How long our games actually last
The measurement first, the ideas after. Over the last ninety days we took every game played through to the end, one line per game, with trials and demos left out. For each game, the median duration: half the tables finish faster than that, half take longer. Median rather than average, because a single game forgotten late at night is enough to ruin an average.
These are game lengths, not evening lengths: a table runs four or five rounds of The Spy. Read these numbers as the unit you keep restarting, not as the time the game will fill.
Two warnings before the list. First The Aperitif, whose median sits under two minutes: that does not mean drinks are over in two minutes. That game is a run of cards you keep going through, and what is counted here is one card, not a session. A full session is thirty cards, fifty in marathon mode. The figure is accurate, it simply does not measure what you would assume.
Then the small samples. Heads Down, The Aperitif, The Suitcase and The Lost Sketch were played less often, four to ten games each. A median over four games is not a truth, it is an indication, and we write it without a decimal so it does not borrow a precision it does not have. The Spy, with seventy-one games, is our most solid measurement.
One last point: the table sizes below are what we observed, not what a game accepts. The game's own limits are repeated on every line. One line does stand out, a table of one on Stop the Bus while the game asks for two: that is a game the others left partway through, and the count kept is the one at the end. We are leaving it in, it is part of the real evenings.
- The Aperitif: median under 2 min, on a handful of games only (6). Tables of 2 to 7. Game limits: 3 to 12.
- The Spy: median of 4.9 min over 71 games, our most solid record. Tables of 3 to 8, 5.1 on average. Game limits: 3 to 12.
- Heads Down: about 5 min, on a handful of games only (4). Tables of 2 to 4. Game limits: 1 to 12.
- The Most Likely To: median of 5.4 min over 21 games. Tables of 2 to 7, 3.9 on average. Game limits: 2 to 12.
- Werewolf: median of 5.4 min over 16 games. Tables of 5 to 11, 6.3 on average. Game limits: 5 to 12.
- The Suitcase: a little over 6 min, on a handful of games only (7). Tables of 3 to 5. Game limits: 3 to 12.
- The Pyramid: median of 8.8 min over 14 games. Tables of 2 to 6, 3.1 on average. Game limits: 2 to 12.
- The Lost Sketch: about 11 min, on a handful of games only (10). Tables of 4 to 7. Game limits: 3 to 8.
- Stop the Bus: median of 12 min over 24 games. Tables of 1 to 6, 4 on average. Game limits: 2 to 12.
- Catastrophe: median of 13.2 min over 22 games. Tables of 2 to 7, 4 on average. Game limits: 1 to 12.
From 4 to 6 people
This is the size we see most: across the ten games measured, the average table sits between three and six people. Almost everything works, so the real question becomes pacing.
To open, The Spy. One secret word for everyone but the impostor, a round of descriptions, a vote. Median of 4.9 minutes, 3 to 12 players, and at four or five there is a single impostor, so the hunt stays sharp. It is the game our tables restart the most, and our guide to words for The Spy publishes a hundred of them.
To keep going without thinking, The Most Likely To: one line, everyone points at someone on three, the most pointed-at owns it. About five and a half minutes, 2 to 12 players. If the table would rather write than vote, Stop the Bus (2 to 12) and Catastrophe (1 to 12, where an AI judges the escape plans) are our two longest games, twelve and thirteen minutes of median: one block instead of several restarts.
What sits badly here: Werewolf, which starts at five players with a single wolf, so the deduction is over quickly, and The Lost Sketch, whose chain of drawings needs several links before it really warps. Keep them for once the table has grown.
From 7 to 12 people
Past six, two things change: taking turns gets expensive, and votes start to mean something. All our games cap at twelve, except The Lost Sketch which stops at eight, and The Assassin which goes far higher.
Werewolf is built for this size. The game runs the nights on its own, nobody plays moderator and nobody sits out. At seven you get two wolves and the Hunter joins; from nine, three wolves. 5 to 12 players, about five and a half minutes per game across sixteen records, and the biggest table we saw had eleven people. Our guide to Werewolf without a moderator compares the three ways to play with no game master.
