Halloween party games for kids and adults

Games for every kind of Halloween: a room full of kids, a grown-up party, a class, a big crowd and a family night in. Each one says how many it suits, how long it takes and how loud it gets, with a costume contest and a tournament to keep score for.

Keep score for every Halloween game on your iPhone or iPad, from charades to the costume contest. Tallynight is free, with no ads.

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Quick picks by situation

Short on time? Start here, then find each game further down the page.

• A kids' party: the mummy wrap race, pumpkin bowling and monster freeze dance.
• Grown-ups: Fishbowl, Taboo and a costume contest with a scored vote.
• Teens: Halloween Pictionary, Fishbowl and Nertz.
• A crowd of 20 or more: charades in two teams, musical pumpkins, or Bunco at tables of four.
• The class party: a mummy wrap relay, minute to win it challenges and the kids' round of Halloween trivia.
• At work: the costume contest, a candy jar to guess and Halloween trivia in teams.
• A family night in: Uno for candy, Farkle, or haunted mini golf through the house.
• All evening: a Halloween tournament with one leaderboard.

Halloween party games for kids

Games made from what's already in the house: toilet paper, a small pumpkin, a bowl of candy and some music. Most suit ages 4 to 10, indoors or out, and need a grown-up only to keep score.

• Mummy wrap race · teams of 2 or 3 · 5 minutes a round · loud. One child is the mummy, and the others wrap them in toilet paper from the shoulders down. The first team to use up its whole roll wins the round, then the mummies swap.
• Pumpkin bowling · 2 or more · 15 minutes · loud. Stand ten plastic bottles or toilet rolls at the end of a hallway, drawn on as ghosts, and roll a small pumpkin at them. Two rolls a turn, and a point for every one knocked down.
• Monster freeze dance · any number · 10 minutes · loud. Put on Halloween music and everyone dances like a monster. When the music stops, freeze. Anyone still moving sits out, and the last monster dancing picks the next song.
• Pin the nose on the jack-o'-lantern · 3 or more · 10 minutes · lively. Draw a big pumpkin face with no nose, and cut out a paper nose for each child with their name on it. Take turns blindfolded, and the nose closest to the middle wins.
• Witch hat ring toss · 2 or more · 10 minutes · lively. Stand three party hats or cones at different distances, worth 1, 2 and 3 points, and throw glow stick bracelets as rings. Five throws a turn, and the highest total wins.
• Candy corn spoon relay · teams of 4 or more · 10 minutes · loud. Carry one candy corn across the room on a spoon, drop it in your team's cup, and run back to hand the spoon on. The team with the most in its cup after two minutes wins.
• Ghost in the graveyard · 6 or more · 20 minutes · loud. Hide and seek outside at dusk. The ghost hides while everyone else counts from one o'clock to midnight at base, then they all go looking. Whoever finds the ghost calls out ghost in the graveyard, and everyone races back to base before the ghost tags someone. Whoever is tagged is the next ghost.
• Crazy Eights and Kings Corner · 2 to 6 · 10 minutes a hand · lively. One deck and simple rules, for a quieter corner of the party, from about 6.
• Uno · 2 to 10 · 10 minutes a hand · loud. From about 7. Play each hand for a piece of candy, or keep score to 500.
• Shut the Box · 1 or more · 5 minutes a turn · quiet. Two dice and some adding, for whoever needs a break from the noise.

To keep score for the party games, add each child or team as a player in Tallynight and tap their tile for every point. Each gets a big tile in their colour, easy to read across a noisy room.

Halloween party games for adults

For a grown-up party, at home or at work: team games with little setup for the big room, and card games with some strategy for the kitchen table. All of them can be played in costume.

• Fishbowl, Halloween edition · 8 to 30 in two teams · about an hour · loud. Everyone writes three Halloween things on slips of paper: a film, a monster, a costume someone is wearing tonight. Round one, describe them. Round two, one word only. Round three, act them out. A point for each slip guessed. Also called Salad Bowl or Celebrity.
• Taboo · 4 or more in two teams · 30 minutes · loud. Describe the word without saying the five words on the card, while the other team listens for a slip. Add a few cards of your own: vampire, cauldron, haunted house.
• Scattergories, Halloween edition · up to 6, or teams · 30 minutes · lively. Write your own list of categories: Halloween films, costumes for two, things in a witch's cauldron, candy bars, spooky sounds, words that rhyme with boo.
• Whose costume was it · 8 or more · 20 minutes · lively. Before the party, each guest tells the host a costume they wore as a child. The host reads them out, and everyone writes down who they think wore each one. A point for each right guess.
• Two truths and a lie, spooky edition · 6 or more · 20 minutes · lively. Three stories: a film that kept you awake, a costume that went wrong, a strange noise in the night. One of them is made up, and the table votes on which.
• Skull King · 2 to 8 · about an hour · lively. Bid exactly how many tricks you'll win, with pirates, mermaids and the Skull King in the deck. A card game with a skull on the box, for a table of up to eight.
• Oh Hell or Wizard · 3 to 7 · about an hour · lively. The same bidding with an ordinary deck, or with Wizards and Jesters added. Exact bids score, missed ones cost you.
• Nertz · 2 or more, a deck each · 10 minutes a hand · loud. Everyone plays at once on shared piles, with no turns. For the friends who take cards seriously.
• Guess the candy jar · any number · all evening · quiet. Fill a jar with candy corn, counting as you go. Guests write a guess and their name on a slip, and the closest guess takes the jar home. It suits an office, where people come and go.

