Games for Christmas

You are still looking for a game adequate for Christmas celebrations or other activities around Christmas or during the time of Advent? Well, take a look at the article Games for Christmas in the Games Wiki. While there are several games perfectly fit for Christmas, many others can be tailored for that special topic.

Werewolves of Millers Hollow

"Werewolves of Millers Hollow" is a great game for groups of around 10 to 20 people. They represent the citizen of a small village. Among them, a group of several Werewolves hide. In the two alternating phases of "night" and "day", different actions happen: in the night, the Werewolves kill one of the citizen (of course, the citizen don't learn to know WHO is a werewolf), while during the day, the village as a whole can bring one of its citizen to justice (a werewolf, hopefully).

Several special characters exist, like a witch (that can heal and kill once per game), a seer (that can discover the identitiy of one other player per round), a healer, etc. Once discussions start, the game usually develops its own momentum. Be prepared for alliances, intrigues, paranoia and verbal disputes among the participants.

The game can be played from age 10 or so onwards, when you can trust the participants to play by the rules. While the game is commercial (you can buy official game cards), it can be played with any other cards as well.

Games without equipment

Often, you need to find a game very spontaneously. Usually, you don't have much equipment at hand, and look for games that don't require any equipment.

Why not look in the Category "Game without equipment"  of the Games-Wiki? You will find many games there that can usually be played without much preparation. Feel free to browse the games described there.

Bullfighting

Bullfight in Sevilla is a game for groups of about 15 to 20 people. All you need is a rope.

Then, one participant is acting as bull, trying to escape the bullfighting arena that is formed by the other players. All the players, bull and the rest, need dexterity and agility to reach their goal: to escape the arena, or prevent just that.

More details can be found in the article Bullfight in Sevilla at games-wiki.org.

Wanna brag about your dexterity?

Coordination games are a great means to test and train one's dexterity. While a few of those games can be played just by oneself, they are most fun if they are played in a group. Then, the team has to work together towards the common goal. Typically, the task can only be solved if the members of the team coordinate and support each other in finding a reasonable solution. Often, such games have a group-dynamic aspect as they strengthen the team spirit.

For more information, see:

• Description of coordination games (with examples)
• List of all coordination games in the games-wiki.org

Building up team spirit ...

For teams of people unfamiliar with each other, you want to make sure they learn to know each other quickly. A team can only act as such and be productive if its members know how to work with each other.

A quick - and fun - way to learn to know each other can be games. Two types of games are adequat especially for such newly formed groups: Name learning games and Icebreaker games.

Name learning games are ideal for groups who don't even know each other's names. During fun games, the names are learned casually while being entertained.

Icebreaker games on the other hand try to build up some basic team spirit. They can be played by newly met groups and try to make the players work (or better: play) together, improve cooperation, build up some trust, and still be great fun. The challenges are typically easy to solve, but can only be solved when the team acts as such and cooperates towards the common goal.

Other games, like trust-building games or group dynamics games can be played at a later time, when the group has already created some team spirit.

Looking for Group Games?

Everybody knows a group game or two. We have all experienced such games in our peer groups as youngsters, at parties, in kindergarten or school or in semi-professional institutions like scouts or YMCA.

But if it is your task to find a game for your group, it can be quite tricky to find an easy, suitable and fun game for the situation. There are ball games and hide-and-seek games, very active and very calm games, games for huge groups and games for only two players, and so on.

Fortunately, resources in the web can support you in finding the perfect game for your situation. Currently, the (german-language) "Spielewiki" is translated into Englisch and is offered for free at http://www.games-wiki.org/. You can search games by game type, location and player count there and read and print the descriptions. For advanced users, the content is even redistributable as it is published under a "free" licence (CC-BY-SA, just like the Wikipedia). Feel free to put descriptions from there on your personal blog/homepage/whatever, as long as you reference (best: link) the original source.

If you know any good game or find a typo in the text, you can even edit it (or add new game descriptions).