Party Game
Games designed for groups at social gatherings, which put laughter and interaction ahead of strategic depth and use simple rules, short turns and a generous dose of luck to keep everyone in.
A party game is a game designed for a group at a social gathering, where the point is the interaction among the players more than winning. Party games tend to have simple rules that can be explained in a minute, short or simultaneous turns so nobody waits long, support for large or changing numbers of players, and enough luck or silliness that a newcomer can beat a veteran.
The tradition is long. Parlor games such as charades were staples of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century social life. The modern boxed party game took off with Twister in 1966, which used players' bodies as the pieces, and continued with Trivial Pursuit in 1981 and Pictionary in 1985. Apples to Apples in 1999 introduced a judging structure in which one player each round picks a favorite answer, so the scoring is social taste rather than fixed rules. Codenames in 2015 asked teams to guess words from one-word clues, which turns a group's shared references into the main resource.
Video games brought the form to the living room. Mario Party, first released in 1998, wrapped a board game around short competitive minigames. Wii Sports in 2006 used motion controls simple enough for grandparents and children alike. These games depend on players sharing a room and a screen. The Jackbox Party Pack, from 2014, let players use their own phones as controllers and allowed an audience to vote, which made it a fixture of streamed game nights.
Party game design reverses many priorities of strategy games. Depth matters less than accessibility, so rules overhead is minimal. Randomness is a feature, keeping trailing players hopeful. Many party games include explicit comeback rules, such as Mario Party's end-of-game bonus stars that can upend the standings. Some are cooperative, and many involve performance, such as drawing, acting or singing, as in karaoke games built on the Rhythm Game template.
The genre relies heavily on the magic circle, the shared agreement that what happens in the game stays in the game. Lying, accusing friends and acting foolish become acceptable because everyone has agreed to play. That agreement is also what the bluffing and accusation in a social deduction game depend on, and those games are often grouped with party games. A good party game can ease the pressure of a gathering by giving people a shared task and a reason to talk.
Testing a party game means testing the group dynamic as much as the rules, with different mixes of friends and strangers, quiet and loud players.