Team lies
A game in no way indebted to the classic game ‘two truths and a lie’ or the TV series Would I lie to you?. (This may be a lie, but it only serves to illustrate the point of the game.)
15 mins
This game involves teams telling two truths and a lie. The group then needs to work together to see if the other team is telling the truth or telling porky pies.
Divide your group up into as many teams of three as possible. Instruct each group that they need to come up with three facts about themselves as a collective group, one of which must be made-up. Encourage them to chat and get to know each other at this stage, and produce as outlandish facts as possible. For example they could claim that collectively they had lived on every continent on earth, that between them they owed two-thirds of the gross national debt of Greece, or that between them they have 13 limbs.
Each group gets an opportunity, one at a time, to share their facts about themselves, and once all the teams have had a chance to share their facts the other groups have the task of deciding facts are false. To aid them in this each group is allowed to ask one question of each other group. The group asked must answer the question truthfully if it is about either of the truths, but they are allowed to continue the fabrication if it is about their collective lie. Each team should then write down what they think the lie is for each of the other groups, before the answers are revealed.
Give each team ten points for each of the lies they correctly identify from the other teams, and then a further ten points for each time any other team incorrectly identifies their own lie.
Getting-to-know-each-other-ometer : 5/10.
A short but sweet opportunity to find out surprising facts about each other.
Human ‘Guess Who ’
A game in no way indebted to the classic children’s game ‘Guess Who?’
10 mins
Get your group to sit on chairs in a regular and even grid pattern (e.g. four rows of four people etc.) with two players standing in front of them. These players will compete against each other to see who can identify the other person’s picks in the shortest number of turns.
Instruct the first player to secretly identify one of the group seated in front of them and write this down so that you the youth leader can check there’s no sneaky changing- of-minds going on (if names are a bit tricky at this stage of the year get them to indicate which chair they are sitting on). Get the entire group to stand up, and then allow the other player to ask yes / no questions about the person who has been picked, e.g. is the person male? Are they wearing glasses? Do they have blonde hair? Is the person Danielle? After each question they need to instruct the relevant members of the group to sit down to help them see the remaining possibilities. Record the number of questions taken to identify the correct person, and then swap the roles over to see if their opponent can identify their person in a smaller number of guesses. This game works really well from a balcony!
Getting-to-know-each-other-ometer : 2/10.
Only really dealing with appearances, for in-depth relationship forming more CONVERSATION is needed.
Youth group ‘Top Trumps’
A game in no way indebted to the classic game ‘Top Trumps’.
15 mins
Before your group arrives, print off an appropriate number of blank ‘Top Trump’ cards on pieces of A4 paper. Include space for their name and a small picture, and then come up with seven categories to include as well. Include some factual ones (e.g. age, shoe size, numbers of siblings, height etc.) as well as more abstract ones (e.g. number of tall buildings leapt in a single bound, number of pianos that can be balanced on a finger, most tree houses built etc.).
As the young people arrive get them to fill in a form for themselves, with names and, most importantly, ‘scores’ in each category (if there’s time get them to draw themselves on the card as well). Make the cards look as professional as possible with boxes for the answers. Give any help needed as to the actual answers, e.g. provide tape measures, as well as providing some guidelines to help fill in answers in the abstract categories (e.g. offer a range of numbers from within which the players can choose their scores).
Divide your group into two teams, giving each player a random card, and get the two teams to play off against each other. Get them lined up, and instruct the two front people of each team to step forward and face each other. Toss a coin to see which team gets to start and allow the player from that team to pick which category to compare scores in. Whichever person has the highest score in that category wins, and both players go to the back of the line of the winning team. The next two players step forward, and the player from the team which won the last round picks a category to compare scores as before. Keep going until one team has all the players, or until an impasse is reached!
Getting-to-know-each-other-ometer : 7/10.
Mixes people up and finds out facts about each other, although possibly in a confusing way.
Actual Consequences
In no way at all indebted to the classic game of cons... you’ve got the idea by now.
10 mins
A quick and simple variation on the game ‘consequences’. Put out five pots / hats / boxes, and label them: ‘When’, ‘Where’, ‘Who’, ‘What happened first’, and ‘What happened next’. Put a pile of pieces of paper next to each pot and instruct your group to think back over their summer holidays and to highlight one exciting, interesting or funny thing that happened to them or their loved ones. Then get them to write down the appropriate part of the story on the bits of paper next to each pot, fold up the piece of paper and put it into the relevant pot. Explain that they have to be actual things that happened, although they are allowed to make up fictitious pen-names for the ‘who’ pot.
Draw out a piece of paper from each pot and seamlessly weave them together as a story - allow people to try and guess who the different bits of the story were from before revealing the authors.
Getting-to-know-each-other-ometer : 8.5/10.
Stories are a key element of who people are, and a great way of getting to know somebody, even in a jumbled up way.
