Hen do games that need no props, no printing and no laminating

Somebody has to organise the hen do and that somebody is, apparently, you. The Airbnb is booked, the sashes are still a maybe, and you have a group chat of eleven people ranging from the bride's school friends to two women from her office to her mum's cousin who nobody has ever met. All of them arrive on a Friday afternoon and all of them are quietly hoping someone else does the talking first.

Games fix that faster than anything else, as long as you pick the right ones. Which means no props, no printing, no laminated quiz sheets you assembled at 1am while questioning your life choices. It means something that runs on one phone in a living room, survives being carried to a restaurant table, and does not collapse the moment three of the group aren't drinking. That last one catches out more hen dos than anything else.

Every prompt on this page is lifted straight out of Antics, our pass-the-phone party games app, exactly as it appears in the app. Nothing here is made up for the article. Read them off this page if you like, or open Antics and let it deal them with everyone's actual names in.

This guide explains the traditional games as they are played offline. Antics for iOS is a party-only app built on forfeits and contains no drinking instructions.

What actually works on a hen do

The test for a hen do game is brutally simple. Can one person pick it up cold, with no setup, and have the room laughing inside ninety seconds? If it needs printing, cutting out, blu-tack, a bag of props or an explanation longer than a sentence, it will get abandoned in favour of everyone looking at their phones.

Pass-the-phone games pass that test because there is nothing to lose, nothing to carry and nothing to explain. One phone goes round the circle, whoever holds it reads the card out loud, the room reacts, tap for the next one. It works on a sofa, standing up in a kitchen, in the back of a minibus and at a table waiting forty minutes for mains.

The other rule: the bride should not be running it. She is the reason everyone is there. Put the phone in someone else's hand and let her just play.

The icebreaker problem: half the room has never met

This is the actual hen do difficulty. The school friends have twenty years of shared history. The work friends know a completely different version of the bride. The cousin knows her from Christmases. Everyone is polite, nobody is loose, and the standard advice of "just do shots" fails immediately if some of the group aren't drinking.

Never Have I Ever is the right opener here, because it needs zero shared history. Everyone has done a walk of shame, everyone has sent a text to the wrong chat, and finding out that the quiet one from accounts has absolutely done both is the fastest bonding event known to science. Start with it before you go anywhere near a game that requires people to know each other's business.

Play it the easy way: read the card, and anyone who has done it drinks or takes a forfeit. Nobody has to explain anything unless they want to, and about four cards in, they will want to.

FROM THE ANTICS DECKNever Have I Ever: 16 openers for a room that half knows each other

1. Sent a message to the group chat that was meant for one person.
2. Said “I’m five minutes away” before leaving the house.
3. Rehearsed a “casual” text for twenty minutes.
4. Left someone on read for a week, then opened with “omg just seen this”.
5. Texted an ex something I instantly regretted.
6. Done a walk of shame past someone I knew.
7. Woken up somewhere with no idea how I got there.
8. Cried at pre-drinks before the night even started.
9. Comforted a total stranger crying in a club toilet.
10. Pretended to remember a night I’d completely blacked out.
11. Lost an item of clothing on a night out, never to be seen again.
12. Kissed a stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
13. Got with someone at a family wedding.
14. Practised kissing on my hand or a pillow.
15. Pretended to like a friend’s partner I couldn’t stand.
16. Hidden the good snacks before guests arrived.

Most Likely To is the one that welds the group together

Once everyone has confessed to a few things, switch to Most Likely To. Read the card, count down from three, everyone points at someone. Most fingers takes the drink or the forfeit. No abstaining, and self-pointing is allowed if you have the confidence.

Here is why it works so well on a hen do specifically. The school friends will point at each other on instinct, then someone from the work group points at the same person for completely different reasons, and suddenly the two halves of the room are comparing notes on the same woman. That is the whole job of a hen do done in about four cards.

Wedding-flavoured ones land especially well when the actual wedding is six weeks away and everyone has opinions.

