How to Host a Game Night in Your Apartment

Know your audience to be able to host the perfect game night for family, friends or coworkers.

Photo Credit: iStockphoto/monkeybusinessimages

Hosting a game night is a great way to meet your neighbors, get to know your friends or coworkers better or bring your family closer together for one night a week or month. You could also find out critical personality traits from a romantic interest – you can learn a lot about a person by how they act when they’re competing. Whatever your reason for hosting game night, the best part is that you don’t need to decorate for it or send out invitations – a clean house is all you need to host a rowdy bunch of friends or a quiet group of coworkers. As for the next steps, read below for tips on how to host a game night that will ensure everyone has a good time.

Location

Decide if you want to host each game night at your house or if you want to rotate homes. If it’s at your house, move furniture around in your dining room, living room or den so everyone can sit facing each other, and bring in card tables and folding chairs if you need them. Let everyone invited know if your game night is BYOB or if you’re providing cocktails.

Games

Decide if you want a relaxing game night with wine and casual conversation, or if you want a more lively game night that brings out everyone’s personality. For the former, games such as Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno or traditional card games, such as poker, spades or even bridge are best. For the latter, games like Outburst, Pictionary, Yahtzee, Bunko, Scene It! or Twister will bring out everyone’s extroverted and competitive side.

Food

For eating during game night, there are two possible scenarios: Either you may be entirely too busy to eat, or your chosen games will wear you out so much that you’re left ravenous. Either way, finger foods that can sit out at room temperature or in a slow cooker are the answer for quick nourishment. Make easy meatballs by combining a package of thawed pre-made meatballs with a small jar of grape jelly and 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, and to make pigs in a blanket, cut refrigerated biscuits into thirds, wrap around cocktail sausages and bake according to biscuit package directions. Set out bowls of Goldfish crackers and nut mixes and a raw vegetable platter. For dessert, slice refrigerated peanut butter or sugar cookie dough into rounds and stuff into the cups of mini-muffin tins. Bake as directed, and during the last minute of baking, press unwrapped Hershey’s Kisses or mini peanut butter cups into the tops of each cookie.

Extras

You don’t always have to have game night with the same group of people – vary it between coworkers, friends, members of an organization or sports club you belong to, family members and neighbors to see who best meshes together. Select games based on how well you know the people you invite; you don’t want to play Twister with people you hardly know (and they probably don’t either) – or a mild game of bridge with your rowdy siblings. Keep the evening casual in terms of food and cocktails to make everyone comfortable. Also, know the rules of each game before you play it and make sure everyone else is familiar enough with it, as constantly looking at the rule book will ruin the flow of your game. Listen to feedback from everyone at the end of each night to gauge whether or not to bring a game back or retire it for awhile.