A fresher’s game guide: The best (and worst) games to break the ice

Whether you’re hiding in your kitchen from the rain, getting together after a long day of lectures, or hosting an all-night games tournament, I’ve got you covered. Here’s a list of the best and worst games I played in my first year at uni. Most are free to play, some will get you suitably drunk, and all will certainly help you break the ice with new friends.

HIGH ENERGY AND HIGH STAKES: Spoons

For this one, you need a deck of cards and some spoons, one less than the number of players. Deal each player four cards, leave the rest as a draw pile, and place the spoons in the middle of the table.

The dealer takes a card from the draw-pile to start, then quickly passes a card to their left. Players then continue passing a card to the left, each time deciding whether to swap their new card or pass it on. Keep passing until someone ends up with four of a kind…

In this moment, it’s life or death. The player with a set of four grabs the first spoon, triggering a race for the rest. There are enough spoons for all but one player, so the last without a spoon is out!

Remove a spoon each round and play until it’s a head-to-head fight for the final spoon!

FOR FLAT GAMES NIGHT: Cheat

Put your poker face to the test (without actually playing poker…) with a game of Cheat.

It’s an easy game, I promise, but the rules are tricky to explain, so I’ll save you the stress of my lengthy explanation and suggest you look the rules up online…

After a few rounds of this, you’ll be so good at bluffing that your seminar tutors will believe you when you tell them you’ve done the reading.

Photo Roulette

This is the ultimate backstory game. Everyone downloads the app and gives it access to their camera rolls – scary, I know, but you can choose the photos, don’t worry! Each round, the app throws up some random pictures, and all players guess who each photo belongs to.

It’s a perfect test of your budding friendships and a perfect opportunity to start infinite ‘lore-drop’ conversations by simply asking: “Where was that taken?”.

A FEW DRINKS IN: Never Have I Ever

Possibly the most dangerous game, Never Have I Ever will guarantee you one thing.

It’s simple, players take turns in repeating the dreaded phrase: “Never have I ever ___”.

Fill in the blank according to just how much you want to know about your fellow players and then watch as anyone who has done what you suggested takes a sip of their drink.

Alcohol optional but strongly recommended.

GAMES TO AVOID: Cards Against Humanity

This ‘iconic’ black-and-white card game, promising a dark-humoured dive into the most twisted corners of your friends’ minds is alluring. But let me assure you, after the first round, you’ll realise this game wasn’t made for you.

Cards Against Humanity is the ultimate product of millennial culture. The premise is a joke-making contest, where each player completes a communal prompt with one of their abstract filler cards. The aim of the game? Say something controversial!

The outcome? Forced laughs at borderline-offensive attempts at ‘comedy’, the crippling realisation that whoever wrote these cards graduated from university over a decade ago, and roughly £30 down the drain.

Trust me, a round of Never Have I Ever will have you laughing much harder than this, and that’s free!

Jackbox

My personal experiences with the online party game Jackbox have been… lacklustre. I found the premise exciting, but the logistics make this game much harder to enjoy than it’s worth. Firstly, someone needs to bite the bullet and pay for the game online, which costs upwards of £20. Not as accessible as the pack of cards you got for free at the Freshers fair!

Then, everyone else needs to join the game, and often, it isn’t built for enough players! It’s restrictive, it’s expensive, and worst of all, it’s not actually that fun. Like Cards Against Humanity, the humour and style of these games come across a little dated.

The aim here is to bond with your newfound friends, but with this game setup, you’ll spend more time asking for the login code and waiting for the poor flatmate with the laptop to find their charger cable.

 

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Mafia: an imagination-heavy whodunnit game for late nights.

The Guardian Quiz: turns a quiet Sunday into an almost-impossible test of intellect.

Uno / Dobble: two card games worth your money.

Ring of Fire: a truly lethal drinking game.