Power Hour Drinking Game

One shot of beer, every minute, for sixty minutes.

Also known as: Century Club (extended)

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Players 1-20

You needShot glasses, beer, a timer or playlist

DrinkBeer

Intensity

Time60 min

Play Power Hour online

Power Hour is the marathon of drinking games, and the concept fits on a sticky note: take one shot of beer every sixty seconds for sixty minutes. No cards, no cups to arrange, no complicated scoring - Just you, a shot glass, a timer, and the slow realization around minute forty that math is no longer your friend. It sounds trivially easy. It is not. That gap between expectation and reality is the whole game.

The classic way to run it is with a Power Hour playlist: sixty songs that each play for one minute, so every track change is your cue to drink. That turns a simple endurance test into a party soundtrack, and it means nobody has to babysit a stopwatch. Finish all sixty and you have officially survived a Power Hour. Feeling ambitious? The hundred-minute version is called Century Club, and very few people finish it gracefully.

What you need & setup

Give every player a shot glass (roughly 1.5 oz) - Plastic ones are smart for later in the hour.
Stock enough beer per person: sixty shots is roughly four 12-oz beers, so keep cans or a pitcher within reach.
Queue up a Power Hour playlist with one-minute song changes, or set a repeating 60-second timer.
Put water and snacks on the table before you start, not after.
Agree on the house rules: what happens if someone misses a minute, and when tapping out is fine (always).

How to play Power Hour

Pour and take your positions

Everyone sits within arm's reach of their beer supply and shot glass. Pour your first shot before the timer starts so minute one doesn't catch you fumbling. Designate one person as DJ to start the playlist or timer - After that, the clock runs itself and nobody touches it.

Start the clock

Hit play. The moment the first song starts, the hour has begun. From here on, the only rule that matters is the sixty-second cycle. There are no turns and no eliminations in the base game - Every player is simply racing the same clock, together, at the same pace.

Drink on every song change

Each time the song switches (or the timer beeps), everyone takes one shot of beer, then immediately refills. Sip-sized, not heroic - It's 1.5 oz, sixty times. The first fifteen minutes feel like a joke. Minutes thirty through forty-five are where the game quietly reveals itself.

Keep the refill rhythm

Refill right after you drink, not right before the next cue. Scrambling to pour with five seconds left is how beer ends up on the carpet. A good rhythm is: drink, pour, relax for fifty seconds. Players who fall behind take only the current shot - Never double up to catch up.

Call your own exit

Anyone can tap out at any minute with zero penalty and zero commentary. Feeling full, dizzy, or done is a fine reason. The game rewards finishing, but a good table respects quitting more than it mocks it. Swap to water and keep hanging out - Spectating minute fifty is genuinely entertaining.

Finish the hour

When song sixty ends, everyone still drinking has completed a Power Hour. Toast with water, log your survivors, and take a real break before anyone even thinks about another game. If your crew finishes comfortably, next time tighten the rules - Don't add minutes until you understand what an hour really does.

The rules

Take one shot of beer (about 1.5 oz) every time the song changes or the timer sounds - Once per minute, no more.
Beer only in the shot glass. Wine, liquor, and seltzer-with-attitude turn this game dangerous fast.
Refill immediately after each shot so you're never pouring against the clock.
Miss a cue? Take the current shot only. Never double up on missed minutes.
No skipping songs and no pausing the clock except for genuine emergencies or bathroom truces.
If the group calls a bathroom truce, the timer pauses for everyone - No one drinks during a truce.
Anyone may tap out at any time with no penalty, no chirping, and no peer pressure.
Everyone who completes minute sixty finishes together - Power Hour has survivors, not winners.
Nobody starts a second Power Hour the same night. House rule, non-negotiable.

Variations & house rules

Half Hour Power

Exactly what it sounds like: thirty minutes, thirty shots of beer, roughly two beers total. This is the smart starting point for first-timers, lighter drinkers, or a pregame with somewhere to be afterward. Everything else stays identical - One-minute songs, shot glasses, tap-out-anytime. Most groups discover thirty minutes is plenty of game.

Century Club

The infamous hundred-minute extension: one beer shot per minute for one hundred minutes, roughly six and a half beers. This is a genuine endurance event with a high dropout rate, and it should only ever be attempted with light beer, food, and a group that already handles a standard Power Hour easily. Honestly, most tables should admire it from a distance.

