What Are The Best Christmas Party Games For Adults?

Short answer: A good Christmas party game for adults is quick to teach, funny without anyone performing, and playable at a table full of people who have had a drink. F**k. The Game fits because the comedy comes from your own brain misfiring, not from memorised punchlines. It is a card game built on the Stroop Effect, plays 2 to 8 people, has four rules, and needs no app, no Wi-Fi and no television.

What makes a Christmas party game work for adults?

Three things, and most games only manage two of them.

• It explains itself in a minute. If the rules need a reading group, the room drifts back to their phones before round one.
• Everyone plays at once. Long turn order kills a party. People need to be laughing while it is somebody else's go.
• The joke does not run out. A game with printed punchlines is funny until the group has heard them all, which for most families is about halfway through Boxing Day.

That last one is the killer at Christmas, because you are usually playing with the same people you played with last year.

What should we play at Christmas dinner?

Something that survives a full table, a lot of wine, and the age range between your cousin and your uncle. Card games win here because there is nothing to set up, nothing to charge, and nothing to argue about when the Wi-Fi drops out halfway through the pudding.

F**k. The Game is designed for exactly this slot: a pocket-sized box, 60 playing cards, 4 rule cards and a 12 page booklet. It is 16+ and there is strong language throughout, so it belongs at the grown-up table rather than the kids' one. Deal it out after dinner and let people fail in front of their relatives.

How does F**k. The Game work?

You flip a card and say what you see. The trouble is that "what you see" changes card to card, and your mouth commits before your brain catches up. Four rules, that is the lot:

• Black text: say the background colour.
• Coloured text: say the colour of the text.
• A swear word: say the swear word.
• F**K: never say it. Apply the colour rules instead.

First player to lose all their cards wins. That is the whole game, and it is still hard on the fiftieth round, because the interference between reading a word and naming a colour is hardwired. You cannot practise your way out of it. That is the Stroop Effect, and it is the reason the game keeps working on people who already know the trick.

The origin story is fittingly daft. Bela Inkster watched Stephen Fry's Planet Word documentary in 2014, saw a Stroop test run with swear words, and combined it with a card game that had been sitting in a gift cupboard. It was Kickstarted in May 2015 with more than 500 backers. It has been designed in Perth, Australia ever since.

How does it compare to the usual Christmas options?

The three games that come up every December, honestly compared:

• Cards Against Humanity. Very funny the first few times. Then the group memorises the cards, and the shock value that carried the game does the opposite of ageing well. The jokes are printed, so they are finite.
• Jackbox. Genuinely good, but it wants a television, a stable Wi-Fi connection, and every player holding a charged phone that agrees to cooperate at the same time. That is four points of failure before anyone has laughed.
• F**k. The Game. Needs the deck. That is it. The comedy is generated live by the players getting it wrong, so it does not go stale, and it works in a pub, on a train, or at a table where half the guests have never met.

None of that makes the other two bad games. It makes them the wrong tool for a room of twelve people, one of whom has already lost their phone.

What if we have a bigger group, or want inside jokes?

F**k. The Game caps at 8 players, which covers most Christmas tables but not a full house party. For the bigger crowd there is BLURGH, the picture-powered evolution of the same idea, built for 2 to 20 players at AUD 39.95.

If you would rather the game insulted your own group specifically, the DIY Expansion Pack (AUD 13.95) lets you write your own cards, which is how nicknames nobody wanted to hear again end up back in circulation.

Playing with people who could not travel this year? Our guide to playing card games over video chat covers how to run it across a screen.

Where can I get it before Christmas?

Straight from us, with 10% off:

Get 10% off F**k. The Game with STROOP10
Base game AUD 17.95 on our store. Code applies storewide.

It is also stocked on Amazon in most of the markets we ship to: UK (RRP GBP 13.99), US (USD 14.99), Australia (AUD 22.95), Canada (CAD 22.99) and Europe (EUR 13.95). December delivery windows get tight fast, so order in November if you can.

For the record, the UK deck has a 4.6 star average from 4,021 Amazon ratings, and roughly 50,000 copies have gone out in the UK alone. Plenty of Christmases have already been ruined by it.

Christmas party game FAQ

How many people can play F**k. The Game?

2 to 8 players. It is 16+, with strong language throughout, so keep it to the adult table. For groups up to 20, BLURGH is the bigger-crowd version.

Do we need a phone, an app or Wi-Fi to play?

No. There is no app, no companion website and nothing to download. The box contains 60 playing cards, 4 rule cards and a 12 page booklet, and that is everything you need.

How long does it take to learn?

About a minute. There are four rules: black text means say the background colour, coloured text means say the colour of the text, a swear word means say the swear word, and you never say the F word out loud. First player to lose all their cards wins.

Is it a good Secret Santa or stocking gift?

Yes, because it is small enough to wrap in seconds and priced under most gift budgets: GBP 13.99 in the UK, USD 14.99 in the US and EUR 13.95 in the EU. Australian RRP is AUD 22.95.