When you can't go out, you have to get creative. All of us need a little fun and adventure and students are the best at this. I've crowd-sourced the best games to play in a house. Whether you are locked down with other students or with family, these ideas are sure to liven things up a bit!
I've avoided any of the usual suggestions of board games etc..Too obvious!
1. Spy Night - Dress up as spies, string red wool across the living room in zig-zags (like laser beams) and you have to get across without touching them. Mission impossible music on. Have cocktails/mocktails and watch Spy Kids!
2. Come Dine With Me - Everyone chips something into a prize fund. Then each housemate gets an evening to cook for everyone else, with menus and everything! Anonymous scoring happens after each meal and there is a big reveal at the end of the week.
3. Speed Skating - Tissue boxes on each foot, agree a course around the house. Time each house mate. Disqualifications for running!
4. Build A Fort - Using everything you own, make a massive fort. Watch a film in it. Snack game needs to be high for this.
5. Blind Pillow Wars - Put a hoodie on back to front with the hood over your face, spin around 10 times and try to find your opponent without being able to see and hit them with a pillow.
6. ‘Will It Hoover?’ - Predict whether the food (mostly desserts) you’re eating can be consumed by sucking it up into your mouth. And then try it. Risk assessment includes choking hazards and asthma issues from dusted icing.
7. Real life Fruit Ninja - Buy loads of fruit. Select Ninja. Chuck fruit at them. Ninja hits fruit with knife.
8. Indoor Luge - timed sliding down the stairs in a sleeping bag (This has been known to end in bruises!)
9. Worm Boxing - Two people stand in sleeping bags zipped all the way up, then hop around and try to knock each other over (This has been known to end with a hole in the wall!) (Spooner)
10. Portrait Painting - Paint the best portrait of another housemate. Display results on the wall all year.
11. Just Dance Night - Plug laptops into the TV and use youtube.
12. Bin Darts - Throwing things into a bin from various distances. Extra points for throwing from outside to inside. Extra-extra points for throwing from one side of house to other side of house, over roof.
13. Gingerbread House Decorating - The more elaborate the better. Or just ‘edible house decorating’. Each housemate gets their edible building material of choice - will they go for a classic gingerbread? Will the latest craze of pop tart houses win out? Will some kind of ambitious spaghetti monstrosity break the over-ambitious art student?
14. Sardines - Opposite of hide and seek, when you find the ‘hider’, you join them until everyone is packed in a small space like sardines.
15. The Gauntlet (from gladiators) - You have to get from the front door to the furthest point of the house. All other housemates are armed with sofa cushions and stand at different points on the route to stop you. Fastest time wins. Careful on the stairs!
16. House Olympics - Skeleton (down the stairs on a tray with mattresses laid on the steps - fastest and least injured wins). Sprint (top of the house and back - fastest wins). Rhythmic Gymnastics (on the chin-up bar - feet not allowed to touch the floor - most elaborate wins). Marathon (quickest to run to the nearby supermarket, buy an item we need and then return). Shooting (involving a frisbee and various targets in the back garden). If you then create an opening and closing ceremony, you’ve got a whole day of stuff you can do at least.
17. Hide It - More of a long term strategy game. Choose an item and each housemate takes it in turns to hide the item somewhere in the house. Points awarded for ambitious hide (ie in plain sight but somehow not spotted), shock discovery potential. Rolled up malt loaf has been suggested as a good item to hide due to looking like something else!
18. Innuendo Bingo - Two housemates with a mouth full of water sit face-to-face. Other housemates make remarks aimed at making them laugh. First one to spit loses. Worth having a covid test before this game!
19. Pan-demic Championship - Find the heaviest pan you can find. Hold it out at a full arm stretch. Hold for as long as possible. The longest hold wins Pan-demic.
20. Peashooter Wars - Give everyone a peashooter. Build bases. Attack housemates with pea ammo.