Movie Power Hour

Swap the playlist for a film and drink at the top of every minute using a phone timer, or on a recurring on-screen cue. Pairing the hour with something to watch makes the middle stretch fly by and keeps the group in one room. Comedies work best - Nobody remembers the plot of anything after minute forty anyway.

DJ Battle Power Hour

Each player queues songs into a shared playlist before the game, one minute per track, with credit announced as each song plays. Between shots, the table rates the pick. Worst-rated DJ of every ten-minute block does a silly forfeit - Sing along, do a lap, wear the party hat. Adds banter without adding alcohol.

Zero-Proof Power Hour

Run the full sixty minutes with alternating water and a non-alcoholic beer or soda, or go entirely alcohol-free. It sounds like a joke until you try drinking anything sixty times in an hour - The endurance-ritual comedy survives fully intact. Perfect for designated drivers, dry months, or anyone who wants the bit without the buzz.

Pro tips

Use light beer. Over sixty shots, the difference between 4% and 7% beer is the difference between a fun hour and a rough night.

Eat a real meal beforehand. A Power Hour on an empty stomach is a beginner mistake everyone makes exactly once.

Pre-build the playlist with sixty genuinely good one-minute cuts - Song quality carries the back half of the hour.

Keep a water glass next to your shot glass and sip between cues, especially after minute thirty.

Plastic shot glasses save your floor. Coordination at minute fifty is not what it was at minute five.

Plan nothing for afterward except couches, water, and food. The hour ends; its effects are just getting started.

Where Power Hour fits on the shelf

Power Hour is the most intense of the 11 screen games on this site, rated 4 out of 5.
It is one of the few games here that genuinely works with just 1 players, and it stays fun up to 20.
Budget real time for it (60 min) - this is a main event, not a filler game.
Browse the full tv, movie & music games shelf to compare all 11 games side by side.

A little history

Power Hour's exact origin is murky, but it appears to have spread through American college campuses sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, likely helped along by homemade mixtapes with one-minute song clips. The rise of MP3 playlists and later dedicated Power Hour apps and YouTube mixes in the 2000s turned a dorm-room ritual into a party standard. Nobody can credibly claim to have invented it, and plenty of schools swear they did.

Drink responsibly: Power Hour packs roughly four beers into a single hour - A genuinely fast pace even for experienced drinkers. Use light beer, eat beforehand, keep water in the rotation, and treat the half-hour or zero-proof versions as first-class options. Tap out early, tap out proudly. See our safety guide for pacing tips and alcohol-free versions.

Power Hour FAQ

How much do you actually drink in a Power Hour?

Sixty shots at roughly 1.5 oz each comes to about 90 oz of beer - Close to four 12-oz beers in a single hour. That's a fast pace by any standard, which is why light beer, a full stomach, water breaks, and a guilt-free tap-out rule aren't optional extras; they're part of the game.

What's the difference between Power Hour and Century Club?

Length. Power Hour is sixty shots over sixty minutes; Century Club stretches it to one hundred shots over one hundred minutes, or roughly six and a half beers. Century Club is dramatically harder than the extra forty minutes suggest, and most groups treat it as a rare special event rather than a standard party game.

Do I need a special app or playlist?

No, but it helps. Any repeating sixty-second timer works fine. That said, a proper Power Hour playlist - Sixty one-minute song clips - Does the timekeeping automatically and doubles as the party soundtrack. Free Power Hour mixes are easy to find on YouTube, and several apps will chop your own playlist into one-minute segments.

Can you play Power Hour with liquor or wine?

You shouldn't. Sixty shots of anything stronger than beer is a medical emergency, not a game - Even wine would triple the alcohol involved. Power Hour is calibrated specifically around beer's low strength. If beer isn't your thing, play the half-hour version with a low-ABV alternative or run the zero-proof variation instead.

What happens if I miss a minute?

Nothing dramatic - Take the shot for the current minute and carry on. The one hard rule is that you never drink extra to make up missed cues, because doubling up defeats the entire pacing structure that makes Power Hour manageable. If you're missing multiple cues in a row, that's your body voting to tap out.

Power Hour Drinking Game

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What you need & setup