Simple yet exciting! Recommended games and activities for year-end parties
Many of you probably attend several year-end parties—at work, with friends, and in your neighborhood—every year, right?
Looking back on the past year and chatting with colleagues and friends makes for a great time.
And the entertainment games—like bingo and quizzes—might be part of the fun, too.
But when you’re in charge of the entertainment, it can be hard to decide what games to play.
Ideally, you want something simple that everyone can enjoy and get excited about.
In this article, we’ll introduce classic games that meet those needs!
Once you’ve decided on the games for this year’s year-end party, don’t forget to prepare the prizes!
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Simple yet exciting! Recommended Games and Activities for Year-End Parties (31–40)
Drawing Telephone Game
You know the game of telephone where a prompt is passed along from one end to the other? This is the drawing version of that.
The first person looks at the prompt and turns it into an illustration to show the next person.
The viewer then draws their own interpretation and shows it to the next person, and the last person gives the answer.
It gets harder with longer prompts.
NG word game
NG word games you play during golf or bowling are so much fun, aren’t they? For example, if you set “no English,” you suddenly can’t use a lot of golf and bowling terms—but as the game heats up, you can’t help blurting out things like “Nice!” anyway.
It really adds to the excitement of the competition.
The type where you stick an NG word on your forehead is great too.
A tip for making it lively is to set the NG word to something the other person says a lot.
Catchphrases really do get ingrained without us realizing it.
Both types are highly recommended party games that get everyone hyped!
In-joke quiz
Inside jokes really bring the energy up, don’t they? They might not land with people who weren’t there, but whether it’s a cringey past or stories of failure…
how about turning them into a quiz? From fresh memories to old things you’d rather not dig up.
Embarrassing, but a total crowd-pleaser!
Pedometer Game
It’s a game where players compete to see who can shake a pedometer the most.
The location on the body where the pedometer must be attached is specified.
Follow the instructions, put it on, and move your body as much as you can within the time limit to try to rack up more counts than anyone else.
The fun part of this game is that each person wears the pedometer in a different spot, so participants end up moving in all kinds of ways.
Someone with it on their hand will swing their arms, someone with it on their foot will run, and someone with it on their waist might look like they’re dancing.
Finding commonalities
Common-ground finding is a fun game that helps you talk with people you’re meeting for the first time and feel closer to them.
There are various ways to play: for example, participants form pairs or groups and, within a time limit, look for things they have in common through conversation; or they present common points they’ve written down in advance—those are standard approaches.
Conversations can stall without a prompt, so set simple topics like “How you spend your days off” or “Favorite foods.” It’s also a good idea to set a target number of commonalities to find beforehand.
Simple yet exciting! Recommended Games and Recreational Activities for Year-End Parties (41–50)
Perfect Cola Drinking Game
The “Perfect Amount Cola Drinking Game” has been around for a long time, evolving in various forms.
If you’re not a fan of carbonation, feel free to switch to juice and enjoy.
The classic rules are: first, pour cola into a glass and mark a spot at some arbitrary level.
Put on a blindfold and drink; whoever stops closest to the mark wins.
We don’t usually pay much attention to how much we drink, so even when someone says “just one sip,” it’s hard to gauge what that actually means.
It’s the perfect game for parties where there are plenty of beverages!
Party Game Scratch
How about playing with party goods sold at 100-yen shops? Since they’re only 100 yen, they’re affordable and perfect for when you’ve got time to kill.
This one reveals a prompt like “Let’s do ◯◯” when you scratch it.
There’s a soft version and a hard version.