11 Best New Games To Play This Christmas
Dead Celebs
Players: 4+
Age: 16+
How well do you think you know your dead celebrities? All you need to do is get into teams of two or more for this trivia-based game, then roll the multi-coloured dice to reveal which deck you have to draw from: red, yellow, or green. Each deck has a different theme: yellow is ‘Who Am I?’, red is ‘Trivia’, and green is ‘Guess Who?’. Which dead celeb married his cousin, had an extremely large and unusually shaped head at birth and wrote his first scientific paper aged 16? Well, you’re about to find out. And thanks to the loose rules of the game, it can last ten minutes or two hours, depending on your post-dinner energy levels. There’s no Monopoly multi-hour tie-in here.
Buy Dead Celebs, £16.99, here.
First Dates: The Game
Players: 4-8
Age: 17+
Recreate all the awkwardness of the real TV show. Maybe one to play with your friends rather than your extended family, it’s split into three rounds of ‘escalating awkwardness’, and consists of questions for each part of a meal: starter, main and dessert. Pair up with a pretend date and ask each other the questions – the pair with the most in common are the winners. Sounds easy, right? Wrong – some of the questions are massively awks, such as ‘Who is easier to get into bed?’ and ‘Who is better at faking an orgasm?’. Get ready to learn a lot about your partner.
Buy First Dates: The Game, £9.99, here.
Friends Monopoly
Players: 2-6
Ages: 8+
‘The One Where Everyone Plays Monopoly’… There have been many different iterations of Monopoly over the years – Game of Thrones and Stranger Things spring to mind – but this Friends special edition is sure to send millennials crazy. Yes, even 14 years after the series ended, our obsession with the New York sixsome is still going strong (Netflix reportedly just paid nearly $100 million to keep Friends on Netflix after public outcry) and we predict we’ll be experts at this version.
The game swaps out the classic counters for ones that represent each of the main characters: a handbag for Rachel, a chef’s hat for Monica, a T. Rex for Ross, an acoustic guitar for Phoebe, a mini sweater vest for Chandler and a pizza for Joey. And instead of places, London hotspots are replaced by classic Friends episodes. How that works, we’re not quite sure – but there’s only one way to find out. Could we BE any more excited?
Buy Friends Monopoly, £29.99, here.
Head Up!
Players: Unlimited
Age: Any
Known for being the game championed by Ellen DeGeneres, Heads Up! is downloadable onto your phone and is great for either quick-fire round or something that last a little longer – and no set-up or put-away time required. From naming celebrities to charades to doing silly voices, the guesser must hold the phone the phone up to their forehead and try and decipher what their teammates are describing. Then, tilt it forward if you get one right, and back to pass. Get ready to see the lengths people will go to in order to help you get the correct answer…
Download Heads Up! here.
Love Island: The Game
Players: 4+
Age: 18+
Just because summer’s over, doesn’t mean our obsession with Love Island is. With this game you don’t need a tan, veneers or a Pretty Little Thing bikini – just four or more of your friends. All you have to do is spin the bottle and let fate decide what your challenge will be: Sexy Charades? Physical Challenge? Or maybe Sexiest Pub Quiz Ever? But be warned: this game isn’t for melts – there’s even a blindfold involved. Maybe one for when you’ve got a few Snowballs in you.
Buy Love Island: The Game, £10, here.
Obama Llama
Players: 4+
Ages: 14+
Yes, our favourite American president might not be in the White House anymore, but luckily we can still remember the good times with this rhyming charades game (which doesn’t really have much to do with Obama, but it rhymes with Llama…). Great after a few sherries, you must mime or describe such rhymes as ‘Cara Delevigne on a washing machine’, ‘George Clooney doing a moony’ and ‘Harrison Ford swallowing a sword’. You and your team must shout out as many as you can within 30 seconds. No pressure then…
Buy Obama Llama, £21.00, here.
Prosecco Pong
Players: 2+
Age: 18+
Whether you’re having the girls round for New Year or you’ve got a boozy Christmas Day with the family on the cards, Prosecco Pong is the classy way to get a bit sloshy. Yes, swap frat-boy red cups and warm beer for these 12 wide-rimmed glasses, a chilled bottle of bubbly and three pink ping pong balls. Then watch your gran throw one back for losing. You can either go head-to-head with one person or form even teams for this game.
Buy Prosecco Pong, £5.99, here.
That’s So 90s
Players: Unlimited
Ages: No age range, but millennium babies probably won’t understand!
2018 was the year of 90s obsessions, so many will jump at the chance to test their knowledge with this trivia game. This deck has 1,000 questions, spanning ten different topics including music, film hobbies, pop culture, sport and tech. Just split your party into even teams and find out who’s more 90s than a Spice Girl using dial-up internet.
Buy That’s So 90s, £15.99, here.
What Do You Meme?
Players: 3+
Age: 17+
If you’re spending Christmas with Gen Z-ers, then you will need this game if you want to be ‘down with the kids’. The premise is basically the same as Cards Against Humanity: players must pair up a reaction image with a relatable yet obscure captions. One to play with teens, but maybe not their parents…
Buy What Do You Meme?, £29.99, here.
Speak Out
Players: 4-5
Age: 16+
The game that has had a huge surge in popularity this year, Speak Out is here to make fools of us all. The ridiculous mouthpiece holds your mouth open as you attempt to read different phrases, whilst your teammates try and guess what on earth you’re trying to say. Have you ever laughed so much that it’s actually painful? That’s the main outcome of this game – it’s never not funny. The recommended age is 16+, but it’s a great one to play with kids.
Buy Speak Out, £11.69, here.
Pie Face Cannon
Players: 2+
Age: 5+
This game does exactly what it says on the tin: great for those with children, you’ve got to be prepared to take food to the face with this one. You must provide your own whipped cream, but besides that all the bits are provided. All players have to do is spin the spinner, and the person with the highest number gets to pick the first victim. The unlucky loser has to try and block a face full of cream with the plastic hand provided.
Buy Pie Face Cannon, £6.99, here.
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