What Is a Party Game? Definition, Subgenres, and Key Titles
What party games are, what makes a good one, subgenres from board-style to social deduction, and key titles from Mario Party to Jackbox and Among Us.
When the family gathers for the holidays, when you visit a friend's place, or when you need to liven up the office year-end party, there's a kind of game you pull out. Its rules take a minute to understand, and both skilled players and first-timers can laugh together. That's the party game.
Party games are an unusual category: unlike other genres, they are defined less by "what you control" and more by "who you play with, and in what setting." That's why they look so different on the surface, ranging from board games and quizzes to cooperative cooking and deduction games. In this post, we cover the definition of party games, what makes a good one, their subgenres, notable titles through history, and their design principles.
Definition and Core Appeal: People Over the Game
English Wikipedia describes party games as games played at social gatherings to help people mingle and have fun. They need to accommodate many people with widely varying skill levels, be easy for first-timers to learn, and be designed so that almost no one is eliminated midway and left just watching.
As video games, party games usually take the form of a collection of simple minigames, featuring intuitive controls and competition among many players. Continuing through minigames on a virtual game board, as in Mario Party, is another classic approach.
The fun of party games happens even more off the screen:
- The fun of reactions: moments when everyone shouts together at a comeback, a betrayal, or a ridiculous mistake
- The fun of conversation: time spent arguing over who's lying, teasing each other, and making plans
- The fun of equality: luck and silliness narrow skill gaps, giving everyone a feeling that they have a chance to win
What Makes a Good Party Game
Wikipedia's party game article lists several traits of good party games. Adapted for video games, they look like this:
| Condition | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Flexible player count | Equally fun with 3 or 8 players |
| Frequent participation | One player's turn is short, so others spend little time waiting |
| Fun to watch | Even players whose turn it isn't enjoy watching the screen |
| Minimal elimination | No one gets knocked out early and has to watch until the end |
| Low equipment burden | Adding players doesn't greatly increase what you need |
The last condition is especially important for video games. If there are only four controllers, the fifth person has to wait. The Jackbox series, which we'll see later, solved exactly this problem by letting each player use their own smartphone as a controller.
Subgenres
| Type | How it plays | Key titles |
|---|---|---|
| Board + minigames | Roll dice to move around a board, with minigames in between | Mario Party |
| Minigame collections | Short games played back to back at a fast pace | WarioWare, Wii Play |
| Quizzes and wordplay | Answer questions and write answers like a TV quiz show | Buzz!, You Don't Know Jack |
| Smartphone-based | Each player enters drawings or answers on their own phone | The Jackbox Party Pack |
| Physical games | Motion sensing, singing, rhythm | Wii Sports, SingStar |
| Cooperative chaos | Coordinate to complete tasks within a time limit | Overcooked |
| Social deduction | Find the hidden traitor through conversation | Among Us |
| Brawl / survival | Many players compete at once to be the last one standing | Fall Guys, Gang Beasts, Super Smash Bros. |
Games such as Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart, which originally belong to other genres (fighting, racing) but are often played at parties, are also commonly discussed as party games in a broader sense.
Notable Titles Through History
| Year | Game | Developer | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Olympic Decathlon | Timothy W. Smith (published by Microsoft) | Called "the first real party game for microcomputers" by BYTE magazine in 1981 |
| 1995 | You Don't Know Jack | Jellyvision | Combined trivia and comedy in a TV show format |
| 1998 | Mario Party | Hudson (published by Nintendo) | Start of the series combining a game board with minigames |
| 2003 | WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! | Nintendo | Strings together "microgames" lasting a few seconds |
| 2005 | Buzz! | Relentless Software (published by Sony) | Quiz show played with dedicated buzzer controllers |
| 2006 | Wii Sports | Nintendo | Five sports played by swinging the Wii Remote |
| 2014 | The Jackbox Party Pack | Jackbox Games | Each player's smartphone serves as a controller |
| 2016 | Overcooked | Ghost Town Games (published by Team17) | Co-op game of cooking together in chaotic kitchens |
| 2018 | Among Us | Innersloth | Social deduction game split into Crewmates and Impostors |
| 2020 | Fall Guys | Mediatonic | Battle royale where up to 32 players compete in obstacle minigames |
Living Room Games: Mario Party and Minigame Collections
The game that established party games as a video game genre was Mario Party for the Nintendo 64 in 1998. Up to four players roll dice to move around the board, and at the end of each turn they compete for coins in a short minigame. Nintendo has stated that the series' cumulative sales exceeded 84 million units as of March 2025.
WarioWare for the Game Boy Advance in 2003 strung together "microgames" that end within a few seconds at ever-increasing speed, making short, frantic laughs part of the party game vocabulary.
Getting Physical: Karaoke and Motion Controls
In the mid-2000s, dedicated peripherals transformed living room parties. Sony's SingStar had players compete at singing with microphones, and Buzz! used controllers shaped like quiz show buzzers. Wii Sports in 2006 let players mimic swinging a tennis racket or bowling ball with the remote, so even people who had never played a video game could join in immediately.
The Smartphone and Online Era
The Jackbox Party Pack, which began in 2014, shows the game on a TV while participants draw or enter answers on their own smartphones. The limit on the number of controllers disappeared, and even stream viewers could take part. Among Us, released in 2018, initially went unnoticed but became a huge hit in 2020 as streamers and YouTubers played it. That same year, Fall Guys combined party games with battle royale, with cute bean-shaped characters racing through obstacle courses.
Design Traits
- Rules you can grasp in 10 seconds: Each minigame should be explainable with a single screen and one or two buttons. Long explanations kill the mood.
- Catch-up mechanics: Things like items that favor the player in last place or bonus stars at the final moment keep alive the hope that anyone can win until the very end. But if they're too strong, people complain it's "just a luck game," so balance matters.
- Simultaneous play: Minigames where everyone moves at the same time eliminate waiting.
- Encouraging interaction between people: Tasks that require cooperation, lying and voting, and ways to interfere with each other create conversation. The Wikipedia article also points out that games that fail to spark interaction rarely make good party games.
- Short rounds: Short rounds make it easy to restart even when players swap in and out.
- Presentation for spectators: Exaggerated falls, goofy characters, and loud sound effects keep even those not taking a turn entertained.
Who It's For
- People who want to play on the same screen with family, friends, or a partner
- Gatherings that include people with very different gaming skills
- People who want time to laugh and chat rather than serious competition
- People who want to hang out casually online with faraway friends
On the other hand, if you want a game to get absorbed in alone for hours, or competition where skill is directly reflected in the result, the luck elements of party games may feel frustrating.
Party Games Today
Today, party games are enjoyed both in the living room and online at the same time. With smartphones used as controllers, stream audience participation, and cross-platform online play now established, the requirement to "be in the same room" has loosened considerably. As of 2026, The Jackbox Party Pack has reached its twelfth main installment, and Overcooked is also offered as a Netflix cloud game.
Attempts to borrow structures from other genres, such as battle royale and social deduction, continue as well. Though the formats change, the goal of party games remains the same: when the game is over, the moments you laughed together should stay in your memory longer than the score.