Highlights

  • Board games have experienced a resurgence in popularity, offering entertaining options for parties and gatherings.
  • Hilarious board games like Snake Oil, Gloom, and Superfight provide fun and fast-paced gameplay for people who don't typically play board games.
  • Games like Mad Gab, Monikers, and Wavelength offer unique and engaging gameplay experiences centered around word puzzles, charades, and debates.

Board games used to be all the rage before video games became more prominent in homes around the '80s. They were very basic in a world where their counterpart was always evolving. Sometime in the late 2000s, a movement started to get going on bringing board games back into the forefront of entertainment.

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Now it is a booming business and a growing subculture. There are games for more than just kids and family-friendly ventures nowadays. So, if you wants to make the next party entertaining for those afraid of video games, check out these hilarious choices.

Updated on January 3, 2024 by Jon Eakin: No game night is complete without board games, so we've updated this list to include more examples of hilarious games. After a few rounds of these games, your friends will be singing your praises, and buying copies of their own.

15 Snake Oil

Fast Talking Sales Shenanigans

Snake Oil Card Game Box - Example Cards

Snake Oil is the perfect party game for people who don't play a lot of board or card games. The rules are simple, rounds are fast, and the concept is one that just about everybody is familiar with.

The overall idea is that you draw cards to determine who you're trying to sell a product to, and what that product is. Then it's up to you to make the best pitch you can to reel in customers from among your fellow players.

14 Gloom

The Losing Player Wins

Gloom box art

Gloom is a truly unique game based around creative card plays and story telling. Each player has a set of cards representing a family, with the other cards representing events which can happen. You want to make bad things happen to your own family, and good things to everyone else's.

It's based on an old Victorian concept that the more unhappy someone was in life, the happier they will be in the afterlife. When the game ends, whoever's family suffered the most, wins.

13 Superfight

Fight About Fights

An example of a card battle from Superfight featuring Dracula versus a Killer Clown.

Superfight taps into one of the things friends love doing most, arguing. Players draw cards to create a fictional fighter and then debate about whose would win in a fight. The Statue of Liberty riding a battle cat, or a marshmallow man in a meat bikini? Let's be honest, there's no loser there.

There are a number of themed expansions to add more of a particular flavour to your deck, like Superfight Horror or Superfight '90s. These can be played standalone or mixed together to create the ultimate fighting deck.

12 Mad Gab

Untangling Tongue Twisters

Mad Gab card example saying 'Wander Her Womb Hen'

In Mad Gab, players partner up into teams to try and guess as many word puzzles in an allotted amount of time. The trick here is that jumbled-up phrases, when put together, sound like other things. Here is an example. "Sell My High Yak" translates to Salma Hayek.

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That is a fairly easy one, but it gets a lot more complicated. The fun comes in stumbling through these brambles in shouting matches. It can get pretty hectic, but all in good fun.

11 Monikers

Charades In Stages

Monikre board game with cards on the table

Monikers could be summed up as a play on charades at its core. There are three rounds. The first allows players to say anything in order to get their teammates to guess what their card represents. In the next round, only one word can be used. So if someone wanted to get a teammate to say monkey, they might say banana.

The last round then is just straight-up charades as no sounds are allowed. Once all cards are guessed, swapping back and forth between two teams, the round moves onto the next. It sounds more complicated than it is.

10 Wavelength

A Game Of Vibe Checks

The box and cards from Wavelength

This is a great game for anyone who likes deep debates. It comes with a dial attached to a wheel, on which are some colored segments. You spin the wheel, peek at where the colored segment is, and then when given a scale, you must choose something that would fit where the segment lands. The other players must then guess where the segment is.

It sounds complicated, but it's really fun once the rules are established. To give an example to illustrate it, if you were given a card that had "cold" on the left and "hot" on the right and the colored segment was somewhere on the right-hand side of the wheel, you might say "McDonald's coffee" to get your friends to pick correctly.

