Mine are Knocklebones, cockroach poker and zombie dice. Maybe Stratego.
But I want something new. Something that I can play with my larp group.
Love the card game Rainbow Pirates [BGG link]
It’s pretty easy to pick up because you’re allowed to go ham during your turn and just play any cards you can.
I’d say it’s a mix of Phase Ten and Uno
I like Sushi Go (specifically Sushi Go Party for variety), Hanabi, and King of Tokyo.
I love small, short games, too many favorites to choose from! So instead of all of those I will mention Khôra which is not small but every time we play it surprises me how quickly it goes. The box says 75 minutes but it’s more like 25 or maybe even less.
Azul
A) 6 Nimmt. scales relatively well with a sweet spot at 4 and 6 players. Takes about 20-40min to play a complete game.
B) One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The first two sets and maybe the bonus roles have lasted us hundreds of iterations. I think it’s superior at 5, but other groups like it from 5-8p. Total round/game length is about 10min (almost regardless of player count).
C) For Sale. Skip the expansion, the base game is one of our better higher count options. Total game length is maybe 20min since the second half of the game is simultaneous action selection.ONUW in particular should go over really well with a LARP group. I do recommend doing index card type role cheatsheets and laminating them. I used to have one that fit in the box but I’ve lost the photoshop file I made it in… If you get more than about 12 people, then Two Rooms & A Boom works as well and has a ~20min running time. It needs a lot of players though.
“Pirate dice”, aka liar’s dice. I love bluffing games and it goes quick.
Quiddler. The rules are very simple to learn (it’s rummy meets Scrabble), and you can set a # of cards to go to as a way of defining the length. But even going to 10 (the official end) doesn’t take too long.
I enjoy Guillotine.
Skull
Skull is great
Bonus points for being able to play with coasters on a bar, or with a standard deck of guards wherever. That way you don’t have to actually have brought the game to play it, but that art is indeed gorgeous
If your not worried about losing your friends after the game I can recommend Intrigue.
Here’s a couple of quick games that I like:
- Coup - Bluffing game where you try to assassinate other players’ political allies
- Dungeon Mayhem - You’re a party fighting to the death over the treasure at the end of a quest
- Red7 - Play a card according to the rules, change the rules if you can’t play, and go out if you can’t do either of those
Oh man, I bought red 7 some years ago. We played it once and I loved it but my friends didn’t. So we never played it again :(
Cryptid and Secret Hitler usually go pretty fast for our group, and they’re loads of fun
Secret Hitler?? I think I’ve never been able to finish a game in less than an hour :D
Lol ours usually go by in like 20 minutes. Maybe we’re all just really bad lmao
Trellis, Lanterns, Kahuna, Tides of Time, Hive and 7 Wonders Duel.
Most of these are two-player games. They asked for games to play with a group.
For short group games, some of our favorites are:
- Codenames (~15min)
- The Resistance: Avalon (similar to Secret Hitler; ~30min, unless you’re really argumentative)
- Love Letter (~20min)
- More recently, Captain Sonar (45-60min).
And honestly, we’ve had a surprising amount of fun with Liar’s Dice too (a.k.a. Bluff/Perudo/Dudo; 15-30min)
Idk if codenames is that short for me. It depends on how experienced the “code masters” are
Sushi Go
We’re still playing Boonanza, after many years. Just doesn’t get old.
I love Bohnanza! My friends and I added another layer to it called “future consideration” if we don’t have a good trade. Then I got some wooden tokens and we write our names on them to keep track and end up trading those too.
Tsuro is always our go-to short game for when folks are getting to game night and getting into the mood. We also like to play Uno at the end of the night when our brains are fried or Jackbox.
