Everyone’s invited over for your New Year’s Eve party, and you’re worried about entertainment for the hours of potential dead time until that magic moment at midnight. While there are standard ways to help with entertainment such as music and food, New Year’s Eve games will show everyone a good time.

Dress to Suit the Hat

Find a large assortment of hats to be handed out when people arrive. You can look at used-goods stores such as Goodwill. Give people a choice of hats, and as they choose the hat, they adopt a new name and persona, perhaps a king or queen or someone famous in history, and talk about their New Year’s resolutions for that persona. After a period of time, have everyone try to guess the identities of others. Turn the hats back in, and have everyone adopt their normal lives back.

I Resolve

Write down as many resolutions as you can think of on pieces of paper that you fold and put into a hat. Make some of the resolutions funny and silly. As guests arrive for your New Year’s Eve party, everyone needs to take a slip of paper from the hat and read the resolution. If that person doesn’t like the resolution, that person must find someone else at the party to trade with. As midnight approaches, everyone must read their final resolution aloud.

Celebrity Hunt

For this game, write down the names of famous celebrities on index cards or sticky notes. As the final 60 minutes count down to midnight, players take turns having a name taped to their forehead without seeing which name is chosen. The player with the celebrity name goes around the room and asks yes-or-no questions until the player realizes which celebrity is taped to their forehead or else the player gives up. The countdown to the New Year provides motivation to guess quickly.

Acronyms

Divide the party guests into groups or have them group themselves. Using a pen and paper, assign acronyms to each group, making the acronym stand for something silly or humorous, but it must relate to the New Year, such as People With No Resolutions (PWNR). Announce the acronym names for each group and have them try to guess what each letter stands for. Establish a time limit for guessing, such as 30 minutes to midnight, and if they don’t guess correctly in time, you get to tell them the answer.