More Than Monopoly Volume 2: Party In a Box Part I

Part II: Party in a Box!

                Imagine this scenario: You are hosting a party for your friends.  Some of your favorite people are complete introverts and often are extremely quiet.  Others have never met  each other and their only commonality is through their connection with you.  Does this sound like a potentially awkward situation?  It doesn’t have to be with a party game! 

                Party games come in a variety of styles that can appeal to a wide range of groups.  There are games that involve acting or bluffing, others involve drawing and creativity.  I’m going to tackle a few different types of games and give a brief overview of each, along with what type of people would enjoy it.   The games which will be covered in this article are Encore, Telestrations, Apples to Apples, Cranium and Bezzerwizzer.

                Encore is a music-based party game.  Players are divided into two teams.  The basic premise of the game is that each team is given a word that exists in a song, such as “life.”  The team whose turn it is must come up with a song that has the word “life” in the lyrics, and then sing the line of the song that has that word.  They must sing either 5 words before or after the selected word.   The other team then has to come up with another song that has the word life in it.  This goes back and forth until one team either repeats the word or is stumped.  The team which wins the round scores a point and a new word is selected.  This is a great game to play with people who love music!

                Do your friends enjoy drawing?  Even if they don’t and have no artistic ability, Telestrations is a great party game that is almost guaranteed to bring laughter to a group.  The name of the game is a combination of two words: telephone and illustration, which gives a hint to the gameplay.  Each player is given a card which has a word on it.  They must sketch the word on their erasable pad, and then flip the page over.  The person next to them must guess what the person drew.  They pass the pad to the person next to them, and then that person must draw what the person before them guessed.  This game requires zero drawing talent  and is actually even funnier when the players are not great at drawing.

Next time I will talk about three more great party games!