Random Game Picker

Two ways to settle game night

A games shelf has the same failure mode as a streaming service: too many options, all of them fine, and a group that spends longer choosing than playing.

Game shelf gets you to a category in five seconds. From "Card game", the shelf is down to three or four boxes and somebody will just pick one. If the group is large, spin twice: once here for the category, and once on the random name picker for who chooses within it.

Party games is for when there is no shelf at all. Nothing on it needs a box or a board — at most some chairs, a phone for music, or a pen and paper — so whatever comes up can start straight away.

The lists on this wheel

Game shelf

Fourteen kinds of game, to narrow a shelf down before anyone argues about titles.

• Card game
• Board game
• Trivia
• Charades
• Dice game
• Party game
• Co-op game
• Two-player game
• Something quick
• The long one nobody's finished
• Video game
• Word game
• Something we've never played
• Old favorite

Party games

Sixteen games with no box or board, ready to start with the people in the room.

• Charades
• Two truths and a lie
• Never have I ever
• Would you rather
• 20 questions
• Celebrity
• Pictionary
• Categories
• The name game
• Mafia / Werewolf
• Telephone
• Scavenger hunt
• Musical chairs
• Heads up
• Story in a circle
• Freeze dance

Running a game night off the wheel

The party list spans group sizes. Charades and Telephone work with four people; Mafia / Werewolf and Musical chairs want eight or more; Two truths and a lie scales to almost any number. So start by cutting the list to fit the room.

1. Delete what does not suit the group — ages, size, energy level, whether people know each other. A wheel with three games your group would refuse to play is a wheel you will spin four times.
2. Turn on Remove the winner after each spin so the evening works through games instead of repeating one.
3. Go Fullscreen on the TV so everyone sees the spin and nobody thinks you picked.
4. Split the room with the random team generator, and settle turn order with who goes first.

A wheel beats someone suggesting games for a social reason: nobody has to volunteer an idea and risk it falling flat. Taking that cost away is most of what gets a party game started.

Load your actual shelf

Replace the categories on Game shelf with the games you own. Twelve to twenty is the right size — enough variety, and still small enough to fit in a share link, so you can send it to the group and let anyone spin.

Weighted choices handles the fact that a shelf is never equal: Codenames *3 for the reliable crowd-pleaser, The four-hour one *1 for the game that comes out twice a year. With Remove the winner after each spin on, the wheel works through the whole shelf across several game nights without repeating.