At a work party, keep to team games, trivia and the costume contest, and put the score on the meeting room screen with the free online score keeper.

Halloween games for large groups

When 20 people in costume fill one room, split them into teams and play something the whole room can follow. Paper, pens, some music and a timer cover most of these.

• Charades · 4 or more in two teams · as long as you like · loud. No equipment, and every age can act. Use the Halloween prompts below.
• Pictionary · 3 or more in 2 to 4 teams · 30 minutes or more · loud. A big pad on an easel, or a whiteboard, so the whole room can see the drawing.
• Musical pumpkins · 10 to 40 · 15 minutes · loud. Musical chairs with paper pumpkins taped to the floor, one fewer than the players. When the music stops, stand on a pumpkin. Take one away each round, and the last one standing wins.
• Bunco · 12 or more, at tables of four · about two hours · loud. Guests change tables and partners all night, so friends of friends meet. Call it Boo-nco for the night, and the whole table says boo at every bunco.
• Taboo · 4 or more in two teams · 30 minutes · loud. Quick turns, and the other team calls out every slip.
• Halloween trivia · teams of 4 to 6 · about an hour · lively. One person reads, the teams write. Our Halloween trivia has 60 questions, with a round for kids and a harder one for adults.

In teams, add each team as a player in Tallynight and start the turn timer for each turn. For 20 or more, put the score on the TV with the online score keeper, or lay an iPad with Tallynight flat where everyone can see it.

Halloween games for the classroom

A class party has 25 children, 45 minutes and a teacher who would like a calm room by the end. Play in table teams of four to six, keep the rules short, and finish with something quiet.

• Halloween Pictionary on the whiteboard · the whole class in 4 to 6 teams · 20 minutes · lively. One child from a team draws a prompt from the list below, and their team has a minute to guess it. A point for each one guessed.
• Mummy wrap relay · teams of 3 · 10 minutes · loud. One roll of toilet paper a team, and a new mummy each round. The first team to finish its roll wins the round.
• Halloween minute to win it · table teams · 20 minutes · loud. One child from each team at a time, a minute a challenge: stack 10 paper cups into a pyramid, move 10 candy corns from one bowl to another with chopsticks, or keep a ghost balloon in the air with a paper fan. A point for each challenge finished in time.
• Four corners: ghost, bat, pumpkin, witch · the whole class · 10 minutes · lively. Label each corner of the room. While the music plays, everyone tiptoes to a corner. One child with their eyes covered calls out a corner, and everyone standing in it sits down. The last one standing calls next.
• Halloween trivia · table teams · 15 minutes · lively. Read out the easy round for kids: ten questions, several with three choices to pick from.
• Haunted house word hunt · table teams · 10 minutes · quiet. Write HAUNTED HOUSE on the board. Each team makes as many words as it can from those letters in five minutes. A point a word, and 2 for a word no other team found.

Put the class scoreboard on the projector with the free online score keeper. Add each table team and tap + for every point. It runs in the browser, with nothing to sign up for.

Halloween family game night

A night in with the family, with the porch light on for trick-or-treaters. Take games you already own, give them a Halloween twist, and keep score between knocks at the door.

• Uno for candy · 2 to 10 · 10 minutes a hand · loud. Everyone starts with ten pieces of candy. Each time you're made to draw, put a piece in the bowl, and whoever goes out takes the bowl. Keep score to 500 as well, if you like.
• Farkle · 2 or more · about 45 minutes · loud. Six dice and a choice every roll: bank the points or push your luck. For Halloween, the whole table says boo at every farkle, and the first past 10,000 gets first pick of the candy bowl.
• Boo-nco · 4 to 12 · about an hour · lively. Bunco with fewer players, at one or two tables. Shout boo instead of bunco when someone rolls three of the round's number.
• Haunted mini golf · 2 to 6 · 30 minutes · loud. Build nine holes through the house or the yard: a tunnel of books, a ramp made from a baking tray, a cup under a chair draped as a ghost. Use a toy putter, or a broom and a tennis ball. Count every stroke, 6 at most a hole, and the lowest total wins.
• Halloween Taboo · 4 or more in two teams · 30 minutes · loud. Write your own cards from the prompts below, each with three words you can't say. For ghost: no sheet, boo or haunted.
• Mexican Train · 2 to 10 · two hours or more · lively. Dominoes for a long night in, once the trick-or-treaters stop coming.
• Halloween trivia · the whole family · 20 minutes · lively. The kids' round first, then the grown-ups' round, with the kids marking the answers.

