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So, you have lots of people coming to your house for a Birthday / Easter / Christmas / Other reason and you don’t know how you will entertain them. Or, you are at a gaming convention and there are so many people that want to play games together. Nightmare scenarios right? Well worry no longer as 10 awesome Zatu bloggers have provided some games for you to try with various large player counts accounted for. Heres 10 Games for a Large Player Count!
Blood On The Clocktower – Neil Proctor (Board Game Happy)
Let me start with a big one. This is the ultimate social deduction game. Suitable for a minimum of 8 players with 1 other person running the game, it will also accommodate up to 15 players. Blood on the Clocktower is the perfect game to play with people who love social deduction. It has murders galore, multiple complex roles all of which are incredibly nuanced, some of the most amazing components you will ever find, and oodles of re-playability in its setup and different scenarios.
This feels like the perfect gaming convention game to play with both new friends and old ones. Be warned, the really experienced players will have a gameplan but if you can find some players you can trust you can try to outwit anyone. But wait, oh no, your best friend was lying all along and has just stabbed you in the back. Is the trust lost forever? Best way to find out is to play again. Love this game.
7 Wonders Architects – Sophie Jones
7 Wonders Architects appeals to the masses with its max player count of 7. In this version players take on the role of a civilisation and build their wonder. Each player has their own deck of cards and mini wonder to build, making set up quick and easy. It has the essence of the original but streamlines gameplay.
By changing the way cards are collected and played, the game is simpler and moves quickly, even when you have a full player count. When playing with a large group, the last thing you want is for players to grow restless as they wait for their next turn. Architects gives you all the 7 Wonder goodness without dragging you through hours and hours of waiting for someone's next turn.
This game is my go-to for family gatherings. Everyone can get stuck in and choose a civilisation with their own ability, none of which are bad. The simplicity of the rules mean that any level of gamer can pick this up and enjoy it. Re-playability creeps in as each civilisation's skill alters how you approach the game.
7 Wonders Architects is great for those who want a quick game which isn’t a party or social deduction experience.
Taskmaster – Favouritefoe
Have you seen Taskmaster on the telly? You'd understand how this qualifies under Games for a Large Player Count...It’s bonkers! Greg “the Giant” Davies and the more diminutive Alex Horne put comedians through their paces with the most utterly ridiculous challenges. 14 Series and counting, there’s no signs of this mad-cap juggernaut stopping (someone had better prepare Romesh Ranganathan!).
If you sit at home watching it and wish you were being put through your paces, you absolutely can! Taskmaster the boardgame is here and it’s cram packed full of time limited tasks for 3+ players to complete for the pleasure and approval of the Taskmaster!
Players take it in turns to be the Taskmaster (ooh the power!) and then everybody else chooses tasks themed around rooms in the Taskmaster house. So, for example, selecting a kitchen-based challenge on the board is going to send you scrambling to the kitchen at home to get/make/or do that which has been set! There are also Secret and Final Tasks but they are done at specific times.
If you have a group of players that are in it to win it and up for a craic, this game can be crazy fun! And it’s definitely a game where the more the merrier applies! I can’t promise you’ll have a mess-free room by the end of the game. But the more players get into the spirit of things, the better it gets!
Rolling Realms – Andy Broomhead
Straight out of the box Rolling Realms is ready for six players. Each person gets their own pen, cloth and assortment of dry-wipe cards featuring games from the Stonemaier line up.
Playing over three rounds, each using three different realms from the initial 11 provided, each turn sees someone rolling the two very chunky dice and you’ll note the numbers on a separate card. Now the world’s your oyster.
Each realm has different criteria, thematically linked to it’s Stonemaier namesake and dice are used differently in each of them. Completing the individual realm objective helps you score stars which are victory points at the end of the game. Will you try and block in a district in the Tapestry realm? Perhaps you’ll cross off a top row action in Scythe to help you gain a bottom row action later on.
This is great for Games for a Large Player Count because despite only have two numbers (and some resources you’ll gather along the way) each turn, everyone comes at the puzzle with a different view and priority and scores end up being surprisingly different. If you have friends who also have a copy, you can even play remotely with huge groups! It’s simple to learn, great fun and something you could theoretically get dozens of people playing all at once!
Camel Up – Pete Bartlam
Camel Up! apart from being the greatest game of all time IMHO works very well with a large number of players. For those who don’t know it is all about racing camels in the desert with its’ USP being that Camels can be carried forward by other camels they land on. This can be stacked (literally) if they, too, land on another, for a cornucopia of camel-carrying capers. What makes it great for large numbers is that you don’t own an individual camel but are part of the on-gazing crowd betting on the outcomes of each leg and the overall race.
This means that whilst you have to wait for your turn to place bets you do watch all the camels move when someone rolls the dice so there’s always something to keep you engaged. Also, regarding the turn wait, if you get to bet early you get better odds but are taking a greater risk whereas with a later bet you can be more sure of the outcome. Your wait time can be usefully spent working out all the possible combinations of the order of dice throws. Good luck with that!
Herd Mentality - Tom Harrod
Big Potato are akin to board game royalty when it comes to party games. One could argue that Herd Mentality is the jewel in their crown. The player count on the box suggests 4-20 players, and this is 100% the kind of game where the more, the merrier.
Herd Mentality features a smorgasbord of questions, but don’t fret. These aren’t trivia questions, but rather, they touch upon subjective topics. One such question is: “What’s the best flavour of crisps?” The thing about opinion-based questions like this is there is no right or wrong answer. Whatever you think the right answer is, that’s the correct response, because it’s your opinion!
