Best Halloween Drinking Games

A Halloween party has a built-in problem that Christmas does not: half the guests are wearing something they cannot drink in. The games below were picked to survive masks, gloves, and a living room lit by one pumpkin. Movie games come first, then the party drinking games built for a full house, then the seated games for the hour when the fake blood has started to itch. Each game is explained in a paragraph, most need nothing beyond a drink, and anything we invented is labeled as a house rule.

Hocus Pocus drinking game

Hocus Pocus is the Elf of Halloween: everyone has seen it, the triggers repeat on a timer, and nobody minds missing a scene. Published versions of this game differ, so the rules below are the triggers that show up in most of them. Pick four or five, and keep the “sisters” rule a sip, because it fires constantly.

• Drink when anyone says “sisters” or “sistahs”
• Drink when Winifred calls for her book
• Drink when someone says “virgin”
• Drink when the Sanderson sisters are baffled by the modern world (a bus, a paved road, a sprinkler)
• Drink when Binx tries to talk the kids out of something
• Drink twice when Billy Butcherson loses a body part
• Everyone drinks when the black flame candle is lit
• Finish your drink during “I Put a Spell on You”

Halloween movie drinking game

The original Halloween is a quiet film, which is what makes it scary and what makes most trigger lists too thin. No agreed rule set exists for it, so the list below is our house rules, tuned so a drink arrives every few minutes without talking over the tension. The same list works for the sequels, where Michael shows up more often and the drinks come faster. For any other slasher, use the horror template on our movie drinking games page.

• Drink when Michael appears somewhere he was not a second ago
• Drink when anyone mentions the boogeyman
• Drink when Dr. Loomis warns someone who does not listen
• Drink when a phone rings, or is answered to silence
• Drink when the piano theme starts
• Drink twice when Michael tilts his head
• Finish your drink when Michael vanishes from the lawn

The Nightmare Before Christmas drinking game

The trap in The Nightmare Before Christmas is that it is a musical, and “drink when someone sings” is the whole film. Count each song as one drink and the game paces itself. The triggers most versions agree on are Jack misreading Christmas and Oogie Boogie showing up; the rest below round the set out.

• Drink when Jack misunderstands something about Christmas
• Drink when anyone says “Sandy Claws”
• Drink when Zero appears
• Drink when the Mayor’s head spins to his other face
• Drink when Lock, Shock, and Barrel double-cross someone, including each other
• One drink per song, taken when it starts, not per line
• Finish your drink when Oogie Boogie comes apart at the seams

Costume contest drinking game

Every Halloween party already has a costume contest running silently in the corner; this gives it rules and a stage. These are house rules, since no official version exists, in the same shape as the ugly sweater judging on our Christmas list. Run it an hour in, while the costumes are still intact.

• Each contestant gets thirty seconds to present the costume and stay in character
• Drink if you have already had to explain what you are
• Drink if the costume came in a bag with a picture of it on the front
• Drink twice if someone else came as the same thing, both of you
• Anyone not in costume drinks once at the start and judges the rest
• Judges vote by pointing; the winner hands out five drinks and last place finishes theirs

Halloween Kings Cup

Kings Cup in a costume. The setup does not change: a big cup in the middle, the deck scattered face down around it, draw a card and do the card. The themed meanings below are our house set; any card not listed keeps its normal rule. Whoever draws the fourth King drinks the witches’ brew, which is whatever the table poured into the cup, so pour with mercy.

• Ace: Waterfall, everyone drinks and stops in order around the circle
• 4: Graveyard, last to touch the floor drinks
• 5: Monsters, everyone in costume drinks
• 6: Mortals, everyone not in costume drinks
• 7: Heaven, last to point at the ceiling drinks
• 8: Zombie, pick a victim who drinks whenever you drink for the rest of the game
• 9: Rhyme, the starting word has to be a Halloween word
• 10: Categories, Halloween only (horror villains, candy, things in a haunted house)
• Jack: Werewolf, everyone howls and the last to start drinks
• Queen: Fortune teller, the holder asks questions and anyone who answers drinks
• King: Make a rule and pour into the cup; the fourth King drinks the brew

Trick or Drink

Trick or Drink turns the candy bowl into the deck. The name floats around the internet attached to half a dozen different games, so treat this whole version as our house rule. You need a bowl, four or five kinds of wrapped candy, and a card that says what each kind means. The candy you collect is both the reward and the record of how your night is going.

• Write a rule for each candy type on a card by the bowl (chocolate means hand out two drinks, sour means take two, a lollipop starts a waterfall, candy corn means everyone drinks)
• On your turn, draw from the bowl without looking
• Do what the candy says, then keep it
• Draw the same type twice in a row and the rule passes to the player on your left
• When the bowl is empty, whoever kept the most candy hands out one last round of drinks

Bobbing for shots

Apple bobbing with a scoring system, not an actual tub of alcohol. Versions online swap the water for punch; do not do that, faces and shared punch are a bad mix, and a tub of drink is impossible to pace. Keep the water, number the apples, and keep the drinks on the table where they belong. The numbering is our house rule.

