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It’s getting to the time of year when people start to think about camping trips. Be it with friends, the kids, or to a festival – you just can’t beat sitting around a roaring campfire and having a good laugh. A lot of the time, you’ll bring along a deck of cards. You'll all have a good game of poker or Jacks, twos and eights. Well, I want to draw your attention to some brilliant alternatives you can take that don’t cost the earth and won’t take up too much room in your rucksack.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Firstly, I’m going to kick off with one of my all-time favourite games – One Night Ultimate Werewolf! Werewolf is a fantastic social deduction bluffing game for 3-10 players from Bezier Games, and comes with a free companion app. It works best at around 4+ players. In Werewolf, you start by selecting a secret card, and take on the role of that character – secretly! The aim of the game is to catch the werewolves – unless you are one yourself in which case you will want to bluff your way to victory! You could be a meddlesome troublemaker, a lowly villager, or – drum roll please – a WEREWOLF!
Some actions during the evening phase may mean that your card has been switched without your knowledge, or other players have looked at your card and know that you are indeed the werewolf, but you won’t find any of this out until daybreak! You’ll find yourselves laughing as you play this addictive game, lying through your teeth to not get caught – and you won’t be able to count the times you hear the words ‘I’M JUST A VILLAGER!’ spouted from the other players!
This is a great choice for an evening when the sun goes down, and you’ll want to play it again and again…just maybe avoid it on a full moon...
The Mind
Next up we have a cooperative card game for two players, which is The Mind.
How well can you read minds? In The Mind, you have a deck of cards numbered from 1 to 100, and the aim of the game is to take turns playing cards in front of you in numerical order. The caveat is that you do this IN TOTAL SILENCE. That’s right – you must figure out when is the right time to lay down your card in the hope that it’s lower than your opponents, by staring at each other. You cannot under any circumstance indicate the number of the card that you have. This is done over 10 levels – in level one you have one card each, level two has two cards each and so on. You also get lives and Ninja stars that allow players to discard their lowest numbered card.
Try not to laugh as you stare each other out. Can you defeat the mind?
A Fake Artist Goes to New York
A Fake Artist Goes To New York is perfect for when you’re chilling with your group and fancy a bit of light-hearted fun.
It’s a small box that packs a punch, for up to 10 players. You have dry erase markers, mini boards and pens of different colours. One person, the Question Master, will write the same word on all boards bar one, upon which they will put an ‘X’. If you draw this ‘X’ you become the Fake Artist and must blend in with the rest. You will then select a board and take turns to draw a line or squiggle on the notepad that contributes to the Question Master’s drawing. You’re trying to make it subtle enough so that it is recognisable to everyone and vague enough so that the Fake Artist won’t be able to guess it. They must somehow fit in with your drawing and pretend they know what it’s all about.
It is super fun trying to figure out who is the Fake Artist!
No Thanks!
This is a brilliant little card game for 3-7 players which will have everyone around the campfire laughing their heads off.
In No Thanks you want the lowest number of points possible to win the game. You have a deck of cards in the middle, each numbered from 3 to 35, with one face-up as the starting card. On your turn, you will decide whether or not to add that card to your hand. If you choose not to, you’ll need to put a token on the card. Play continues until the card is taken or a player runs out of tokens. If a player cannot add a token to the card, they automatically take that card and all tokens on it into their tableau.
The tokens do serve as minus points, so the more you have the lower the score at game end. You’ll need to find the balance between keeping hold of those tokens or spending them in the hope that someone runs out and takes the card you really don’t want.
One great feature of this game is that you can acquire runs, so if you get lumbered with the dreaded number 35 for instance, and a 34 comes up, you can take this card and put it on top of your 35, thus making the score 34. I mean, that’s still a pretty dismal score! There is no limit to how many cards you can have on a run either. If you love traditional card games, you are bound to love this alternative!
Three Sisters
Next on the list is Three Sisters, a fantastic roll and write game about backyard farming for 1-4 players.
This is a new game which came to Kickstarter in 2021 and is super fun to play. You roll the dice and perform actions based on the die rolls, filling in squares on your paper which give you certain benefits at end-game scoring. There are a lot of ways to gain points and a lot of strategy to this game – will you go down the route of collecting fruit, or perennials? Set over eight rounds, it plays relatively quickly, and the solo mode is a nice addition.
The downside I’d say is that the box is a bit bigger than all the others on this list, so it may not be great if you’re pressed for space. If you do have room then I’d definitely suggest taking this along with you.
Llama Card Game
If you’re looking for a funny, bright card game that kids and adults alike will love, then I have you covered!
The card game Llama is a personal favourite of mine and is always a big hit when it’s on the table. Llama is a push your luck card game for 2-6 players. It consists of a deck of cards numbered from 1 to 6, and some pretty colourful llamas thrown in for good measure. The sole aim of the game is to once again have the fewest points by the end. This time by getting rid of your hand of cards. No prob-llama you might say! Well, just hold your horses…I mean llamas. All is not as it seems.
The round ends once everyone has passed or a player has gotten rid of their cards. At the end of the round, you get points tokens correlating to the number on each card in your hand. If you have a number 3 in your hand, you’ll get 3 white tokens (worth one point each). If you have a llama in your hand that you didn’t manage to get rid of, you’ll get a black token (worth a whopping 10 points!) All is not lost though, you might get rid of your hand on the next round meaning you get to discard either a black or white token.
The replayability of this game is enormous, and it comes in a tiny box, perfect for fitting in your rucksack!