Halloween charades and Pictionary prompts

Copy them onto slips of paper, fold them into a bowl or a toy cauldron, and draw one a turn. Act it out for charades, or draw it for Pictionary with no letters, numbers or talking. Give each turn a minute, and a point for each one guessed in time. These first 20 suit younger players.

• Ghost
• Witch on a broomstick
• Black cat
• Bat
• Pumpkin
• Carving a pumpkin
• Spider web
• Trick-or-treating
• Haunted house
• Dancing skeleton
• Mummy
• Vampire with a cape
• Werewolf howling at the moon
• Scarecrow
• Candy corn
• Bobbing for apples
• Full moon
• Witch stirring a cauldron
• Frankenstein's monster
• Owl

Harder prompts for teens and adults

• Running out of candy
• A costume that's too big
• Telling a ghost story by flashlight
• Jumping at a scary film
• Sorting the candy after trick-or-treating
• Trading candy with your brother or sister
• Getting a toothbrush instead of candy
• A vampire at the dentist
• A witch whose broom won't start
• A mummy coming unwrapped
• Lost in a corn maze
• A haunted hayride
• A dog dressed as a hot dog
• A couples costume
• Pumpkin spice latte
• The Monster Mash
• Hocus Pocus
• Ghostbusters
• The Addams Family
• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Run a Halloween costume contest

A costume contest gives everyone a reason to dress up, and a scored vote keeps it fair. Tell guests the categories with the invitation, so they can aim for one.

• Choose the categories. Scariest, funniest, most creative, best homemade and best group costume suit most parties. At work, add best last-minute costume. At a kids' party, have enough categories that every child wins one.
• Parade first, vote after. Each person or group crosses the room and says who they are. Take a photo of every costume as it passes.
• Score the vote. Every guest picks a top three, never their own costume: 3 points for first, 2 for second and 1 for third. Or ask three judges to score each costume from 1 to 10 for creativity, effort and staying in character.
• Add it up. The highest total wins overall, and each category goes to the costume with the most points in it, or to a show of hands.
• Break a tie with the most first-place votes. If it's still level, both costumes cross the room once more and the room cheers for its favourite.
• Play for something. A pumpkin sprayed gold as a trophy, a bag of candy, or first pick from the candy bowl.

Keep the vote in Tallynight. Choose Something else, then Rounds, with the highest score winning, and add each costume as a player, with its photo from your library if you like. Type each guest's or judge's points as a round on one keypad, and the table adds them up. When the game ends, the top three stand on the podium with their photos, ready to send to the group chat.

A Halloween tournament with one leaderboard

A tournament turns a Halloween party, or a week of family game nights, into one competition. Mix games of skill and games of luck, so the kids have a real chance against the grown-ups.

• Pick four to six events. Pumpkin bowling, the mummy wrap, a card game, a dice game, Halloween Pictionary and the costume contest.
• Make teams and name them after monsters: the Mummies, the Vampires, the Werewolves. Mix the ages in each.
• Give points for places. In each event, first place gets 3 tournament points, second 2 and third 1. With more teams, first gets a point for each team and every place after gets one fewer.
• Keep the leaderboard where everyone can see it, and update it after every event.
• Play for something. A golden pumpkin trophy, first pick of the trick-or-treat haul, or the choice of next year's family costume theme.

Three ways to keep the leaderboard

In the Tallynight app. Score each event in Tallynight as you play it. Every finished game is kept with its winner and scores, and whoever wins outright takes the belt. For the overall standings, start one more game: choose Something else, then Rounds, with the highest score winning, and add each team. After each event, type everyone's tournament points as a round. The table keeps the totals and who's in front, and the race chart replays the whole night at the end.

With Tallynight Pro, the Family Hall of Fame keeps wins, longest streaks, head to head and records across every game you finish, from one Halloween to the next.

On a laptop or the TV. The free online score keeper works in any browser, with Full screen for the whole room. The game stays in that browser until you clear it.

On paper. Print a blank score sheet, write the teams across the top and one event on each row, and tape it to the fridge.

Tallynight

Keep score for the whole party

Tallynight is a score keeper for iPhone and iPad, free with no ads. Pick a game and its scoring is ready, or set up your own for pumpkin bowling or the costume contest. Each player or team gets a big tile in their colour, and a turn timer runs for charades and Pictionary.

• A turn timer for charades and Pictionary
• Rounds that add up, for every judge's votes
• A podium for the top three, with their photos if you like
• With Tallynight Pro, the Family Hall of Fame: wins, streaks, head to head and records

Download on the App Store