Nothing is better during a game night than a good, hearty laugh! So here are our top 15 board games that will help make you and your friends laugh every time!
15. 3 Things
Do you have what it takes to survive a dangerous situation? How about something that you think is never ever going to happen to you? What if you could only use three surrounding items to get you out of that scenario? Well, you’re about to find out in 3 Things.
In 3 Things, your goal is to obtain the most rations out of your group. You obtain your rations by coming up with the best solutions to survival scenarios using three random object tiles in the center of the table. At the start of the round, one player will act as a judge, holding the whistle that’s included in the game. That judge will draw out a scenario card and read it aloud to the rest of the group. The other players will then scramble to grab three tiles from the pile to help them. If one or more players take too long, the judge with the whistle can announce that part of the turn is over.
Can you come up with the best scenario to survive with only three items?
Players will then present their tiles and explain why they think they will help them survive the scenario. After presenting, the judge will then pick which items made the most sense and award them with rations. Players can earn up to three rations per turn. After rations are handed out, the judge’s turn goes to the next player. All tiles that were taken from that round are put back into the pile, with the other side facing up to reveal a new item. The player with the most rations after everyone has had a turn as the judge is the winner.
Creative and impromptu minds will have a ball with this game, and it is guaranteed to give laughs throughout the night, especially when someone needs to explain how a plunger will help them out of a situation like being attacked by cannibals. And as a bonus, it's easy to learn. One playthrough and you already know the whole game!
Buy this game if:
- You want a game that encourages improv and creativity.
- You want to hear some hilarious survival plans.
14. Stupid Deaths
We’re back at it again! Stupid Deaths makes the list again as it tells you how hilarious Death can really be sometimes. So gather around and prepare to learn about all of the embarrassing ways that people have died!
You and other players will try to outrun Death as you go around the board. As you read cards about how some people have died, you’ll need to guess whether or not that death actually happened. And some of them will seem too ridiculous to be true. Guessing correctly ensures that you stay ahead of Death and are one step closer to victory. Guessing incorrectly means that Death gets to move closer to you. If he catches up to you, he will take your soul. Successfully move around the board first or be the last player standing and feel spectacular about cheating Death!
Play this and find out how long you can outrun Death!
This game admittedly was on my best horrors game list, but I feel that it needed a spot here too. My main reason is that with over 300 deaths included in the game, some of them are pretty funny. Whether they are true or not, you and your friends will get a chuckle out of it as you play the scenarios through your heads. And that’s what this list is about! This is a board game that will get you to laugh.
Buy this game if:
- You have a macabre sense of humor and find death to be a source of comic relief.
13. Funemployed
Most people from a very young age have had to go through the grueling task of finding a job so that they can afford the things they want. The worst part of getting the job especially was the interview. You can plan ahead and run multiple scenarios through your head, but it always felt like you were going to say something wrong that would blow your chances at getting the position at the company because the interviewer would throw a curveball question at you. How about instead of doing that in real life, we just do that in a board game? In Funemployed, you do just that.
Before the game starts, the setup will have 10 black-backed cards laying face up in the center of the table. Each player will then have four cards in their hands that they will use to argue their case on why they should have the job in question. The judge during the round will keep cards of his own (equal to the number of players in the game, excluding himself).
Present yourself well to get the job!
At the start of each round, a job position is introduced. Once all players know the job, they’ll look at their cards and come up with a pitch. During that pitch, the judge can use one of their cards to rebuttal them and see if they get tripped up much like in a real job interview. Whoever makes the best interview for the job position is declared the winner by the judge and gets the job card as their point.
Whoever has the most points after everyone has had a turn as a judge is the winner.
A lot of games are going to be judge-based in this list, but this one is great because of the real-world circumstances that inspired it. Everyone has had at least one crazy interview in their life, so while this game is producing laughs, you or a friend will probably keep the joke rolling with some real-life experiences of your own!
Buy this game if:
- You like judge-based games.
- You or your friends are creative, imaginative, or want to try to be more like that.
12. Taco Vs. Burrito
How many seven-year-old children do you know that made a game that kickstarts an entire card-based food fight? Apparently, Alex Butler was that age when he made Taco Vs Burrito, which disappointingly does not involve a fight between the two, but it’s still a fun game!
In Taco Vs. Burrito, you are invited to make the biggest meal possible. To start the game, players will grab five cards from the deck and keep the rest of the pile in the middle. On your turn, you will draw one card and then have one of five options to do: add an ingredient card, add a hot sauce card, play a tummy ache card, or play an action card (steal a card, pull a card from discard, etc.)
Earn the most points by getting the rarest foods!