FROM THE ANTICS DECKMost Likely To: 18 questions built for a hen do

1. Turn up late to their own wedding.
2. Cry at a stranger’s wedding.
3. Grab the mic at a wedding, uninvited.
4. End up in the family photos at a stranger’s wedding.
5. Get married in Vegas.
6. Marry someone from the group chat.
7. Get married first.
8. Have a breakdown over the group holiday spreadsheet.
9. Cry tonight.
10. Lose their phone tonight.
11. Be the last one dancing when the lights come on.
12. Befriend the bouncer by the end of the night.
13. Know the barman’s life story by last orders.
14. Show up to brunch in last night’s outfit and own it.
15. Get a tattoo on holiday. Of the holiday.
16. Leave every party without saying goodbye.
17. Say goodbye, then stay another hour.
18. Be the reason the gathering has rules now.

Truth or Dare, but save it for after dinner

Truth or Dare is the best game of the night and the worst game of the afternoon. Ask a room of half-strangers to perform a dare at 3pm and you will get a very long silence. Ask them at 10pm, after two games and a meal, and the mum's cousin will be doing a catwalk across the living room.

Two things make it work on a hen do. First, the dares should be doable in a living room with nothing but a phone and a sofa. Second, the truths should be aimed at the group rather than at anyone's private life, because you have people here who genuinely do not know each other yet.

The prompts below with names in them get a real name dealt in by Antics when you play. We have swapped in a name here so you can see how they read.

FROM THE ANTICS DECKTruths that suit a mixed hen do group

1. What was your honest first impression of Sophie?
2. Which two people in this room would make the best couple?
3. What’s the biggest red flag you’ve ignored because they were hot?
4. What’s the biggest ick someone’s ever given you?
5. What’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?
6. What’s the fastest you’ve ever fallen for someone?
7. Who was your first crush, and how bad was it?
8. What’s the most embarrassing thing in your camera roll right now? Describe it.
9. What’s your guilty-pleasure song? Bonus points: sing a line.
10. What’s the most embarrassing thing a family member has done in front of your friends?
11. Who in this room would you trust least with your phone unlocked?
12. What’s your most-used excuse for cancelling plans?
13. Whose approval do you want most in this room?
14. What’s your honest review of the last party this group threw?
15. What’s the one question you were hoping nobody would ask tonight?

FROM THE ANTICS DECKDares that work in an Airbnb living room

1. Tell the group your honest first impression of everyone here, one by one.
2. Deliver a wedding-style toast about Hannah.
3. Best fake proposal to Sophie. Ring optional, tears mandatory.
4. Recreate Steph’s laugh until they admit it’s accurate.
5. Reenact the moment you and Nat first met. They play themselves.
6. Interview Hannah for the position of your best mate. Three questions.
7. Do your best impression of the player on your left until they laugh.
8. Do your best impression of the group chat as a single person.
9. Read out the last thing you typed in your notes app.
10. Show the group your screen-time report. No explanations allowed.
11. Invent a dance move, teach it, everyone performs it.
12. Do your best catwalk across the room and back. Commit to it.
13. Hold eye contact with the player across from you for 60 seconds without laughing.
14. Give a heartfelt acceptance speech for an award you invent on the spot.
15. Let the group pose you for a photo on YOUR phone. It becomes your lock screen for the night.

The sober-friendly bit nobody plans for

Every hen do has this. Someone is driving. Someone is on antibiotics. Someone doesn't drink and never has. And on a decent number of hen dos, someone is quietly about nine weeks pregnant and has not told the group yet, which means the last thing she needs is a game where the only currency is booze and every skipped drink is a public announcement.

This is why Antics is a party-only app built on forfeits. Every single penalty is a forfeit: a dance, an accent, a ridiculous performance, something that costs dignity rather than a drink. Same cards, same games, nobody outed and nobody sat there feeling like the spare part.

The neat trick is that forfeits are frequently funnier than drinks anyway. Watching someone give an estate-agent tour of an Airbnb living room beats watching them sip a drink every time, and the group who aren't drinking end up running the whole night.

FROM THE ANTICS DECKForfeits built for a living room

1. Do your best runway walk across the room.
2. Sing everything you say for the next round.
3. Recite a nursery rhyme in your most dramatic acting voice.
4. Give tomorrow’s weather forecast in your best TV presenter voice.
5. Give a tearful Oscar speech thanking everyone in the room.
6. Announce the next player’s turn like a darts referee announcing a 180.
7. Do the macarena with zero music and full commitment.
8. Compliment yourself in the front camera, out loud, for 15 seconds.
9. Compliment every player in the room in under fifteen seconds. Go.
10. Invent and perform your signature dance move. Name it.
11. Give a 20-second estate-agent tour of this room. Sell its best features.
12. Ten seconds of a cappella karaoke. The group picks the song.
13. Declare the sofa a sovereign nation and hum its national anthem.
14. Give a solemn eulogy for the last snack you ate.
15. Rate everyone’s shoes out of ten. Justify each score.
16. Text your mum just the word “beans”. Nothing else.

