Office party games have a bad reputation, mostly earned. The failure mode is always the same: a scheduled hour of mandatory entertainment where people take turns being embarrassed while everyone else waits.
The ones that work are short, run in heats so nobody is waiting long, and are easy to stand at the edge of. Here are ten that survive a room where half the people have never spoken to each other.
Games that scale to a big room
Office Olympics. Four or five silly events scored as a series. Chair slalom around some bins, paper plane distance, stapler shot put, cup stacking, a lap of the floor carrying a full mug. Score it as a league table rather than picking one winner. Done properly this stops being a party game and becomes an argument that runs for a fortnight afterwards.
Wrap the mummy. Teams of three, one roll of toilet paper each, two minutes to wrap a volunteer. Judged on speed and on dignity, which are usually in tension. Several teams go at once so the whole room is busy.
Paper plane long shot. One sheet, one throw, longest distance. Run it as heats with a final. Cheap, instant, and it works with any number of people.
Human bingo. A grid of statements, one signature per square, find someone it applies to. Has a dog. Has broken a bone. Can drive a manual. It is the only game here that actively forces people who have never met to talk, which is the entire reason to run it at a mixed party.
Games that need a volunteer
Use these sparingly, and make sure the first volunteer is senior.
Cookie face. Biscuit on the forehead, no hands, move it to your mouth using only facial muscles. Sixty seconds. It is the single most undignified thing you can film a head of department doing, and once they have done it the rest of the room relaxes completely.
Chair races. Office chair, marked course, timed runs. Health and safety permitting, which it frequently isn’t. Carpet makes this harder and safer, both of which help.
Blindfold drawing. Draw a colleague on a whiteboard blindfolded while the room shouts increasingly unhelpful instructions. The results are worse than anyone expects.
Games with no performing at all
For the parts of the evening when people just want to stand around and talk.
Guess the baby photo. Everyone sends a childhood photo in advance. Number them along a wall and hand out answer sheets. Collect the photos yourself so nobody knows who submitted what. This runs passively all night and people keep drifting back to it.
Guess the desk. Same idea with photos of workspaces. Works better in a bigger company where people genuinely don’t know each other’s floors.
Two truths and a lie, party edition. Same game as the meeting version, but with drinks and no time limit, so the lies get more ambitious. Works in small clusters rather than as a whole room activity.
What to avoid
Anything that singles out one person for an extended period. Anything requiring alcohol to be enjoyable, since not everybody drinks and it excludes them completely. Anything where the joke is at somebody’s expense rather than at the situation’s.
The other thing worth avoiding is scheduling. A printed agenda with game slots on it kills the mood before anyone arrives. Have two or three ready, run them when the energy dips, and drop the third if things are going well without it.
Making it last past the party
Most party games are one-offs by nature, but Office Olympics is the exception. Run it as a scored series and it carries on afterwards, because a league table gives people a reason to demand a rematch.
The same applies to anything you already have in the office. A pool table or a dartboard turns into a season if somebody keeps the results. Without a table it’s just a series of games nobody remembers by Monday.
Where to go next
For the everyday version, see funny 5 minute desk games. For the ones that fit into a recurring call, see funny office games for meetings. Both sit under the full list of funny office games.
If a party game turns into a proper competition, Desk Champ runs the bracket: seeding, fixtures, live standings and a leaderboard that settles the argument.