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 (81–90)
King’s Game
When it comes to party games that have been around since the Showa era, the King’s Game definitely comes to mind.
First, prepare some chopsticks and mark one of them as the King.
On the other chopsticks, write numbers from 1 up to the number of participants.
Everyone draws a chopstick at the same time, and the person who picks the King’s chopstick gets to give a slightly mischievous command to the person or people who drew the numbered chopsticks.
Make sure the commands are mild and compliant! These days, there are even special King’s Game cards for sale, so be sure to check them out!
Mozzarella Cheese Game
The purpose of playing games is to create a fun atmosphere and boost everyone’s energy, right? But depending on the members, sometimes it’s hard for people to really let loose.
That’s when you should try the Mozzarella Cheese Game.
In this game, participants take turns saying “mozzarella cheese.” However, there’s one rule: each person has to say it with more enthusiasm than the person before them.
This way, the energy naturally ramps up, making it easier to liven up your year-end party.
dizzy bat
The items you’ll need are a few bats! Place your forehead against a bat standing upright on the floor, press up close to it, and spin around on the spot.
Once you’re nice and dizzy, run to the target.
Those are the rules.
We recommend doing it as a relay: form teams, and the team that reaches the goal faster wins.
Yamanote Line game
Among games like this, the Yamanote Line Game is a true classic.
The great thing is that you can adapt it to all kinds of prompts, not just Yamanote Line station names! For a company year-end party, you could use executives’ names or product names; for a class reunion, you could try the names of teachers from back in school.
Come up with your own original prompt!
Quiz using puzzles
How about a groundbreaking game that combines puzzles and quizzes? All you need is a store-bought blank jigsaw puzzle and a permanent marker.
For preparation, assemble the puzzle in advance and write a quiz question on it with the marker.
On the day, proceed as follows: first, distribute the disassembled puzzle to each table and have the guests at the same table complete it.
The team that answers the quiz written on the completed puzzle the fastest wins.
Since too many pieces will take too long, the key is to choose a puzzle with a number of pieces that can be completed in just a few minutes.
What comes to mind when you think of ◯◯?
A “What comes to mind when you think of ◯◯?” game where everyone names what they think is the most obvious, universal answer—and tries to match with others.
For example, questions like “What’s the classic rice ball filling?” or “What’s a ball sport?” You answer with something common or your personal standard, but the key is to align your answers with the group.
You might think, I like pickled plum for rice balls, but what will everyone else say? That person might write kelp… There’s a psychological element to it, too.
When all the answers line up perfectly, the satisfaction is doubled.
Smartphone speed-typing showdown
Typing text on a smartphone is something we all do every day without thinking.
Because it’s an action each person does individually, we don’t often get to see how others do it.
This is a simple game where you compete to see who can type fastest on their smartphone.
A prompt sentence is shown in front of you, and once you finish typing it, you send it as a message.
By having everyone post to the same group, you can easily check not just typing speed but also mistakes like typos and omissions.
It’s also fun to add rule variations, such as typing with both hands or with one hand.
Birthday line
It’s a game where you derive answers using only gestures, helping build participants’ trust and understanding.
Express your birthday through gestures and line everyone up in order of their birthdays.
Since numbers can be shown with hand shapes, conveying your birthday itself should be fairly easy.
We recommend setting a time limit or competing by team speed to encourage smooth communication.
Once everyone gets used to gesturing, you can change the prompts—such as “height” or “the most expensive recent purchase”—to adjust the difficulty and keep things lively.
a human head
A familiar TV segment: “What’s in the box?” While it doesn’t seem to appear on television as often in recent years, it’s a well-known game that’s fun even with a large group.
You can put all sorts of things inside, but the real crowd-pleaser is a human head.
For the person reaching in, just feeling something warm and moving is enough to make them think, “Is it alive? Will it bite?”—a heart-pounding moment.
Viewers will laugh at reactions like licking or gentle nibbling, and you’re sure to see screams and big reactions.
The person putting their head in should wear an eye mask or similar for protection, and it can be done safely.
It’s also recommended as entertainment for large events.
Limited Shiritori
This is a version of shiritori, the word-linking game everyone knows, with added rules to make it more engaging.
By restricting the words you can use—such as playing only with song titles—the difficulty of what should be a simple game increases.
It tests various abilities, like how many words that fit the theme you know and whether you can recall them instantly.
Combining rules, such as thematic constraints or limits on word length, and gradually increasing the difficulty could also make the game even more exciting.