9 Hilarious Campfire Games for Adults and Families

After a long day of exploring, swimming, and eating delicious camp food, nothing beats settling in for a cozy evening at your campsite. To ensure a comfortable night’s sleep, especially during colder nights, check out our tips on how to stay warm in a tent. Once you’re snug and prepared for the night ahead, gather around the campfire for some classic games.

While many popular favorites from your middle school days may come to mind when we say campfire games (truth or dare, anyone?), we’ve included some new and unique games below to get you started.

Best Campfire Games for Adults

These adult campfire games add a bit more complexity and thinking to the mix, but create a fun gaming environment for all! And the best part? Everyone can stay cozied up around the fire why you play.

Fortunately & Unfortunately

Time commitment: 10 minutes

Ease of playing: Medium

This fun storytelling game requires creativity from those around the campfire and showcases people’s imaginations during your gathering.

The basic premise is as follows: The first player chosen to go begins with a fortunate statement, such as “Fortunately, the whale swam away”. From there, the second person continues by building off the story’s first sentence with their own unfortunate statement, such as “Unfortunately, the ocean opened up into a whirlpool”. The third person in line goes back to their own fortunate statement.

The game continues in the same direction until the entire group goes. This popular game ends when the story naturally comes to a close.

Two Truths & A Lie

Time commitment: 10 – 15 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy-Medium

Two truths and a lie is a classic game for a larger group or splitting up into two teams. It’s also a perfect icebreaker for new friends to learn more about each other.

The game starts with one person saying three statements about themself – two truths and a lie. Next, your team or the group guesses which statement you think is the lie.

Add some drinking into the mix and this game can really open up people’s funky sides. Every time a person guesses the lie incorrectly, they take a drink!

20 Questions

Time commitment: 10 to 15 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy

The 20 questions game makes for an engaging and fun game for your next camping trip. This one, you’ve maybe played in the car, but now let’s crank it up a notch and get crazy with it!

One person volunteers to be “it”. This person’s job is to think up a place, a famous person, or a thing. The other players ask yes or no questions to try to figure out what the “it” person is thinking of. The group has to be strategic with their guesses though, because you only have 20 questions to get it right. Whoever has the correct guess first, is the winner.

 

 

Best Bonfire Drinking Games

 

Campfire shenanigans aren’t just about ghost stories and s’mores, folks. For those who enjoy cooking at the campsite, having a reliable campfire cooking kit can enhance your experience and make preparing meals a breeze.

And once you’ve stuffed yourselves with gourmet campfire cuisine, why not kick things up a notch? Campfire drinking games add extra adult fun to your fireside circle. In this section, we’ll look at a classic drinking game and a fun numbers game suitable for a large group. Whether you’re flipping pancakes or flipping cups, we’ve got you covered for a night of laughs under the stars.

Beer Pong

Time commitment: 20 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy (with a bit of set-up)

It’s time to pull out those college party skills again for this classic! While you’ll often find beer pong at house parties, with a little prep, you can also set it up as a campfire game.

As long as your campsite has a picnic table, you’re in business! You’ll also need ping pong balls, a set of cups, and an alcoholic beverage of your choice to fill up these cups. Typically this game is split into two teams. However, you can also pit one person against another, too.

For the first round of this game, each team takes turns trying to toss the ping pong ball into one of the cups set out by the other team. If one team gets the ball into one of the other team’s cups, the other team has to take a drink.

There are a few different ways to play this scoring, so it’s best to establish the rules you plan to use beforehand. Some people will score points for each ball that makes it into a cup and tally them up after three rounds. Others will take away the cup a team scores and play until one team loses all their cups. The team that still has cups, wins.

Cheers, Governor

Time commitment: 20 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy – Medium

This counting and rules game is great for groups of four to six people!

The game begins by going around the circle counting, with one person starting at 1, then the next person counting 2, until the group gets to 21. When you reach 21, everyone says “Cheers, Governor!” and takes a sip of their drink. The last person that landed on 21, then creates a rule that swaps out a number. For example, instead of saying the number 7, you have to say a word with the same first letter as the previous person’s name.

This is one of those games that doesn’t often reach completion, as it takes a while to replace all the numbers with rules. You could also decide on different rules for each round. One round could be about naming the capital cities of European countries, while the next round could be reserved for naming famous rock bands. The biggest thing is having fun and getting silly!

 

Fun Campfire Games for Kids and Families

 

If you’re bringing the whole family along for your camping trip, you need some games that will be good for all ages — games that don’t require alcohol and are simple and PG enough for 5-year-olds, but still entertaining enough for teens and adults. It’s a big ask, but totally doable.

Chubby Bunny

Time commitment: Less than 5 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy

A goofy name game that brings all family members together and gives older kids and youngins alike the chance to indulge in this fave campfire treat. This game is meant to test your articulation skills, but let’s be honest — it’s actually just an excuse to eat marshmallows.

Each player begins by cramming several marshmallows in their mouth at the same time without chewing or swallowing them. Then, everyone takes turns trying to say “Chubby Bunny” without spitting out the marshmallows. If it’s too easy the first time, add another marshmallow and get ready to make some funny faces!

Telephone

Time commitment: 10 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy

Telephone is another classic, fun word game for you and your group around the campfire. Telephone often ends up with miscommunication, but it’s interesting to see the beginning phrase and what it turns into by the end.

The group begins as one person whispers a phrase or even one word into the ear of the person beside them. This process continues as each person whispers the phrase they heard from the previous person, into the ear of the next person.

When you get to the last person, they state the phrase or word out loud for everyone to hear how it morphed. The end result is often quite different from the original phrase.

Crazy Telephone

Time commitment: 10 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy-Medium

As you may have guessed, this game is a play off the previous telephone — but it gets crazier. With this version, the first person typically starts with a single word (though it could be a phrase if you’re feeling extra adventurous).

However, instead of the next person repeating what they heard, they say the first thing that pops into their head after hearing the word. For example, if the first person whispers “chicken,” the next person might say “egg,” and the person after might say “scramble.”

In this version, you’ll often get even weirder endings and it can be fun to go back and share how it morphed from one person to the next.

Make Me Laugh

Time commitment: 5 to 10 minutes

Ease of playing: Easy

The title says it all. In Make Me Laugh you split into two teams with the goal to make the other team laugh. You can use jokes, funny faces, or ask silly questions BUT you also can’t laugh in the process. The first person who laughs loses.

This fun campfire game gets more exciting to play as the night sky closes in, getting more difficult to express silly faces and emotions in the dark.

 

Come Play Campfire Games With Us!

Explorer chicks fully testing the bear boxes in Yosemite National Park

 

Looking for more campfire game ideas and some rad gal pals to play them with? Join us for a camping adventure where you’ll bond with a group of like-minded women over the campfire and through outdoor adventures during the day.