9 We Didn't Playtest This At All

Every Game Is Different

Four boxes of We Didn't Playtest This At All

As the name might suggest based on its length, this is a pretty hard game to describe. First of all, it is just a deck of cards. On each card is a set of rules that can change the outcome of the game by implementing rules.

For the most part, games can go pretty quick in a matter of minutes, but there are a few cards, which make it incredibly hard to win. If the base deck gets too old, as there aren't that many cards, there are also several expansions now to make the chaos even more random.

8 Boss Monster

Munchkin Meets Dungeon Keeper

Cards from Boss Monster, with a Draculord on top

If you're a fan of RPGs, especially classic ones, Boss Monster will appeal to you in multiple ways. Even if you're not a fan, this game is a great one to play with friends.

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In this card game, you must build a dungeon out of various cards - you want it to be appealing to adventurers but also deadly enough to kill them because adventurers who make it all the way through your dungeon will hurt you. You can use spells to upset your competitors, and there's actually some surprising depth to the strategies you can employ.

7 Would You Rather

Best Played Silly

Would You Rather game logo

There are too many ways to play this game for us to pick just one. We have seen board games, decks of cards, books, and even dedicated websites. Like Truth or Dare, it is a very easy game to pick up.

What makes it more hilarious is if improv is implemented into the game. Asking what players would want to have between flight or X-Ray vision is boring, so we like to call these improv rules the Comedy Bang Bang law, which is named after the podcast. Take a listen to see what we mean. This style is recommended only for people quick on their toes.

6 Cards Against Humanity

Tact Won't Help You Here

Examples of Cards Against Humanity cards

Cards Against Humanity is the card game that seemingly kickstarted so many others of its ilk. For those unaware, it leans more toward adults. The tag line is "a party game for horrible people" and that is not a lie.

There is no winning really. The goal here is to be as shocking as possible. Don't pop this one out for grandma or the more reserved friends. This is definitely a game to be saved for your closest set of degenerates.

5 Quelf

Rules May Vary

Quel board game

Quelf is an actual board game with tiles, cards, and a goal. That is all pretty standard, but landing on a space and drawing a card may make this game go from normal to straight-up bonkers. There are a lot of cards, which dictate random acts like grabbing something from the kitchen and placing it on one's head.

If that object falls, that person may be punished. It's as equally difficult to describe as We Didn't Playtest This At All, but trust us, it is fun if not a little stupid.

4 Blank Slate

A Test Of Friendship

Blank Slate is sort of the perfect icebreaker for new people to get to know one another. It is also a great way to test friends on whether they know each other as well as they think they do. One player chooses a topic card, reads it out loud, and everyone puts their guesses face down.

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The goal here is to hope they match with the question asker's mentality, sort of like Cards Against Humanity mixed with Truth or Dare with more options.

3 Silicon Valley Start Ups

Capitalism, But Actually Fun

Examples of Silicon Valley cards

Silicon Valley Start Ups Is exactly as it sounds. The basic gist here is that one or more players on a team will pitch a product, that has an established market area. All of these things will be brought forth via four sets of cards randomly selected.

The goal here then is to pitch the other players on their idea to get it to market. It is basically an improv game to make people laugh. Get those creative juices flowing!

2 Sunken Sailor

Quick On The Draw

Clipboard and cards from Sunken Sailor

Sunken Sailor is like Pictionary but better, to be frank. All but one player will get the same card. The goal here is to figure out who the titular Sunken Sailor is. Everyone can only draw one line on their turn, and everyone has a different colored crayon, so it is easier to tell who drew what.

It sounds more complicated than it is and may take a few rounds to get the hang of, but trust us, it is a gas.

1 Jackbox Party Pack

Variety Wins

Various Jackbox games

Okay, so this is technically not a physical board game, but because it is so funny and easy to get going, we had to throw it on here. We are mainly a video game website, after all. Now, all these party packs are so great because they are cheap and don't require any controllers for those unaccustomed to gaming consoles.

You simply has to have a phone in order to enter answers into the video game. The variety is also key to our overall enjoyment.

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