All ingredient and food cards have point values that will add up to your final score. If you pull a health inspector card, then all of your cards will need to be discarded and you have to start again. When there are no more cards left to draw, the player with the most points in their meal is the winner.
You’ll get a few laughs in this game as you play a trash panda card to steal from the discard pile. And you may need to refrain from yelling “FOOD FIGHT!” as you play that certain card. And whatever your perfect meal is at the end of the game, I’m sure that will be funny as well.
Buy this game if:
- You need a smaller game for on-the-go traveling.
- You want a game that kids can get involved with.
11. Sounds Fishy
Have you ever heard an answer to a question that is so random, so extreme, or so left-field that you think it couldn’t possibly be the real answer? And when you found out that it is indeed real, did it just blow your mind? With Sounds Fishy, it plays on that, and your goal is to find out which answer is the truth and which one “sounds fishy.”
Before the round starts, each player except for one will grab a fish from the pile. If one player gets the blue fish, they must be the one that says the correct answer. Everyone else will need to come up with something on the spot. Then the player that is guessing the correct answer reads the question and reveals the answer on the back side to everyone else.
You must lie if you get the Red Herring fish!
One by one, everyone says their answer to the question, but again, only one will be the true answer. The player will then guess who is lying and ask them to reveal their card. If he guesses correctly, he will get points. If at any time he is wrong, he has to end his turn and it will be the next person's turn. Each player will get a chance to play as the guesser, and the player with the most points after that is the winner.
This is a great game of social deduction as you try to find out who is lying and who is telling the truth. If you like the idea of learning useless new trivia while bluffing to earn more points, then this is for you!
Buy this game if:
- You love the games where you try to weed out the liars from the group.
- You want another trivia-based game that doesn’t play like traditional trivia-based games.
10. Hand-to-Hand Wombat
The title is misleading because there are no fighting wombats in this game, however, that does not mean that it won’t be funny to play.
In Hand-to-Hand Wombat, your goal is to either build up your towers successfully or sabotage the towers. At the beginning of the game, each of you will receive a wombat card. It will reveal your role as either a good or bad wombat. Without revealing your role, you’ll attempt to work on towers while blindfolded.
The blocks for the tower will have bumps on the sides so you’ll know which ones go on the bottom, which should be on top, etc. The bad wombat is trying to sabotage the other towers and earn points for himself.
Gather your friends and family around the table and try to build up (or destroy) your towers!
After a 90-second timer, everyone stops. If there are three completed towers, the good wombats earn two points. If there is at least one completed tower, they earn one point. The bad wombats earn two points for ruining all three towers and one point if there is at least one incomplete tower.
If there is one thing that Exploding Kittens is great at, it’s coming up with games that break normal board game boundaries and make you think “how the heck did they come up with this?” As you are feeling the pieces and feeling confident in your tower-building skills, imagine what happens when you open your eyes and find that everything that you’ve done does not translate to what the outcome is. And that’s funny.
Buy this game if:
- You want a game with a more hands-on approach.
9. Secret Hitler
Yes, you read the title correctly. Enough said.
In traditional Mafia or Werewolf gameplay, your group of friends will be handed cards that assign them their roles in the game, which are: liberals, fascists, and the Secret Hitler. Everyone will claim to be a liberal, but only a few will be fascists (and one of the fascists is the secret Hitler).
The goal of the liberals is to pass five liberal policies or identify the secret Hitler. The goal of the fascists is to pass six of their own policies or get three policies and enable the secret Hitler as the Chancellor.
How do you gain policies for either party? During each turn, one person will act as the presidential candidate and he will elect someone from the group as their chancellor. If the majority of the group agrees to the proposal, the president will pull three policy cards (which are fascist or liberal policies mentioned earlier) from the deck and chooses one to keep face down. He then hands the others to the Chancellor and he then picks one and puts the new policy on the liberal or fascist board.
Collect your party's policies first to win!
If in the case that the majority votes against the leadership, the role of president goes to the next player and he proposes a chancellor. If the majority says no three times, then a policy card is pulled from the top of the deck and played, regardless of whether it is fascist or liberal. Whichever party meets its goals first is the winner.
This is probably not a game for more sensitive audiences, but if you can make it past that, this will bring laughter throughout the game as you try to find out the Secret Hitler in the group.
Buy this game if:
- You love the game style of Werewolf, but need something with a political twist.
8. Speak Out
Why is it always that when you go to the dentist and they have their hands all up in your mouth, they try to strike up a conversation with you? Honestly, do they expect a different answer besides “glurgglurgshglurishey?” While it’s not fun when it happens in the dentist's chair, I can guarantee that it will be when you’re trying to say a simple phrase to a friend. This is Speak Out.