However, in Herd Mentality, if the question is “What’s the best flavour of crisps?”, you don’t write down what you think is the answer. Instead, you write what you think will be the most common answer around the table. Your aim? You want to be part of the majority; part of the herd! If people take too long to think of an answer, you can start mooing at them, to – ahem – encourage them to think quicker…
Then everyone reveals their answers, one at a time. If you’re part of the herd, you gain a point. The aim is to be the first to get to eight points. But what if you create the only unique answer around the table? (Such as Prawn Cocktail, which is clearly not the best flavour of crisps!) Well, you have to take the Pink Cow Of Shame (as I christened it at my table)! You can’t win while holding the cow, but it can and will bounce around the table as people create unique answers in later rounds.
Herd Mentality is brilliant with a high player count, because it creates a wider range of answers. Everyone taking turns to state their thoughts is the highlight of the game. You’ll get nods of approval for each additional majority answer… And whoops of laughter for the random suggestions! While the box suggests 20 players as a maximum, the reality is there is no real limit for the player count. Although it might become a tad chaotic trying to organise that many people at once…
Secret Hitler – Luke Pickles
Before we get too deep into this, let’s just make something very clear. I dislike the theme of this game. I think it’s a little distasteful personally and I think another theme would really have made a difference. Having said that though, Secret Hitler is an excellent game mechanically.
Social deduction isn’t one of my favourite mechanisms, but I played this with a group of close friends on holiday together and it was the best fun I’ve ever had with a game of that mechanism. In the game, players are in 1930’s Germany and are split into one of three groups – Liberals, Fascists and Hitler. (Ok, technically “Hitler” isn’t a group, more of an individual title, but hey.) The goal of the Liberals is to prevent the rise of Fascism and/or kill Hitler but they have no idea who anyone else is. The Fascists are trying to overthrow Liberalism and elect Hitler as Chancellor (more on that in a second). The Fascists know who each other is and who Hitler is, but Hitler has no idea who anyone is.
On each turn, a player will become President and will nominate a Chancellor, whom will be voted in by the other players. The President then draws three cards from the policy deck, and discards one, passing the rest to the Chancellor who will select one and play it to the relevant policy board. Play continues until either five Liberal policies are enacted or at least three Fascist ones are AND Hitler is named Chancellor. Of course, if Hitler is killed, the Liberals win. The larger the player group, the more Fascists are included in the game, and that leads itself to having a great time with your friends, accusing them of Fascism or being Hitler. It’s a great example of a party/group game where the numbers really count. You just need to check in with everyone about the theme first though.
Captain Sonar – Stefano Paravisi
Captain Sonar is an very interesting take on the classic Battleship that pits two teams of up to 4 players each against one another. Separated by cardboard screens, the 8 players act like the crews of two submarines hunting each other thought the depths of the ocean till one team succeed in sinking the opponent.
The innovation and the greatness of this game lie on the fact that each member of the two crews has a different role as well as their own mini-game, both absolutely crucial to ensure the team’s victory. Each Captain Sonar game is a tense cat & mouse game with you and your teammates chasing and hiding from the spectre of your opponent.
Although the game allows you to play at lower player counts, the mechanics and the game complexity are really designed to get the best out of the high player count. When you play in real time in particular, the game becomes a chaotic hunt with all players shouting orders and commands. Recreating the tension of the chase is where this game shines the most but you will feel something is missing unless you play it with the recommended eight players.
Tiny Towns – Rob Wright
It is ironic that a game with ‘Tiny’ in its title can play so many people, but there it is.
Out of the box, Tiny Towns can play up to six, but with a bit of outside the box thinking, it can play more. A lot more.
If you are not familiar with Tiny Towns, it is a lovely puzzley game that is part town builder, part Tetris and part bingo. Players choose one of five different resources on their turn that everyone, including them, have to place them on their four by four map. The resources need to be placed in particular quantities and positions that hopefully correspond to patterns on different buildings – complete the pattern and replace the resources with a building. These buildings, in different combinations and positions, give players points, and points make… points, which is a good thing.
Each player also has a unique monument to build, which takes more resources and will be harder to build, but will bring more points or resources or even create different ways of scoring. It’s a good thing but tricky.
Now, as said, out of the box it plays six, but there is a way of playing that makes this game more like bingo and playable by as many people as you have copies of Tiny Towns x6 – the town hall deck. Here, the deck decides what players have to put on their map for one turn and players get to choose their own resource for the next and so one until no one can place anymore buildings or resources. I have heard talk of a legendary game that had one hundred players playing simultaneously this way.
Maybe playing with this many players is a bit impractical, but it does mean that you can play a proper game with a high player count and not have to do any social deduction whatsoever. Yuck.
Codenames – Matt L
So you have a large group of people wanting to play a game aye? Perhaps willing to participate but not able to fully comprehend a deep dive of rules? Well, look no further, whack that bright orange box on the table and start setting up whilst the pack squabbles over why monopoly would be great if it could play up to ten little hats and dogs on the board.
Codenames is a crafty, cunning word game where you split into teams (red & blue) looking over a 5x5 board of words. Each team has a spymaster, who can see which words are for their team. They will give codenames (ohh we got there) to correspond to which words their team needs to guess. You may give Peas for 3 thinking the team will work out it was the Porridge, Paint & Pillow on the board due to them all starting with P’s but of course, someone picked the word green and unfortunately gave away a word to the other team.
It’s a game that's easy to pick up and with more plays brings a layer of decision-making between your friends that’ll carry over many sessions. Watch out though, one of the words is the ‘bomb’ word. Pick that one, and it’s game over.
Thanks for reading this Games for a Large Player Count blog and I hope you have found perfect games for large player counts you would love to play as much as we do, if you have any suggestions come find us on the socials including the Zatu Discord channel.
Editors note: This post was originally published on 11th April 2023. Updated on 10th July 2024 to improve the information available.