Team-based recreational activities for adults that are fun even with large groups
When you’re organizing company events like parties, in-house sports days, or welcome gatherings for new employees, it’s common to include some kind of recreation, right?
If it’s something you can do in teams, it builds a stronger sense of unity and makes it more fun for everyone.
Plus, offering prizes to the winning team can really liven things up, and at welcome parties it can be a great way to break the ice with people you’re meeting for the first time.
In this article, we’ll introduce a variety of team-based recreational activities that adults can enjoy!
They vary in how long they take, and some require very little preparation.
Choose the ones that best fit your event’s situation.
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Team-based recreational activities for adults that are fun even with large groups (1–10)
Team Competition Bingo
How about turning the classic bingo game into a team competition? As usual, you mark off numbers on your card, and you get bingo when you complete a line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally… but you don’t win just by being the first to finish.
For example, you can set a rule like “the round ends when three people at the table get bingo,” which removes the “it’s over as soon as I win” scenario and keeps everyone on the edge of their seat until the end.
Whether you snag a lavish prize comes down to luck—let’s all cheer and groan together with every number that’s called!
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.
Puzzle-solving game
How about trying a team-based puzzle-solving activity? Puzzle hunts are booming in many places, and aiming for the goal while cooperating as a team makes for a great recreation that also strengthens team cohesion.
You can enjoy the satisfaction of clearing a game where you plant codes and riddles around a room, solve them to find the answer, and then move on to the next puzzle.
Combining puzzle-solving with escape rooms or incorporating a treasure hunt will make it even more exciting.
It could also be fun to make it a time trial to see which team can solve the puzzles the fastest.
Adult-oriented team competition recreation activities (11–20) that are fun even for large groups
Gesture Game
Let’s play a classic recreation game that everyone from kids to adults can enjoy: charades! Prepare paper and a pen and write down prompts.
Make sure only the person acting can see the prompt.
The actor must convey the prompt using gestures only—no talking allowed! Once the prompt is correctly guessed, switch to a new actor.
Try playing in teams and compete to see how many prompts each team can guess.
It also gets more exciting if you add your own rules, like how many passes are allowed.
Who is eating something spicy?
A game where everything looks the same, but one item is extremely spicy, and you have to guess who ate it.
To confuse the opposing team, your team can cooperate with some double-bluff acting so it’s hard to tell who got the spicy one.
You can do this not only with spicy flavors but also with something sour, so prepare some snacks and include just one special item to try it out.
With some convincing acting, you’re bound to fool a few people—and by the next day, you might even earn the nickname “the actor” (lol).
BlindSquare
Are you familiar with a recreational activity called “Blind Square”? It’s a game you can play with at least four people.
You place a rope formed into a circle on the ground at your feet, and everyone stands around it.
Then, everyone puts on a blindfold, picks up the rope at their feet, lifts it to chest height, and, while calling out to each other, tries to shape the rope into a perfect square.
It sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly difficult, and getting a clean square is quite a challenge.
Because it requires teamwork and cooperation, it’s also recommended as a team-building activity.
Junk Relay
Let me introduce a recreation activity called the Junk Relay.
Players split into teams and compete.
You set a start line and a finish line, and place about five items—such as stuffed animals or balls—at the start.
The game is to work together as a team to carry those items to the finish in order.
However, you can’t start carrying the next item until the previous one has been properly placed at the finish, and an item can’t be placed at the finish until every team member has touched it.
Before starting the game, teams hold a strategy meeting to decide how to carry the items as quickly as possible.