Name: Antics party data: how groups play party games, 26 August to 4 October 2026
Creator: Antics
Published: 2026-10-05
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

9pm is party o’clock

The busiest hour to start a party is 9pm to 10pm, UK time: 15% of all parties kick off in that one hour. Three in five (59%) start between 6pm and midnight, and more start between 9pm and midnight (35%) than in the whole stretch from 5am to 6pm (28%).

Parties starting in each part of the day, per hour (UK time)
Time	Bar	Share of parties
5am to noon		1.5% an hour
Noon to 6pm		2.9% an hour
6pm to 8pm		5.8% an hour
8pm to 9pm		12.2%
9pm to 10pm		15.2%
10pm to 11pm		11.4%
11pm to midnight		8.7%
Midnight to 5am		2.6% an hour

Longer stretches are shown per hour so they compare fairly with single hours.

A party starts at its first card that wasn’t skipped. Times are UK clock time. Most Antics groups play in the UK and Ireland, so a group abroad shows up at the wrong hour: an evening in New York lands after midnight here.

Saturday is the big night

A Saturday night gets 1.8 times as many parties as a Monday to Thursday night. Sunday and Friday come next. We count a night from 5am to 5am, so a party that starts at 1am on Sunday belongs to Saturday night.

Parties per night, where an average night is 100
Night	Bar	Index
Monday night		97
Tuesday night		67
Wednesday night		84
Thursday night		82
Friday night		105
Saturday night		148
Sunday night		114

Nights from Wednesday 26 August to Saturday 3 October 2026.

The window covers freshers fortnight at most UK universities, which lifted every night of the week in mid September.

Three in four parties play more than one game

75% of parties switch game at least once, and a third (32%) play four or more. It isn’t just the free cards running out: in parties with the full decks unlocked, two in three (67%) still switch.

Never Have I Ever and Antics mode each turn up in almost half of all parties (46% and 45%). Antics mode is the most common first game (27% of parties), and the most common switch is from Antics mode straight into Never Have I Ever (11%).

Games played per party
Games	Bar	Parties
One game		25%
Two games		25%
Three games		19%
Four or more		32%

Parties that played each game
Game	Bar	Parties
Never Have I Ever		46%
Antics mode		45%
Truth or Dare		41%
Most Likely To		39%
Would You Rather		33%
The Four Kings		23%
What Are The Odds		23%
Spicy		21%
Imposter		20%

Antics mode is the first tile on the app’s home screen, which helps it get picked first. Percentages are rounded, so they may not add to 100.

Truth goes first. Dare catches up

64% of Truth or Dare games open with a truth. Over every pick, dare edges it: 52% of all picks were dares. The longer a game runs, the braver it gets. In games that ran past 20 picks, the share of dares climbs from 40% in the first five picks to 49% after the twentieth.

Truth or dare: what groups pick
Picks	Truth and dare
The first pick of a game	64% truth, 36% dare
Every pick	48% truth, 52% dare
Long games: first five picks	60% truth, 40% dare
Long games: after the twentieth pick	51% truth, 49% dare

A game here is one session of the app that played Truth or Dare, and every pick is a tap on the Truth or the Dare button. In the app, Truth sits above Dare, which may nudge the first tap. For long games each game counts equally, so one marathon game can’t outvote the rest.

One in seven Never Have I Ever cards gets skipped

About one in seven Never Have I Ever cards (15%) gets flicked past in under two seconds, nearly three times the rate for Truth or Dare (5%). Only Spicy, the app’s 18+ deck, is skipped more often (16%).

Would You Rather and Truth or Dare hold the room longest, at about 15 seconds a card. That’s more than twice as long as a Never Have I Ever card (7 seconds). Part of that is the format: one is a single line, the other starts an argument.

Never Have I Ever

Sent a message to the group chat that was meant for one person.

Would You Rather

Ten grand right now or A hundred a week for life

Two real cards, both free in the app.

Cards skipped in under two seconds
Game	Bar	Skipped
Spicy		16.5%
Never Have I Ever		14.9%
What Are The Odds		11.1%
Most Likely To		10.7%
Antics mode		9.5%
The Four Kings		8.6%
Would You Rather		7.9%
Truth or Dare		5.3%

Typical seconds a card stays on screen
Game	Bar	Median
Would You Rather		15.4 s
Truth or Dare		14.6 s
Most Likely To		11.4 s
Antics mode		8.5 s
The Four Kings		8.3 s
Spicy		8.0 s
What Are The Odds		7.4 s
Never Have I Ever		6.6 s

A skip is a card on screen for under two seconds: too quick to read out. A run of five or more quick flicks in a row counts as scrolling, not skipping, and is left out. Imposter deals whole rounds, not cards, so it isn’t in these charts. Seconds on screen come from 6 September onwards, when the app started measuring them exactly, and leave out any card that was still up when the phone switched to another app.

How we counted

Window: 26 August to 4 October 2026, UK days, read on 5 October 2026.
Source: Antics’ own anonymous in-app analytics, from App Store and Google Play versions only. Phones on TestFlight, Google Play internal testing or a development build, and anything played in a web browser, are left out. The app never records names, typed text or anyone’s answers.
A party: One session of the app with at least 10 cards read. If a group closes the app and opens it again, that counts as two parties.
A skip: A card on screen for under two seconds. Runs of five or more quick flicks in a row are scrolling and are left out.
Small numbers: Every figure clears a minimum sample size, and anything thinner was cut.
Who this is: Antics groups, not everyone. Only groups who opened Antics are in it, and the app is rated 18+. Most play in the UK and Ireland.
What it can’t tell you: Who is in the room, how many people (adding names is optional), anyone’s age, or which language a group plays in. The app records only taps on its language setting, and there were too few to say anything.

Use this data

Journalists, student media and bloggers are welcome to use these numbers. They’re free to use under CC BY 4.0: please credit Antics and link to this page. Ready-made charts are below.

Suggested credit

Source: Antics party data, 26 August to 4 October 2026.

Download the charts

Each chart comes as a landscape image for an article and a portrait one for a social post, with the source set into the image. Every figure on them is on this page.

Free to use with a link to anticsapp.com/party-data.