Planning a unique birthday bash for adults is kind of difficult. Good food can only get you so far! You kind of need something to do after the meal. So many party games are built for children, and coming up with adult birthday party games your guests will actually enjoy can be both difficult and time-consuming. That’s where we come in…
Look no further, this list of birthday party activities for adults is packed with suggestions that should satisfy just about any kind of party guest. There is something on this list for everyone—even for party pooper game-haters!
Personalized Birthday Parties From Let’s Roam
When you’re planning a party and want to be sure it goes off without a hitch, look to Let’s Roam! Our Birthday Party Scavenger Hunts combine incredible app-led city tours with custom trivia and activities designed just for the guest of honor and attendees. Contact us to learn more!
How to Choose the Perfect Activity for Your Birthday Bash
The secret to successful party planning is choosing the correct combination of food, decor, and activities for your guests. You know your crew. You know what they love, so if you want a killer get-together, you have to think like your guests!
1. Make a guest list.
Who is coming to your party? Write the names down and think about each guest and their personality. What do they like to do? Plan to have a few games that most of the guests on your list will enjoy.
2. Think about the guest of honor.
The most important person in attendance is the birthday guy or gal! If it’s your party, what do you want to do? If you’re excited about it, those who love you will play along.
3. What’s the theme?
It wouldn’t be advisable to play beer pong at a murder mystery-themed party. It doesn’t fit the birthday party theme! Your activities should go with the vibe and feel of your bash.
Birthday Party Activities for Adults
We have broken down our favorite party activities by theme, so if you haven’t decided on your birthday celebration theme yet, check out our list of “Adult Birthday Party Ideas For Every Interest!”
Note: If your guests don’t know each other or you’re inviting a large group, consider starting off with some icebreakers to get everyone acquainted and comfortable. Sometimes it just takes a couple of quirky questions to bust through the awkwardness and get everyone ready to party. We’ve got lists of the best icebreakers ready to go!
Sleepover Activities
Okay, so sleepovers are generally considered child’s play, but hear us out! We guarantee you have a few friends who would love to join you at a lakeside cottage or cute spa hotel for the evening! Think of it like a bachelorette party. It’s a time for you and your besties to spend a full evening of revelry together, without having to worry about driving home at night. It’s easy and cheap to plan. Either book a cool place or have it at your home with some appetizers and cupcakes. These are the activities you’ll need to make your slumber party a success!
1. In-home Scavenger Hunt
For a sleepover party, try things that can be done in pajamas. For instance, rather than hit the town for a city scavenger hunt, you can try an in-home scavenger hunt, instead. Our hunts are expertly crafted to keep every player entertained and engaged. They are easy to engage in, just download our interactive app and get started in minutes!
2. Board Games
Go completely nostalgic by busting out all your favorite childhood games. Grab a few bags of candy and make hot chocolate for your besties. Having Candyland, Pictionary, Charades, and Shoots and Ladders will not only bring back fun memories from all your childhoods, but it will help you create new ones too.
3. Never Have I Ever
You have all your girls on a sugar high, now is the time to bust out the tough questions…and the alcohol! Never Have I Ever is one of the easiest and most revealing drinking games out there. You can buy an official version of this game on Amazon, but that might not even be necessary! This one is easy to DIY.
Just think of a list of wild activities and write them on a piece of paper. You start the game with one from your list. For instance, “never have I ever had sex in a public place.” Anyone who has takes a shot. Then the next person goes. If someone can’t think of anything, they can pick from your premade list.
Birthday Dinner Party Activities for Adults
No matter where you are from, or what age you are, bonding is best done over a full table of food. Whether you are planning an elegant soiree or a simple dinner with family members, a few fun games will keep everyone snacking for longer!
4. Old Fashioned-Card Games
Cards are meant to be played by friends around a table. They are cheap, easy to play, and no one even has to put down their beer. Bust out the Black Jack, Phase 10, or even Uno. Grab a few utensils and play a rousing game of spoons. For a little added fun, let each guest pick their favorite card game and take turns playing them.
5. Birthday-Person Trivia
One of the best games to play during an adult birthday is trivia centered around the birthday boy or girl. It takes a bit of prep, but not much. Make a list of questions about the guest of honor and include the corresponding answers. Print out copies of the questions for all of the guests (with some to spare!), and provide them on a slip of paper for each guest.
Allow time for everyone to guess the answers. Then, have the host read the correct answers, as participants score themselves. You can play individually or in teams, but the winner (or winners) should get a prize!
6. Twenty Questions
Twenty Questions is as old as dirt, but it is still really entertaining! It’s simple, and you don’t need any special supplies to play it. Just have someone think of a person, place, or thing, and give fellow attendees twenty yes/no questions to figure it out. Not only will it help you pass the time between courses, but you might just find that you have way more insight into the way your friends and family think by the time the game is done!
