "for 3 to 10" is often best at one end of that range. For a party, you want a game that is good at the number of people who actually turn up, and still works if two more arrive.

2. How long does it take to teach? This matters more than anything else. If you can't explain it while people are still taking their coats off, it isn't a party game. A good test: can someone who missed the start join after one round of watching?

3. How long is a game? Thirty to sixty minutes is the sweet spot for a party. Short enough to play twice, long enough for a grudge to develop. Anything over ninety minutes belongs on a different night.

4. Is it a talking game or a thinking game? Strategy games reward quiet concentration; party games reward talking, bluffing and making a scene. At a party you want the second kind. If people are staring at their own cards, the room has gone quiet.

5. Does it survive a drink? Not a drinking game, necessarily, but a game that still works when people are distracted, chatting, getting up for more crisps and coming back. Small fiddly pieces and complicated scoring don't survive a party. Big cards and simple rules do.

The types, and what each is good for

Social deduction. Hidden roles, a few liars, and a group trying to work out who they are. Werewolf and Mafia are the classics. They are brilliant for big, loud groups and less good for four people, and the classic versions need someone to run them rather than play. If your group loves The Traitors, this is their type: our guide to how to play a Traitors-style game at home has the rules, and Treachery! vs Mafia vs Werewolf vs The Traitors has the differences.

Word and drawing games. Describe it, draw it, guess it, against the clock. Codenames, Articulate!, Taboo and Pictionary are the well-known ones. Easy to teach, good for mixed groups, and they play in teams, which helps when not everyone knows each other.

Bluffing games. Lying with a straight face, and catching others at it. Cheat is the card-game version everyone already knows; Skull and Coup are the boxed ones. Short, tense and very good with a drink.

Party-quiz and card games. Trivia, fill-in-the-blanks and "who is most likely to". Low skill, high noise. Trivial Pursuit is the classic of the trivia kind and Cards Against Humanity of the fill-in-the-blank kind. Good for warming up a room, less good for a whole evening.

Social games. The type we make. The game is the group itself: who you side with, who you betray, what you are willing to say out loud. It plays like a board game but feels like a party.

What Popularity is

Popularity is a party board game for 2–8 players, taking 30–60 minutes. The aim is to reach the Height of Popularity, the top of the board, before anyone else. You get there by playing Action cards that win people over or take them down a peg, Reaction cards for the comeback, and Twist of Fate spaces that can swap you with the most popular player in an instant. Alliances form, betrayals follow, and the true social pecking order comes out.

It was inspired by Truth or Dare, Uno, Snakes & Ladders and a dash of Cards Against Humanity. You can play it sweet or spicy, and there's no need to make it personal: the game is about creating your own drama. It took three years to develop and a lot of play-testing, and it is published with Imagination Gaming. How we made it, from the barcodes to the printers, is in how to create a board game.

Against the five questions above:

• Group size: 2–8 players, so it covers a dinner for four and a full house of eight.
• Teach time: thirty seconds to teach, about three minutes to get the hang of. We designed it so nobody has to read the rulebook to the table.
• Length: 30–60 minutes. Short enough to play twice.
• Talking or thinking: talking. There are tactics (the Wallflower saves up Reaction cards for a late leap to the top; the Villain takes people down, then lands a Twist of Fate), but the game is the argument.
• Survives a drink: yes. Booze is optional, and pre-drinks is one of the things it was made for.

When the group has played it a few times there are other ways to play: Height of UnPopularity, where you race to the bottom; Mega-Mode, where all points are doubled; Unfair Advantage, where start places are random; and Exploding Twists, where the Twist of Fate cards go into the main deck and are played the moment you draw one.

And if there are more of you

Past eight, most board games stop working: turns take too long and half the table drifts off. That is the point to move to a game built for a crowd. THIS IS REALITY 2000, our social deduction game inspired by 2000s reality TV, is for 4–12 players, and it is relaunching. For a room bigger than that, a hosted game like Treachery! takes over. And for why games belong at a party at all, see 5 reasons to have board games at your party.