Games at a restaurant table

The restaurant is where hen dos go quiet. You are split across a long table, the two ends can't hear each other, and there is a forty minute gap between ordering and food arriving. This is the single best moment of the day to get a game out, and the single worst moment to attempt anything involving standing up.

Stick to Most Likely To and Never Have I Ever here. Both are read-and-react, both work seated, and Most Likely To's pointing on three carries down a long table when conversation doesn't. Pick forfeits that are verbal rather than physical here, otherwise someone ends up doing star jumps next to a waiter carrying four plates.

The forfeits below all work sitting down, at volume, in public, without anyone being asked to leave.

FROM THE ANTICS DECKForfeits you can do at a table without getting thrown out

1. Speak in an accent for the next 2 rounds.
2. Speak only in questions until your next turn.
3. Speak in slow motion until your next turn.
4. Say “beep” at the end of every sentence for 2 rounds.
5. Talk without showing your teeth until your next turn.
6. Give your next answer as a haiku. Roughly.
7. For one round, refer to yourself only in the third person.
8. For one round, replace every filler word with “sausages”.
9. End your next three sentences with “…as the prophecy foretold”.
10. Speak at double speed for one round. Clarity is your problem.
11. Talk with your hands so much the group fears for nearby objects. One round.
12. Read out your last three Google searches.
13. Show the group today’s screen-time report. No explaining.

Antics mode, for when nobody can be bothered to choose a game

By about card sixty of anything, a group starts to drift. Antics mode is the answer to that: one continuous feed that mixes everything up. A statement for the whole room, then a card that singles out one person by name, then a rule that sticks for the next eight cards, then a challenge, then a vote. You never pick, you just keep tapping.

It is the mode we would put on at a hen do if you only ever open one, because it handles the whole arc of an evening on its own. The cards below all run on forfeits, which is what a mixed group will want.

FROM THE ANTICS DECKAntics mode cards, exactly as dealt

1. Group photo, one take, everyone in. Anyone who blinked takes the forfeit.
2. Around the room: compliments for the host. First to repeat one takes the forfeit.
3. Hannah, stand and give a ten-second toast to the room. Weak toast = forfeit.
4. Nat, describe this group’s chat in three words. Room votes: accurate, or forfeit.
5. Sophie, compliment the person opposite you. If they smile, they take the forfeit.
6. Point at the group mum or dad. They assign two forfeits, responsibly.
7. Point at who’s most likely to ghost the group chat for a week. Most votes takes the forfeit.
8. Take the forfeit if you’ve got a group chat muted right now.

How to pace the whole day

Afternoon, everyone arriving, bags still in the hallway: Never Have I Ever. Low effort, seated, no history required, and it does the introductions for you while people are still unpacking.

Getting ready, drinks poured, music on: Most Likely To. It is loud, it is fast, and it works while half the room is doing eyeliner in a mirror.

Dinner: Most Likely To again, or Never Have I Ever, with table-friendly forfeits. Do not start Truth or Dare in a restaurant. You will regret it and so will the staff.

Back at the Airbnb, late: Truth or Dare, or just put Antics mode on and let it run. This is when the dares land and when the group who arrived as strangers stop being strangers.

One last thing. Do not run games all day. Two or three good bursts of twenty minutes beats four hours of relentless prompting, and the bride will remember the bits in between just as much.

A note on reading the room

Hen dos have wider age ranges and thinner shared history than almost any other party, so someone needs to be watching. Antics deals plenty of spicy cards, and you can absolutely lean into that once the mums have gone to bed, but a card that lands beautifully with the school friends can land very differently with a colleague who met everyone four hours ago.

Skipping is free. Tap past anything that doesn't suit the room and nobody notices. The point of the whole exercise is that the bride ends the night surrounded by people who feel like they actually know each other, which is a much better souvenir than a laminated quiz.

Common questions