Ready-to-use games + Icebreakers: The last one

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LOSER

A game with no winners, only losers, much like Monopoly. Or life.

10 mins 

This game requires no props, and works with any size group as long as the young people can see each other easily (get them sitting in a circle to enable this). All the game consists of is one person (Bob) pointing at another person (Bill) in the circle and saying their own name (‘Bob’). That person (Bill) then has to point at someone else (Jane), again saying their own name (‘Bill’), and so on. There are three rules: if you point at the person who pointed at you, you become a loser and must sit for the rest of the game holding your hand in the universal loser sign on your forehead (right handed, thumb and forefinger forming right angle), if you say a name other than your own while pointing at someone you become a loser (and hold your hand in the loser sign) and if you point at someone who is a loser, you become a loser. You might wish to enforce a speed rule to keep people from stalling for thinking time, but this game very rapidly becomes quite difficult. Keep going until there are only two people left, or everyone else gets bored.

Obviously any game named ‘Loser’ can have negative undertones, so there is definitely something to be said for trying to ensure that any vulnerable young people don’t end up labelled too enthusiastically as losers in this game.

STICKING YOUR NOSE IN…

For just £5 a month, you can help teenagers like these afford to eat enough so that they don’t have to cover themselves in Nutella for sustenance.

5 mins 

Not a game for people who don’t like a bit of mess and equally not a great game for carpeted areas or white t-shirts, but apart from that, a sure-fire winner. This game requires a family size bag of Maltesers (or two), a jar of chocolate spread and a couple of bowls. The challenge of the game is to move a bowlful of Maltesers from one end of the room to the other, using only a nose smeared in chocolate spread (as with any game involving food, check for any allergies beforehand).

This game works best as a relay race so divide your group into teams and give each team a bowl full of Maltesers and another empty bowl placed at the other end of the room. Smear a dollop of chocolate spread on the nose of each participant and get them (one at a time) to pick up as many Maltesers as they can. The only way they are allowed to carry them is by using their nose, and they must carry them on their nose to the bowl at the other end of the hall. Once they have successfully deposited their Maltesers, they return to their team and the next person has a go. Any dropped Maltesers are returned to the first bowl and the winning team is the first to transport all their Maltesers to the second bowl. Allow carrying of multiple Maltesers, as it’s nigh on impossible to pick up only one at a time.

PRISONBALL

This game is almost exactly like prison. Except with more foam balls and harsher sentencing.

15 mins 

This is my favourite variation of dodgeball, and works best for larger groups with energy. You will need a large playing area (a church hall works superbly) a number of foam footballs (ideally two or more, but use as many as your playing area can cope with), a clear eye and a loud voice to ensure fair refereeing.

Set up your playing area along a large hall, marking a clear divide across the middle, and making two clearly identifiable ‘prisons’ that stretch across the width of the playing area, at each end of the hall. Divide your group into two equal teams, putting one team into each half of your playing area, and explain that the aim of the game is to get all of the opposing team into the prison behind them.

The way to do this is using standard dodgeball technique of throwing a foam ball so it cleanly hits a member of the opposition below the waist - no rebounds or bounces allowed. Once a person is hit in this way they are sent to the prison behind the opposing team. However, once they are there they remain active in the game, and when one of the balls manages to get into the prison they can regain their freedom by getting a member of the opposition out by hitting them below the waist in the normal dodgeball way. If they do this they go back into the main playing area and the hit player has to go to their team’s prison. Explain that the players have to stay in their half of the playing area at all times, unless they’ve been sent to prison, at which point they have to stay within the prison area until they regain their freedom. Once there is someone in the prison the opposition aren’t allowed into it to fetch a ball.

Once a team has all its players in prison at the same time they lose, but as any players in prison can be freed at any time this game can go on for a while. You may need an eagle eye to see when exactly the last person on a team is sent to prison and simultaneously check that no one from their team has managed to earn their freedom.

Other ideas...

In which Jimmy does himself out of a job…

The best source of ideas for games is simply you and your group’s creativeness. As Mary Poppins teaches us (somewhere in Leviticus?), in the right circumstances anything can be a game. Somehow end up with vast supplies of ping pong balls? Get inspired by The Cube and see how long it takes someone to clear them all out of a large bowl, or try and roll them along a thin pathway. Find a cleaning cupboard full of those wide-headed sweeping brushes? Get a lightweight football and invent a variant of football / hockey using the brooms. A random section of rope? Tug-of-war. Thousands of straws? Set your group a challenge to build something. An abundance of cotton wool balls? Cover a sheet of paper with something sticky and see from how far away your group can throw them at the paper and get them to stick. Or if all else fails, gather a random selection of rubbish from your cupboard, plonk it in front of your group and get them to invent a game.