The game comes with mouthpieces that you stick between your lips which opens your mouth wide, showing all of your teeth in all their glory (it helps to brush those pearly whites beforehand, just saying). During a time limit, you’ll draw a card out of a pile and read it to your partner. Because of the situation happening with your mouth, you won’t be able to pronounce all of the words right, so it sounds like a garbled mess. Your teammate’s goal is to try and figure out what you're saying by repeating it. All of the cards that you get correctly will count toward your points.
Try this game out today!
The team that gets the most cards after a certain amount of turns wins!
The beauty of the game is that it’s straightforward. Put the thing in your mouth, read something off a card, and laughter ensues. You don’t even need to keep score because the prize is watching your friends make fools of themselves as they try to get their teammates to repeat what they say. Just remember to wash the mouthpieces off after each play.
Buy this game if:
- You want a game that doesn’t need to be taken seriously in order to enjoy.
7. Hearing Things
Here’s another awkward social situation for you: you’re having a conversation with someone and they say something that you didn’t hear, so you ask them to repeat it. They do so, and you still can’t understand it. One more time, still nothing. So, as any normal person would do, you just nod your head in acknowledgment and hope for the best. Now imagine that as a game.
The gameplay is really similar to Speak Out, but instead of mouthpieces, you get a headset that blares white noise into your ears while you wear it. One person reads cards to their teammate that is wearing the headset and tries to get him to understand them by reading his lips. The headset also acts as a timer so that when it buzzes, the player knows when the round is over. Each card has an easy side and a hard side, so you decide which one to use. The hard side is more points but is usually a longer more complicated sentence.
After everyone has had a turn with the headset, the team with the most cards/points is the winner!
This would be a great game to couple with Speak out if you’re looking for a lighthearted game night! Much like Speak Out, the humor comes from players trying to understand one another and usually getting it horribly wrong.
Buy this game if:
- You want to see your friends struggle and come up with their own sentences that result in hilarious moments.
6. Boom Boom Balloon
Tick. Tick. Tick. The needles dig deeper, building your anxiety to new levels. It's your turn. You roll. The outcome: six. Your worst fear becomes a reality. Now you must push those needles further and further until the worst thing imaginable happens…your balloon pops.
The gameplay is as simple as it gets. You blow up the balloon in the special contraption that comes with the game. You stick the plastic pins in the slots on the contraption, and you roll the die. Whatever number you roll, you’ll have to push the pins into the balloon in that same amount. You can distribute those numbers into all of the pins, meaning you can choose to push one pin for the whole amount or push several for that same number. You’ll be surprised how much punishment those balloons can take!
Whoever pops the balloon on their turn loses that round, but honestly, points don’t matter in this game. Most of the fun is watching everyone’s anxiety build as the balloon distorts.
This is probably not a game for those who don’t enjoy loud noises or the anticipation of one coming, but you and your friends can still get laughs out of watching the balloon gets pushed to the limit until the final burst. Then depending on their reaction to the balloon popping, more laughter may come.
Buy this game if:
- You want something lighthearted where there are no cards involved to play.
- You want to see poor balloons get punished.
5. Chicken Vs. Hotdog
Some games require a serious learning curve to play and enjoy. Some require many many many plays in order to master. Then there is this game.
The game is straightforward. You want to be the first person or team that wins six challenges with the chicken or hot dog stickems (stick-ums? Stickims? ) In each round, you’ll draw a card that will give you one of various challenges to complete with your chicken or hot dog. You’ll both do a bid and whoever has the highest bid gets to take on the challenge. Complete it successfully and earn a point. Don’t do it and the other team gets the point. There will also be cards that cause a sudden showdown where both teams try to get their stickems to land correctly first to get the point.
The first person/team to complete six challenges is the winner.
If Big Potato Games is good at one thing, it's coming out with games that make you go wtf? And if the chicken and hot dog stickems don’t produce laughs right away as they are pulled from the box, using them to win challenges will. And the best part is that there is no strategy to winning; you just have fun.
Buy this game if:
- You just want a game to be fun, with no strategy involved.
- You want something that anyone can play.
4. Aye, Dark Overlord!
Have you ever been in a situation where your boss pulls you and your coworkers aside and demands to know why something wasn’t done correctly and who was to blame? Did you just take the blame or did you try to talk your way out of it and point fingers elsewhere? This game does that, essentially, but in a dark fantasy setting.
The player that acts as Dark Overlord will set the scene, asking his minions why is his precious treasure missing, why the princess in the nearby castle hasn’t been captured, etc. His minions (the other players) then must play a narrative using prompt cards in their hands to come up with an excuse for why it has not been accomplished or use a special card to shift blame to another player, and that player needs to continue the story.