The Spy also holds at ten or twelve, with two or three impostors depending on the table, but the descriptions stretch out: say up front that each person gives one word, not a sentence. Heads Down, where the phone goes on your forehead while the others get you to guess, plays in teams and absorbs a big table very well.
One limit worth remembering: The Lost Sketch stops at eight players. At nine, split into two chains.
Above 12, up to 30
Only one of our games goes to thirty: The Assassin. That is not a generous limit, it is the mechanic. Everyone gets a secret target and a secret mission, and nothing is synchronised: nobody waits their turn, so the headcount costs nothing. We checked it with thirty real players on 27 August.
The principle: you get your target to carry out your mission without them realising, only they confirm it, and you inherit their target. It runs in the background all evening while everything else happens. 3 to 30 players. Our guide to the Killer game gives the rules and a hundred mission ideas taken from the game's own bank.
For the rest, the honest answer above twelve is to split the table: two games of The Spy at nine beat one game of eighteen that does not exist. The thirteenth player is turned away, and that is not a setting to loosen.
Then there is host mode: the host can choose not to play, keeping the screen, starting the rounds and settling arguments. At twenty people, someone running the room without playing does more for the evening than any player limit.
Depending on the time you have
Under five minutes, because the food is coming out of the oven: The Spy, at a 4.9-minute median, or Heads Down, around five minutes on a handful of games only. One round, then you sit down to eat. The Aperitif works too, since it stops between two cards without breaking anything.
A quarter of an hour, the usual gap between arrival and the meal: The Most Likely To and Werewolf sit around five and a half minutes, so you run two or three back to back. Otherwise one single game of Stop the Bus (twelve minutes) or Catastrophe (thirteen) fills the same gap in one block.
All evening: The Assassin, which runs in the background through the conversations, and The Pyramid for the quiet stretches, an 8.8-minute median, with its Alcohol badge stated plainly. Before you promise your table a schedule: these are medians, so half the games run longer. Nothing here is guaranteed.
What you need on the table
Nothing at all. The round-the-table classics, never have I ever, would you rather, the forbidden word, only need people sitting down. They cover five minutes, then they run out of air: nobody is holding the rules or the score.
A deck of cards. The evening rituals, the pyramid and the ring of cards around a glass, play perfectly well with fifty-two cards. Here they are digital: The Pyramid and The Circle deal, count and hold the stakes, with no deck to fetch. The full Pyramid rules have their own guide.
Phones. That is our format: the host opens a room, the others scan a QR code or type a six-character code, nothing to install and no account for guests. All 14 games are free. And if someone has no phone, five games accept guests without a device: The Circle, The Spy, The Most Likely To, Heads Down and The Aperitif.
A television. Optional, never required. Ten of our games have a TV view: the game shows there while each player keeps their private information on their own phone. It is the only paid feature, seven days of trial with no card details, and only the host pays.
The mistakes that kill an evening
The long game at the wrong moment. Thirteen minutes of Catastrophe while people are still arriving, and half the table drifts off before the verdict. Keep the long games for mid-evening, once everyone is seated, and open with something short.
The rule that takes longer than the game. A round of The Spy lasts five minutes: spend six explaining it and you have lost. Two remedies. Tutorial mode, which the host ticks before starting, puts the explanations where they are needed. Or play one round for nothing and say out loud that it does not count. Nobody reads a rulebook, everybody understands by playing.
The game that shuts out the last arrival. Roles are dealt at launch: whoever walks in mid-game waits for the next one. While guests are still turning up, stay on short rounds, The Spy or The Most Likely To, and save Werewolf for once the doorbell has gone quiet.
And the underlying mistake, which has nothing to do with any game: letting the table decide as a group. One person calls it and opens the room. The catalogue gets browsed afterwards, between two games.