Drinking Board Games

Half the drinking games you love are just regular games with better rules bolted on. That deck of cards, that dusty Monopoly box, that Jenga tower in the closet - each becomes a social wrecking ball the moment you assign a sip to every setback. This guide shows you how to convert the classics into drinking board games, from Drunk Jenga and Drunk Uno to Monopoly, Sorry and Cards Against Humanity, plus the purpose-built boxes worth buying. It is the cheapest way to a great game night, since you already own most of the equipment. For the rest of the setup, lean on our hosting guide.

How to turn any board game into a drinking game

The formula behind every drinking board game is the same: find the moments where a player loses something - a turn, a token, a point - and attach a drink to it. That is really all Kings Cup and Ride the Bus are doing under the hood, and you can bolt the same logic onto almost any box on your shelf. The best candidates have frequent small setbacks, quick turns and a bit of luck, so no single player carries the whole tab.

Think in three levers. Loss triggers a drink (you go bankrupt, your piece gets sent home). Chance triggers a drink (you roll doubles, you draw a certain card). And milestones trigger a group drink (someone wins, someone passes Go). Keep every sip small - a board game can run an hour, so a full chug on every setback ends the night in round one. Pace beats punishment.

Drunk Jenga (Tipsy Tower): the modern classic

Drunk Jenga, sometimes called Tipsy Tower, is the single easiest classic to convert and the most fun. Take a standard Jenga set and write a rule or a challenge on each block with a marker: take 2, give 2, waterfall, rhyme or drink, truth or dare, or social where everyone drinks. Whoever pulls the block does what it says, and the game ends the way Jenga always does, with a spectacular collapse and one final penalty for whoever knocked it over.

The genius is that the tower writes the game for you. Mix easy sips with a handful of wild-card blocks - make a rule, category, pick a partner - so the tension builds with every pull. Because it is a physical skill game, it also stays fun for people who are not big drinkers; the challenge of the pull is half the entertainment.

Pro tip: use a permanent marker and keep the ruleset PG-to-medium for mixed groups, then keep a second, spicier set of blocks for closer friends. One box, two very different nights.

Drunk Uno and other card-driven boxes

Card games convert almost instantly. Drunk Uno is the headliner: keep every normal Uno rule and simply add drinks to the action cards. Draw Two means drink two, Draw Four means drink four (and the next player deals with the color), Reverse makes the person to your other side drink, Skip makes the skipped player drink, and forgetting to say Uno costs you a hearty sip. The loser of each round drinks based on the cards left in their hand.

The same swap works for other card boxes. Cards Against Humanity becomes a drinking game when the card czar's least-favorite answer each round takes a drink, and the round winner assigns a sip to anyone they like. For deck-of-cards purists, Pyramid and Irish Poker are ready-made drinking board games in miniature - all bluffing, memory and assigned sips, no special equipment required.

Monopoly, Sorry and Trouble go drinking

The big-box classics are begging for house rules. In Monopoly, drink when you pay rent, finish your drink when you go bankrupt, take a sip every time you pass Go, and drink twice when you land in Jail. It stretches the notoriously long game into something loud and social, and it hands out sweet justice to whoever owns Boardwalk with a hotel.

Movement games with sent-home mechanics are naturals. In Sorry and Trouble, you drink every time your piece gets bumped back to start, and the whole table drinks when someone wins. The constant sabotage that makes those games frustrating becomes the entire point once drinks are attached.

Even word games play. In drinking Scrabble, take a sip per tile in any word you fail to challenge successfully, or drink the point difference on a lopsided round. Connect Four, checkers and dominoes all work the same way - the loser of each quick round drinks, then you rack up and go again.

The classic-to-drinking-rule cheat sheet

Not sure where to start? This cheat sheet maps a handful of classics to a simple, road-tested drinking rule. Treat them as a base and adjust the sip sizes to your crowd.

Purpose-built drinking board games

If you would rather buy than DIY, plenty of purpose-built drinking board games exist - pre-printed Drunk Jenga block sets, roll-and-drink party boards, trivia-and-shots boxes and adult spins on Snakes and Ladders. They save you the marker work and come with a ready-made ruleset, which is handy for a party where you do not want to explain anything.

That said, the DIY classics are free and endlessly customizable, which is why most hosts stick with them. If you want to branch beyond the tabletop, a backyard Drunk Cornhole board brings the same lose-a-round-take-a-sip loop outdoors, Quarters turns any table into a bounce-and-drink game, and a Power Hour playlist keeps a slow board game ticking with a group sip every sixty seconds.

Pick a game and set your house rules

Once you have picked a game, set your house rules out loud before the first turn - especially sip sizes and any finish-your-drink penalties. The table below sizes up the go-to drinking board games so you can grab the right one for your group and mood.

As always, keep water and snacks on the table, use small sips so an hour-long game does not turn into a sprint, and let anyone play with a soft drink or a sip-when-you-want pass. Board games are a marathon format - the goal is to still be laughing when someone finally wins, not tapped out by the second lap.

Frequently asked questions