Whoever is least capable of answering the Dark Overlord’s scene or shifting the blame onto others will get a withering stare. The first player to receive three withering stares loses.
Those players with a taste for theatrics are going to love this game. It encourages roleplay to bring characters to life, but it will not appeal to someone that wants rules to decide who didn’t win a specific round. Still, for the right group of people, this will keep you laughing throughout the night.
Buy this game if:
- You like the roleplaying aspect of games such as D&D.
- You don’t want anything with a hard ruleset to determine winners and losers.
3. Trodgor! The Board Game
Flash animations were a thing of beauty back in the day. They were the best way to make free games out of virtually nothing. They were also used for making web series including Homestarruner.com. For those who never had the pleasure to know this particular site, it was a lighthearted web series involving a group of individuals that made of fun pop-culture references or put themselves in wacky situations. One of these characters (Strongbad) had his own show answering fan emails. It was on this show that he made up a character named Trogdor which became an instant hit for fans. I’ll also leave a youtube link that includes the creation of this character. Years down the road, Trogdor got his own board game from a successful Kickstarter campaign and, much like the show itself, will produce laughs as you play.
In Trogdor!, you play as the servants of the Burninator, and your goal is to control Trogdor and burninate the countryside, burninate all the peasants, and burninate all the thatched-roof cottages.
Your group will take turns controlling him with special items and action cards, and with each tile he lands on, you will flip over to reveal its burninated version. Each unfortunate peasant that Trogdor also comes across will also suffer his fire. If you’re lucky, the peasant’s fleeing, flaming body will cause more damage to the board and the thatched-roof cottages.
Trogdor’s actions will not come without opposition though. Knights and archers will attempt to stop him while other peasants can fix the countryside so that the burn damage is reversed. They also have random move sets determined by drawn cards, and they can damage the dragon if he is in range of their attacks.
The game is over once the whole board has been burned or Trogdor has been defeated.
While this game is going to tickle fans of the original web series, there is a lot that newcomers and board game enthusiasts can enjoy as well. With the flame crown that you put on the peasants, you will get a laugh or two as it runs around the board burning everything in sight.
Buy this game if:
You were a fan of Homestarruner.com.
You want a creative, humorous board game to add to your collection.
2. Kill Doctor Lucky
In Clue, your goal is to find out who killed Mr. Body, where he was killed, and with what weapon. Consider this next game on our list the Anti-Clue because (as its title suggests, instead of solving a murder, you’re trying to commit one. This is Kill Doctor Lucky.
Players take on the roles of character tokens with a color palette similar to Clue and put their characters in the drawing room. Each player will also have cards in their hands that can help with movement, weapons, or luck (we’ll get into luck shortly). Dr. Lucky will have his own token, and he starts on a different part of the board. Each player will take a turn moving from one room to another. Cards can help them move directly to certain locations in the mansion.
After each player's turn, Dr. Lucky will move to the next room. If he ends up in a player’s location, that player can attempt to kill him. The only time you can’t attempt to kill him is if another player is in the same room or can see you from open doors.
Each card in the game will have points on them that will determine a successful or unsuccessful attempt at the doctor’s life. During the attempted murder phase, players will start out with one point. If he has a weapon card, that will increase his points, and thus increase his chances of successfully killing Dr. Lucky. The other players can play cards to beat out the attempted murderer’s points (which will be represented as four-leaf clovers). If they play cards that have more points than the ones needed for the murder, that attempt failed. If you fail at your murder attempt though, fret not! The Doctor’s luck will run out eventually as the cards dwindle.
When someone makes an attempted murder where the other players can’t beat the points associated, then that player is the winner.
Finally getting to kill the man will be satisfying, but the humor is that you are still trying to attempt murder, and it will get flopped time and time again.
Buy this game if:
- You want to play something that is different from Clue, but just as much fun.
1. We Didn’t Playtest This At All
Has there ever been a time when you need to play a game, but you also have to go somewhere in the next two minutes? Well, worry no more, because this game has got you covered!
You draw a card and you play a card. All cards you play will have instructions that you must follow. Sometimes it’ll say that you win immediately. Some may say that everyone but you is a winner. And maybe if you’re lucky enough to have longer gameplay, may add an extra rule that everyone must follow in order to win.
That’s it.
No, really. That’s it.
This is truly a game that doesn’t feel like someone tested it, and it shows. There will be games where literally no one gets to play a card because someone already played a card that declared them as the winner. So it is definitely not a game for serious players, but it may be good to play as a practical joke on someone, or you just need a game that no one will take seriously.
And there is an expansion pack. So there’s that.
Buy this game if:
- You want a game that no one can take seriously.
- You need a game that is more of a gag than an actual game.
