Comedy has always been subjective – which means finding funny card games to suit your player group can be a mammoth task. You might find a game that gets the kids laughing, but grandma still doesn’t know what a meme is. Likewise, you probably don’t want to sit down to a game of Cards Against Humanity with grandma or your children (although, it does depend on the grandma).
Another challenge of funny card games is finding ones that are actually fun. After all, the million-and-one ‘would you rather’ clones on the market right now aren’t going to cut it with a die-hard gamer group who are used to the best card games and best board games on the market. Where are the funny card games that everyone can enjoy? The answer? Right here.
These are the best funny card games around:
- Cards Against Humanity
- Monikers
- Joking Hazard
- Master Dater
- What Do You Meme
- Poetry for Neanderthals
- Don’t Get Got
Cards Against Humanity
Let’s start with the big name in funny card games. Cards Against Humanity is infamous for its dark humour, and no topic is too grim to touch. Honestly, what did we expect from a game that’s named after crimes against humanity?
In concept, Cards Against Humanity is so simple it made it onto our easy card games list. One player becomes the ‘card tzar’ for the round, and they play a random black card with a prompt. The rest of the players play a white card, and the card tsar chooses to award the black card to their favourite answer.
Make sure the card tsar reads the black card aloud with each of the optional answers for maximum funniness. And that’s it! You can set a point limit to decide a winner, or you can simply play until you’re sick of jokes about sperm whales.
Naturally, this is in the card games for adults category – we’ve even included it in a guide to drinking card games, so it’s definitely one for after the kids are in bed. There are family-friendly alternatives for anyone looking for something more PG. For example, Cards Against Humanity: Family Edition or Kids Against Maturity are both safe bets.
Monikers
Monikers is a clever adaptation of the classic party game Celebrity. Each round, one member from each of the game’s two teams is nominated to describe or imitate a person – crucially, they must do so without saying the person’s name. Monikers is made even harder (and more hilarious) by the sheer inanity of the people it makes you describe. Good luck describing Drunk Jeff Goldblum or Catherine the Great’s Horse to your family.
Monikers actually solves one of the biggest problems with the original game of Celebrity, and this makes it a fantastic game for groups of different age ranges and backgrounds. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what a Doge is – the Monikers card describes it to you, so you’re still able to give clues to your team.
One thing that often makes a funny game truly side-splitting is constraints. Monikers makes gameplay more difficult and more silly by imposing rules on what you can say round after round. In round one you can say anything you want; in round two, you can only say one word; and finally, round three forces you to use gestures and charades. Add a time limit on top of this, and Monikers is pure, glorious panic.
Joking Hazard
Cyanide and Happiness is a humorous stick-figure webcomic that’s entertained millions since it hit the internet in 2005. After creating a random comic generator, the comic’s creators realised they could make a pretty funny card game out of the same concept. And so Joking Hazard was born, a card game where you compete to add the funniest punchline to your own randomly generated webcomic.
Joking Hazard is another game that sits firmly in the camp of ‘offensive humour’. So, despite what the fun stick figures may imply, this isn’t a funny card game for family game night.
Master Dater
Cyanide and Happiness has clearly gone all-in on humorous card games, because we have another one to recommend you. Cyanide and Happiness: Master Dater, a quick-fire dating game with some unlikely characters looking for love.
If you’ve played the game Snake Oil, you know exactly what to expect here. Each round, one player becomes the ‘sexy single’, and they reveal three things they’re looking for in a romantic partner. All other players will need to use a ‘head’ and ‘body’ card from their hand to create a beau, and then they must explain why their monstrous creation is, in fact, the soulmate of the sexy single.
Master Dater is a solid choice if you’re new to tabletop gaming, as the rules can be explained in mere minutes. It has enough random (or, if you’re using some of the expansions, raunchy) cards to get a party talking, giggling, and guffawing.
What Do You Meme
Ah, memes – a versatile and often totally absurd form of humour, and one that’s become a lot more sophisticated since the days of ‘Can I Has Cheezburger’ cats. What Do You Meme is a card game that turns a generation of famous memes into a betting-style ‘would you rather’ party game.
Players take turns choosing a random scenario from the game’s book (or using one made up by the players) and choosing a meme from their hand to reflect how they would respond to the scenario. Each other player adds a meme of their own to the pile, and these are shuffled – then everyone attempts to correctly bet on which meme is the true reaction of the initial player. It’s Dixit, but with funny internet pictures.
Like actual memes, What Do You Meme is constantly evolving to include more and more internet comedy. There’s a Game of Thrones memes version, one with family-friendly memes, and even a Tiktok What Do You Meme edition – just in case you need a game to make your relatives feel really old.
Poetry for Neanderthals
For many of us, slapstick is our earliest introduction to comedy – just think of cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes where characters constantly beat each other black and blue. Poetry for Neanderthals is a card game from the publisher of Exploding Kittens that perfectly captures the feeling of slapstick comedy. Turns out, all it takes is a giant inflatable club.
Poetry for Neanderthals is another team game. Each round, one team member is handed a card with a fairly complex concept on it, and they have to describe it to their team in a way that allows them to correctly guess what’s on the card. So far, so Monikers.
However, you’re a caveman in this game, so you can only describe the concept on your card with single-syllable words. Using a lexicon any more complex than that loses you points – and a player from the other team gets to bash you over the head with the giant inflatable.
As you can imagine, a game of struggling to communicate and openly hitting each other with balloon weapons is bound to get families laughing. It’s not witty, sure, but ‘hitty’ comedy often does the trick.
Don’t Get Got
Don’t Get Got is a party game that takes you away from the gaming table and turns you into a secret agent. Everyone is handed six cards with seemingly easy missions on them – get a player to comment on your clothes, wear a hat, or reply ‘what?’ when you call their name.
The danger comes from the fact you can’t ‘get got’. If anyone asks whether what you’re doing is related to the game, you’ve failed that mission. Stealth and poker faces are common in Don’t Get Got – and they’re just as easily broken by the silliness of the game.
The first person to complete three missions is declared the winner of Don’t Get Got, but it’s common for people to want to keep playing all evening. We advise handing out missions at the start of a large party or event, and then watching the chaos unfold.