Birthday Pool Party Activities for Adults
If your birthday bash revolves around the pool, make sure to have a few outdoor games in the yard for the non-swimmers and the waterlogged. You should also have bbq grilling, a great themed playlist on the stereo, and beer and wine coolers on ice! We also can’t explain what happens when a group of friends joins up for smores together around a firepit. It’s magical!
No pool? Try Swimply! This service lets people rent pools by the hour. Check it out, and find a refreshing oasis nearby.
7. Cornhole
Cornhole is easy to find online or make yourself. It’s a simple game of throwing sand or rice-filled bags into a hole (usually cut into a piece of plywood, situated at an angle several yards apart.) You might be surprised how competitive your clan gets, so warning! Cornhole is serious business. Plus, as the beer count increases, the aim decreases, and the game gets funnier as the night goes on!
8. Giant Yard Jenga
Jenga is one of those childhood staples that pretty much everyone has played at one time or another, but giant yard Jenga is even more fun! Built up, up, up, and then watch it all come crumbling down. Make some bets on the winner. Turn it into a drinking game, or to really up the challenge, place your Jenga on a styrofoam lid or boogie board and float it in the pool. It’s a whole new level of balance!
9. Couple’s Chicken Contest
Do you have a few competitive couples in your crew? Well, see who is the strongest with a good, old-fashioned chicken war. Ladies hop on your fella’s shoulders and battle your besties to see who can stay on their feet and who ends up underwater.
10. Watermelon Ball
Nothing says, “happy birthday” like near-death by drowning. If you have ever played this wild game, you know it gets competitive fast! A Watermelon Ball is a weird heavy ball that is hard to control in the water. The point is for each team to get the ball to the other team’s pool edge in any way possible. It’s nuts! There are no rules, and it is serious fun! Just don’t drown your mates.
11. Karaoke Contest
If you have a nice yard away from neighbors, bust out the speakers and the karaoke machine. If you have done the ice breakers and passed out the booze, everyone is comfy now, and they can bust out their best moves unhindered. The non-drinkers in the clan will love this one too. It’s always funniest from the other side.
Adult Game Night Birthday Party Activities
If your birthday bash is based around great games, be sure to plan several so there’s something for everyone in attendance. You might consider setting up different sections for guests to bounce around to and make sure to have snacks handy at each gaming section.
12. Exploding Kittens
It’s weird and wonderful. Exploding Kittens is a strange card game similar to Uno, except that you have goats, explosive kittens that can kill you, and “nope ninjas.” It only takes a few minutes to learn, but you will want to play for hours. Betray your friends, trick them into all kinds of scenarios, and escape without exploding!
13. Cards Against Humanity
This game lets you in on the warped mind of your friends more than any other. Each play has a stack of cards with ridiculous words and phrases on them. If it is your turn, your draw a fill-in-the-blank card from the black pile. Every player throws out an answer from the cards they have in their hand, and the first player gets to choose the answer they like most. It’s strategy and mindreading, in the most ridiculous and inappropriate scenarios possible.
14. Texas Hold ‘Em
Make sure to have at least one card table set up for the gamblers in your crew! If you don’t have a poker table, you can purchase one online for pretty cheap, and they are often multi-game tables that are nice to have around anyway.
15. Twist It Up
If you really want to relive your childhood, get all tangled up with your buds in a nostalgic game of Twister. It’s hilarious. You will get close. You will fall, and you inevitably will end up in an overaged pile on the floor. It’s fun for participants and onlookers.
Outdoor Adventure Birthday Party Activities for Adults
One of our favorite adult birthday themes is an outdoor adventure. We love a scavenger hunt in your favorite city, a nice hike in the woods, or a lake day as an adult birthday bash idea! However, if you do take your besties on a long hike or road trip for your birthday, you may need a few boredom fighters along the way.
16. Let’s Roam City Scavenger Hunt
If you want this birthday to be adventurous and memorable, download our adventure app and purchase tickets for a bar crawl or sightseeing scavenger hunt in your city! Our party planning experts have designed hundreds of unique experiences that will allow you and your crew to explore your hometown like never before. Our games are loaded with difficult trivia, fun photo challenges, and much more. We also have urban art hunts, bar crawls, and ghost hunts-something for every birthday adventure.
Want something more personal? Contact us. We love planning unique custom events!
17. Name a Celebrity
This one is easy and doesn’t require supplies either. The first person names a celebrity. The next person must name a celebrity whose name starts with the same letter as the last name of the previous celebrity. For instance, if you pick Ariana Grande, player two would choose a celebrity whose first name starts with “G,” like George Clooney. To make it harder, you can set a time limit.
18. Contact
Bear with us on this one. It’s a bit hard to explain. Here goes nothing. You need at least 3 players to play Contact. It is basically a competition between the word-giver and everyone else. We will use an example because it’s easier to get a visual.