• Write a number from 1 to 3 on each apple in marker before it goes in the water
• Each player gets twenty seconds, hands behind the back
• Catch an apple and hand out that many drinks
• Come up empty and take one drink yourself
• Put towels by the tub, and face paint goes last or not at all

Pumpkin Pong

Beer Pong with two cursed cups a side. The base game is unchanged: ten cups in a triangle, throw, drink what gets hit. The curse is our house rule, and it is the right amount of theme, enough to feel like Halloween and not enough to need explaining twice.

• Set up and play standard Beer Pong, re-racks and rebuttals as your house plays them
• Before the game, mark two cups per side with a spider drawn on tape
• When a spider cup is sunk, the drinker also names a horror film within five seconds or drinks again
• No film can be named twice all night
• Bounced shots count double, as usual

Candy corn Flip Cup

Flip Cup in three rounds named for the stripes of a candy corn. The relay itself is the one you know: drink, set the empty cup on the table edge, flip it to land face down, next teammate goes. The stripe rounds are our house rule, and they give the game the escalation it otherwise lacks.

• Two teams line up on opposite sides of the table for a standard Flip Cup relay
• Round one is white, a sip in each cup
• Round two is orange, a third of a cup
• Round three is yellow, half a cup
• The losing team of each round takes one candy corn each and keeps it in view
• After three rounds, the team holding more candy corn drinks a final half cup

Werewolf drinking game

Werewolf, the campfire deduction game also played as Mafia, needs a narrator and eight or more players, and it is the best seated game a Halloween party can run. The base rules are the classic ones; the drinking layer is our house rule, kept light because the game is tense enough already.

• One player narrates and deals roles, with one werewolf per five players, one seer, and villagers for the rest
• Night: all eyes closed, the werewolves silently pick a victim, the seer checks one player
• Day: the narrator announces the victim, who drinks once and is out, but stays to watch
• The village debates and votes someone out; if the village got it wrong, everyone still alive drinks
• A caught werewolf finishes their drink and joins the dead
• The dead may drink, gesture, and gloat, but never speak

Scary story circle

The campfire game, moved indoors and given a forfeit. One story builds around the circle, one sentence per person, and the drinks go to whoever breaks the spell. Kill the lights; the game is twice as good when the only light is the pumpkin. The two-drink reward is our house rule.

• Sit in a circle and dim the room; the oldest player opens with “it was Halloween night, and…”
• Each player adds exactly one sentence that keeps the story going
• Hesitate, laugh, or derail the story into a joke, and you drink
• Whoever drinks starts a fresh story
• A sentence that makes the circle genuinely flinch earns the teller the right to hand out two drinks

Halloween Never Have I Ever

Never Have I Ever with the prompts pointed at October. The rules do not change: someone names a thing they have never done, and everyone who has done it drinks. The prompts below get a Halloween table started; after six or seven, the group writes better ones than any list. If the room would rather point at each other than confess, Most Likely To runs on the same kind of prompts with no setup.

• Never have I ever worn a costume I had to explain more than once
• Never have I ever worn a Halloween costume in a different month
• Never have I ever eaten a whole bag of Halloween candy alone
• Never have I ever turned off the porch light and pretended not to be home
• Never have I ever screamed at a haunted house actor
• Never have I ever quit a horror film before the end

How to pick one

Start with where people physically are. A sofa and a screen wants Hocus Pocus or The Nightmare Before Christmas, with the Michael Myers rules for a crowd that asked for a real horror film. A full standing party wants the costume contest, Trick or Drink, or the Pong and Flip Cup tables, because all four absorb a new player mid-game. The seated hour at the end of the night belongs to Werewolf, the story circle, and Never Have I Ever, which trade volume for attention. Halloween Kings Cup is for a group that came to play rather than to mingle, and it is a bad background game, so give it its own table or skip it.

If the party is big and mixed, run two at once: a movie game in the room with the TV and Trick or Drink near the kitchen, and let people drift between them.

Tips

• Sips, not shots, across the board. A Halloween party runs four or five hours, longer than any single game here, so pace every rule for the whole night and let anyone skip a round without comment.
• Costumes and drinking games mix worse than they look. Masks hide how people are actually doing, capes and heels trip, and a dark room has edges; keep one path through the party lit, check in with the quiet ones, and slow the games down as the night gets long.
• Put real food out, not just candy. Sugar and drinks with no dinner underneath is how the night ends at ten thirty.
• Agree the movie rules before pressing play, and cap them at five. The argument about whether a flashback counts is worse than the drink.