4 Brilliant Games for the Next Game Night

By Sarah Lalond

I spend an embarrassing amount of time on my phone. Through Apple’s newest system update, iPhone users can see exactly how much time with the screen time feature under settings. On average, I spend five and a half hours of my day looking at a screen. Yikes.

If you’re also concerned about the moments you’re missing by being on your phone, ditch the screen for a night to hang out with friends. However, instead of just “hanging out” (which will eventually turn into scrolling through your phone or watching Netflix), use the opportunity to plan a game night.

Unplug and insult your friends without consequences by playing these four games.

Cards Against Humanity

The R-rated uncle of the family friendly Apples to Apples is branded as “a party game for horrible people.” If you’ve somehow avoided playing this game, players choose a descriptive card from their hand to complete a sentence. To win, players must impress the judge of the round by filling in the sentence with the most absurd, clever or inappropriate card.

Aside from the basic black and white pack, you can buy extension color packs (red, blue and green) to add new cards into the mix. The college, dad, period and weed packs are a few of the themed specialty packs. It’s difficult to say whether Cards Against Humanity is hilarious or horrifying, but it’s thoroughly human.

The Resistance

Similar to mafia, this duplicitous game turns friends against friends. Each person chooses a character card, which is either a member of the resistance (the good guys) or a spy (the bad guys).

Without revealing who anyone is, the players go on five missions. The goal of the resistance is to pass the mission, while the spies want it to fail. The team that dominates three out of the five rounds wins.

This is the quick pitch of The Resistance. The logistics get more complicated once you have the full rundown. The draw of the game is not knowing who to trust, but still trying to figure out everyone’s identities based on their reactions and comments.

Superfight

If there’s tension in your friend group, Superfight is a cathartic way to disperse it. Based on a character and attribute card, two players face off by creating ludicrous arguments about which of their characters would win in a fight. For example, would a laser-eyed Michael Jackson or a robot baby with magnetic powers win in a fight?

The winner of the round is decided by an audience vote, and that person stays to argue against someone new. The more creative and absurd the argument, the more likely the character is to win.

Poker

We’re all broke college students, so chances are you won’t be playing for money, just an impressive stack of poker chips and the jealousy of your friends. This classic game boils down to 5 percent strategic planning and math, 10 percent bluffing and 85 percent sheer luck.

Players use the two cards they’ve been dealt to make one of 10 different five card combinations with any of the additional five, face up cards. Based on the strength of the hand, players can fold (end the round), check (stay in) or bet. 

Poker is a gauge of how your friends look when they’re bluffing, which can be helpful later on to determine if your friend is lying about not eating your leftovers in the fridge.