Player 1 (the word-giver): “I have thought of a word, and it starts with a C (or whatever letter).”
The other players will begin to ask hint questions. For instance-
Player 2: “Is it an animal?”
The rest of the players will try to figure out what player 2 is thinking, and when they think they know the hint, they will scream, “Contact.”
The two players then count down 3,2,1 and spit out the answer.
Player 3: Contact!
Player 2 and 3: 3,2,1- “Cat”
If they agree (even if the word is wrong), player one has to give them the next letter in the original word. You keep going with the next letter until they get it right.
Player one can fight back though! In the three-second countdown, if player one thinks he knows what the hint is, he can scream out, “it’s not cat!” If he beats the other players, he is not required to give them another letter, and the game continues.
There is some strategy to it. You want to try to come up with hints that your teammates might know that the word-giver wouldn’t. It gets harder than you think.
Birthday Party Activities for 30-Something Adults
You have left your twenties and entered your dirty thirties! It’s a popular year to have a giant birthday bash. Here are a few fun party game ideas for your 30th birthday and beyond!
19. Name Dropper
Choose a category. For instance, “professional football players.” Each contestant has 30 seconds to drop as many names as possible. The winner gets a small prize. We love this one because the stress of the timer causes funny answers and lots of excitement. Plus, you can play for a while by just changing up the category!
20. Dirty Minds
This digital printable questionnaire is good for a few adult laughs! It’s full of naughty riddles, and each person fills in their answers with what they think the birthday person will answer. You go around the table revealing your naughty answers before the birthday person reveals the correct one. The person who gets the most matches with the guest of honor is the winner!
21. Dirty Dunk
This one will take you right back to your college days. Get out in the backyard with a few of those plastic wading pools and some diving sticks. Fill them with water and all manner of disgusting things. Whatever you need to throw out of the fridge, whatever is sticky, smelly, or looks nasty. Give each party guest a pair of goggles, and then you all find a spot on your knees around the pool. Hands behind your back, head in. The person to pull out the most diving sticks with their mouth in a set amount of time wins. Just be sure to have a water hose handy for rinsing!
22. Tipsy Obstacle Course
After a few beers, challenge your friends to a little backyard race. Think easy to set up events like a bat spin, sprinkler jump, under the picnic table crawl, slip and slide, hula hoop, and hopscotch. Whatever you have around the house will work. Set up a few stations and let the fun begin. If you are all partnered, challenge each other as couples. Tie each player’s leg to their partner’s with a scarf and make them run the course as one unit. Sit back. Eat your birthday cake, and laugh at your friends. We guarantee watching this will be your best present of the night.
Birthday Party Activities for the Senior Crowd
While “over the hill” themes are often used to celebrate 50th birthdays, being of “a certain age” doesn’t dictate that your birthday party activities can’t be exciting! So embrace your age and have some fun!
23. Real Hill Games
If you happen to have a small hill on your property, utilize it! Go sledding. Set up a slip and slide, or challenge your friends to a rolling race. It will certainly make you feel like a kid again. Just be careful, you don’t want any broken hips.
24. How Old Are You?
Set up a cute pinboard or a twine banner with photos of the birthday person at different ages. Number each photo and have printed, corresponding answer sheets and pens available. Each guest will fill in how old they think the birthday person was in each photo. The person who gets the most right wins!
25. Flipback
This super fun trivia card game is available on Amazon. They make a new one every year, so it’s up to date. It is specifically made for 50th birthdays and anniversaries and focuses on trivia from the year of your birth. Good luck!
Time to Party!
That concludes our list of the best birthday party activities for adults. Whatever birthday theme you choose, these suggestions are sure to keep your guests engaged and entertained for hours.
Keep Let’s Roam in mind for all of your events. Not only do we offer helpful guides and other advice on our Explorer blog, but we also plan personalized Birthday Party Scavenger Hunts!
If a virtual party is on your calendar, check out our list of “The Best Virtual Birthday Party Ideas for Adults“! It’s packed with ideas for celebrating with loved ones around the world who can’t get together in person.
Not only can we help you plan the party and entertain your guests—but we can also help you choose the perfect gift! If you aren’t sure what to get the guest of honor, our lists of “Birthday Gifts for Her” and “Birthday Gifts for Him” just might save you.
Enjoy your event!
Frequently Asked Questions
The best birthday party activities for adults revolve around the theme and the guest of honor. For example, you could plan a scavenger hunt in their favorite city or a bar crawl followed by a tipsy obstacle course!
If you have a creative theme, a great venue, and adult birthday party activities that revolve around the guest of honor, you’re sure to have an epic adult birthday bash!
If you’re planning activities for an adult birthday party, consider doing something out of the ordinary, like a personalized party from Let’s Roam that features a scavenger hunt tour or a bar crawl!