Games for Independence Day Parties 

Pool parties, fireworks, hot dogs… sounds like freedom… sounds like the Fourth of July!

One of our favorite Independence Day activities is busting out a board game and playing with our friends. For the fourth, we’ve outlined four games that we believe captures the spirit of America. Celebrate the best of our great nation with We Didn’t Playtest This At All, Hanabi, Telestrations After Dark, and The Metagame!

1 | We Didn’t Playtest This At All

America, the Great Experiment.

Our founding fathers set out to make a free nation, a true democracy.  Despit the odds, despite their experience... they dug their heels in and went for it.

Over 200 years later, and we still embody that innovative, just-go-for-it spirit… with games like We Didn’t Playtest This At All.

We Didn’t Playtest This At All features dozens of mini-games. Each round someone will win, and someone will lose. Some are based more in strategy - tell players to choose cake or death. If more choose Death, you lose. If more choose Cake, those who chose Death lose. A tie means you win. Others are based in social restraint - from now on, saying the word ‘you’ means you lose! And some are just luck, good and bad - congrats! You lose.

We Didn’t Playtest This At All is a great party game because what it doesn’t require in skill and concentration, it rewards for humor! Play a few rounds or run through every expansion, either way it’s a hilarious (and easy) way to get the party started!

2 | Telestrations After Dark

Some things in life are better after the sun has gone down. BBQs, fireworks… and Telestrations.

Telestrations After Dark combines the games Telephone and Pictionary for a hilarious party game experience. Draw a prompt card and write the word. Pass it to the person next to you who will attempt to draw your clue. The next person will have to write a word only using the picture they have seen. This continues until the book arrives back to you and you have to show off the horribly tangled lines of miscommunication.

Telestrations After Dark adds an extra laugh factor with their adult cards - just watch your friends get embarrassed trying to draw “uranus”. We have a soft spot for party games like Telestrations that feature simple rules, allowing the player’s personality escalate the fun. As an extra fun bonus, Telestrations After Dark comes with drink coasters, encouraging you to really make it a party!

3 | Hanabi

A stomach full of barbecue, a sunburn spreading across your face, sand between your toes… you’re ready for the fireworks. But somewhere, someone is trying to get the show started.

In Hanabi, you play as the firework handlers, but you’re working blind. You don’t get to see your cards, the other players do! This is troubling because you need to work together to place different firework cards in order from one to five! Give clues and take chances to create a beautiful firework display.

With its light, accessible rules and cooperative gameplay, Hanabi is a game you can easily introduce to any group and any situation. Winner of the Spiel des Jahres award (the most prestigious board game award) it’s a tried and true classic that we’ve come to rely on.

4 | The Metagame

If Independence Day had to be summed up in a word, it wouldn’t be sparklers or shish kebabs, pools or parties… it’d be Freedom. And games like Metagame celebrate that Freedom by giving you the freedom to choose your game!

Metagame features two decks of cards - Culture Cards with recognizable names and events (George Washington to Pride and Prejudice to Ms. Pacman) and Opinion Cards that feature prompts requiring your opinion - Which is More Fun? or Which Better Represents America? Now how you use these cards… is up to you.

This box outlines seven different ways to play! Play like Cards Against Humanity and secretly place Culture Cards as answers to Opinion Cards, or play like Timeline and line Culture Cards up in chronological order. Or get half the group to guess your card but not all! Or guess the same card as your partner!

The Metagame can be a game about strategy, a game about humor, a game about appealing to the judge or offending the judge. It can be loud, silent, long, or short. That’s what we love about it. It can fill nearly every occasion and with more games being added in new expansions and as downloadable PDFs, it gives you the freedom to play anyway you’d like!

Written by Johnni Medina