10 New Year's Eve Party Games: Fabulously Fun for Adults

These New Year’s Eve party games for adults provide a lot of fun and good humor until at twelve the corks pop!

Every year on New Year’s Eve, everyone is eagerly waiting for it to finally be midnight and welcome the new year with fireworks and streams of champagne. Whether you’re having a New Year’s Eve party at your house, with friends, or with family, New Year’s Eve party games are one of the best ways to shorten the wait until midnight and bring the mood to its peak until then.

With or without alcohol, these 10 New Year’s Eve party games for adults are ideal for any New Year’s Eve party.

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10 Fun New Year’s Eve Party Games for Adults

1. Who Am I? – New Year’s Eve Edition

Play a few rounds of Who Am I guessing to warm up. Everyone writes a name on a piece of paper and sticks it on the forehead of the person sitting next to them. All players now have to figure out who they are by asking yes-no questions to the others. We also have an article with the exact rules and a lot of suggestions on variations at the party game Who Am I.

Tip: As a New Year’s Eve special rule, specify that only people who went through the media this year or were particularly important may be written down.

2. Charade With Good Intentions

Charades or pantomime is one of the most popular party games for adults. Purely pantomimic, you represent terms and the other players have to guess what is meant. Detailed rules and game variations can be found here.

Tip: For New Year’s Eve, use as terms loud good resolutions that you have for the new year, or ones that other people typically have.

3. New Year’s Eve Quiz

We Germans just love quizzes – there’s hardly a better-running television format than quiz shows. Besides popular quiz games like Trivial Pursuit, Quizduell as a board game, Bezzerwizzer and others there’s still the possibility to organize your very own New Year’s Eve quiz.

Simply prepare 10 to a maximum of 20 questions and play the quizmaster yourself. Your friends compete individually or in teams. Either you ask questions about general events of the year that have been in the news. Or if all present know each other well and have done a lot together over the year, you ask questions about certain common experiences. Who remembers the details best?

4. Cocktail Poker

In Greece, it is actually custom to play poker on New Year’s Eve. Instead of playing for money, we recommend playing round by round on New Year’s Eve to see who will mix the next round of cocktails or for some other symbolic stake.

5. Blind Lead Pouring and Collective Clairvoyance

Lead pouring is one of the most popular New Year’s Eve traditions in Germany. The goal is to interpret the form cooled in the water that molten lead takes and thus learn something about the future.

Our suggestion for a playful variation: Whoever is in charge of pouring lead closes their eyes while pouring and does not look into the pot of cold water for the time being. Everyone else present writes down on a piece of paper what they see in it.

Then the caster is allowed to open his eyes and interpret what he sees in it. Now all the slips of paper are revealed and the person whose interpretation came closest to that of the lead caster gets a clairvoyant point. Whoever has the most points is crowned the prophet of the new year.

Of course, it’s also super interesting to see what the others saw in the molten lead! 😉

New Year’s Eve Party Games for Adults to Raise the Level

6. Mexican Dice

One of the most entertaining dice games that can be played both as a drinking game and without alcohol is Mexican Dice. All you need is a dice cup, 2 dice and a base, e.g. a beer mat.

As in poker, the point of mäxle is to see who can bluff the best. And who can see through the shenanigans of the others the best. The exact instructions can be found here as the second of our Top 5 dice drinking games.

7. Apple Bobbing

Apple Bobbing is a popular New Year’s Eve custom, especially in English-speaking countries. Apples float in a large bowl of water. Everyone must now fish out an apple with their hands tied behind their backs.
To make this New Year’s Eve game even more fun, you can also time the game or have 2 teams of the same size compete against each other. The group whose members have first all grabbed an apple, has won.

Tip: You can also fill white wine or cider instead of water in the bowls and core the apples, so that they are nicely soaked… 😉

8. Dinner for One as a Drinking Game

What would New Year’s Eve be without Dinner for One? To make the nearly 20 minutes even more fun, we recommend combining watching with a drinking game.

The Rules:

• Every time (yes, every time!) that Butler James brings the glass to his lips, the audience does the same.
• For every trip over the tiger skin is also drunk.
• Who correctly quotes sentences from the head, just before they are pronounced, may one of the other players a shot.

Who was still sober before, will feel at the latest now like Butler James.

9. New Year’s Eve Zapping

If Dinner for One is not your thing, you can also zap blithely through the program, playing a drinking game with actions. Your imagination is needed when designing the rules.

Suggestions:

• Year in review broadcast: Everyone must take a deep sip of their drink, take a demonstrative look behind their own shoulder and shout loudly “Gone is gone!”
• Live broadcast of a New Year’s Eve party: Everyone cheers to each other and exes their drink.
• Dinner for One: Everyone jumps up and shouts: Happy New Year Miss Sophie! If one of the players was late, he becomes the “butler” and must pour drinks to the others.
• Comedy or satire show: You nimbly blow a streamer into the hair, on the head, etc. of another player. The streamers may not be shaken off and for each one that lands on you must drink a sip.
• News broadcast or documentary: Everyone must make a serious newscaster face at lightning speed. Anyone caught grinning or even giggling gets a shot…

10. The Wicked Seven

One of the nastiest drinking games and therefore also perfectly suited to bring a much too sober round lightning fast into the water is the infamous evil seven.

The Rules:

• To be counted in turn, everyone says a number. Only at 7, any number divisible by 7 and any number that contains 7 as a digit must the person whose turn it is to say STOP instead.
• After each STOP, the direction of the round changes. So, for example, was counted clockwise, it now goes counterclockwise after the STOP.
• Who makes a mistake, must drink. Whether just a sip or immediately a shot, you must determine for yourself.
• Additional rule for advanced and math cracks: also every number with checksum 7 is a STOP…

You will find on our website, by the way, not only New Year’s Eve party games for adults, but also many more New Year’s Eve ideas. Plus, there are great activities to do with friends, couples or family on Abenteuer Freundschaft regardless of the season.

If you like our ideas and don’t want to miss any more, feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

Image source Cover photo: fortune lead casting by jp_tech_girl under CC BY 2.0

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