Tips for Hosting a Brilliant Game Night with Friends or Family

Tips for Hosting a Brilliant Game Night with Friends or Family

A game night is a great way to spend time with family or friends, having fun together. In this article, we’ll look at some ways that you can create a memorable game night event to entertain your loved ones.

• Who’s coming?

First, you need to decide who to invite to your game night. If you want to play with the people you live with, then that’s easy but if you want to invite other people then that requires a little more planning. How many people can you host? How big is your table? Things like that matter and it’s of course also a good idea to invite people that you know get along!

• Choose a date and time

Game nights are usually hosted in the evenings (hence the name!) so pick a night that works for everyone you want to invite. A weekend evening is usually the best for most as it will allow people to relax a bit more since they don’t need to worry about getting up for work the next morning. This means you can play for as long as you’re having fun and enjoy some drinks too.

• Pick the perfect games

Once you know who’s coming and when it’s all happening, it’s time to choose the right games to play – after all, the event is all about playing board games! There are lots of great games to choose from and what works best depends on how many people are playing and what their interests are. It’s a good idea to have a few different games if you choose ones that are quite quick to play.

Some of our favourite games include Pandemic (that we ironically bought a couple of months before the Covid 19 pandemic began…), Scrabble, Blokus, Pictionary and Monopoly. Cards Against Humanity is a great game too for adult players. A card game like Poker is a good option too for smaller groups.

You might wish to have a theme for your party – these days you can get games based on popular films and TV shows, for example. Then you can plan other parts of the evening to fit the same theme.

If younger guest are joining in too, set up a smaller table with board games for younger children to keep them entertained.

• Sort out snacks and refreshments

A party is not complete without snacks and drinks. Either choose snacks that are not messy so that your games don’t get ruined or plan to have a break between games or rounds to eat something like pizza, perhaps. Drinks can be anything you and your guests like. For alcoholic beverages, people usually bring their own in the UK but as the host it’s always nice to offer a welcome drink or have a few options available too.

• Set it all up

The best place to play games is at a large table so the kitchen table or dining room table is most likely the best place. Clear it completely so that you have plenty of space for your drinks and your games. A large coffee table in the living room can work for games too if there’s not too many of you and you’re all happy to sit on the floor. If the weather is nice, you might be able to play outside depending on your garden set up.

Game nights are a wonderful way to spend time together and have fun! They can easily be adapted to suit whoever is joining and you only need a bit of planning and preparation to ensure that you can enjoy a brilliant game night with your friends and family.

Additional reading: 

• Game night? Keep things fair with a random group generator 
• Fun past times for the holiday season 
• Fun activities for a pandemic summer

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