Halloween Party Games for Kids, Teens, and Adults

By Jim Markus · Published July 15, 2026

The best Halloween party games are the ones that capture the spirit of the season while still being fun, and most of them need almost nothing: apples, string, paper, a bowl. Which ones you pick depends on the kind of party you’re throwing.

Is this for Halloween night for trick or treaters? Is this for a Halloween party for adults? There are some answers that are good for anything, and there are some that are best for kids. I’ll go through all of them here in this article.

The whole point is just to share some of my experiences as a person who loves Halloween, grew up with some of my favorite Halloween parties ever, and to inspire you to try some of these sometimes long forgotten party games and Halloween games yourself. I think you’re gonna love them.

Traditional Halloween Party Games

The traditional Halloween party games are bobbing for apples, Snap Apple, Snap Dragon, and folk games like fortune telling. I grew up with some of these, and some are well documented in media. They’re all things I’ve tried at my own parties in my life.

Bobbing for apples, without the group germs

The biggest one that you won’t see anywhere anytime soon, that we’ve all seen in media, is bobbing for apples. When I think of this, I think of the Peanuts special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” I think of cartoon characters bobbing for apples, specifically Lucy and Snoopy, and Lucy being upset (“ew, dog germs!”) that she put her face into water shared by that black and white beagle.

We’re all Lucy. And we should be. It’s kind of gross the way it’s usually depicted. But that doesn’t mean there’s no good way to do it.

You can mimic the bobbing-for-apples experience without sharing a big barrel of water with apples floating on top. The point of the game is pretty simple: you want to bite an apple without using your hands. The change that’s necessary to actually do this at a party? Give everyone their own bowls with apples floating in water.

That way, nobody has to share germs. Everyone is still competing on time, and if you do it right you can use those little plastic cauldrons from the drug store for Halloween parties.

Snap Apple, my all-time favorite

My all-time favorite Halloween party game comes from the same tradition as bobbing for apples.

It’s called Snap Apple.

The original version of the game involved a stick, a candle, an apple, and some string. You put the apple on one side of the stick and a lit candle on the other side. Then you hung the string from the ceiling and challenged guests to bite the apple without burning themselves with the candle.

I did a version of this a few years ago, and it’s now one of my favorite games for Halloween. I just got rid of the lit candle.

Putting an apple on a string and having people compete to see who can bite their apple the fastest turned out great. It was exciting to see people try to bite it, especially because everyone was in costume. We ended up with apple on the floor and a proud winner who somehow mastered a mid-air biting strategy.

Snap Apple can be modified, too. Make it more kid friendly with a lower string and no competitive element, or go back to that stick/candle/string version if you’re looking for a more thrilling adult version. Just keep a fire extinguisher handy if you go that direction.

For me, Snap Apple is one of the long-forgotten party games worth bringing back.

Snap Dragon (adults only)

Another old-school game nobody seems to try anymore is called Snap Dragon. It was traditionally done around the winter holidays, but I like it for Halloween instead.

To play Snap Dragon, you’ll need high-proof spirits, a porcelain bowl, and some raisins. Put the raisins in the bowl, floating in the flammable spirits, and then light the spirits.

The game is easy: People try to snag a raisin without being burned.

I’ve tried this at my own parties, and unfortunately it has never worked out as well as I’d hoped. Some guests are scared of being burned. Others didn’t want to make a mess (or burn the house down). I understand all of these objections.

Snap Dragon suits the season and can be a fun party game, but it’s never one I’d recommend for kids. Play it outside, and definitely not near anything that is flammable. If you are surrounded by dry grass, for example, don’t play Snap Dragon.

Use your common sense.

There’s a lot of risk involved if you’re working with anything flammable, and if you’re using a high-proof spirit to ignite, which is what makes the game fun, then you’re going to want to make sure you have a fire extinguisher handy, something that can put out a fire if one starts accidentally.

Fortune-Telling Games for Halloween

The best fortune-telling games for Halloween are the ones that use seasonal items as the artifact: apples, cake, walnuts, a talking board. I admit I’m biased. I wrote a game called Fortunes, the tarot card storytelling game. I love it. I think it’s great for Halloween, but I also think it’s great for any time of year. It’s a storytelling game, and it’s exactly to my tastes. If you have really nerdy friends and they all wanna tell stories, a game like that can be perfect.

But actual traditional fortune telling games are common around Halloween. I read about a few of them in a book from 1992. It’s called “The Halloween Book”, and it’s by a guy named Jack Maguire. I think I got it from my grandparents’ attic when I was a kid. But it had a bunch of really good suggestions.

Here are my favorites:

Reading apple seeds

One of my favorite things about the Halloween season is access to apples. I love apple orchards. I worked on one when I was a kid. That’s where I learned to snap an apple in half with my bare hands. (Pull at the top and twist. It takes practice, but it’s pretty easy if the apple is big enough.)

Once you cut an apple (or snap it in half), look at the side of the apple. The number of seeds you see will tell you something about your fortune. According to legend, one seed means your luck will persist, whether that’s good or bad.

With two seeds, you’ll probably find love this year. With three seeds, you’ll have financial success. Four seeds foretell good and safe travel in your future. And five seeds predict success at work. If you see six seeds, expect good health. And if there’s anything more than six seeds, hold onto your hat. You can expect numerous blessings, unexpected success in many areas of your life this year.

Fortune telling with apple seeds is an interesting party game for Halloween because it requires no setup, no minimum number of participants, and no specific play area.

It’s something that you could absolutely do at any harvest party or any harvest festival party, anywhere with apples, but I think it works really well at a Halloween party, especially if you’re going for the folksy vibe. I’ve done this plenty of times in the past. And, again, I just love apples, so it’s nice.

The ring in the cake

One suggestion from that old Halloween book was baking a ring into a cake, or into a cookie. Then at the party, people take slices of cake or cookies and enjoy them. The person who finds the ring is destined to find true love.

The book says that’s based on an old Irish tradition, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s actually yet another tradition that has multiple origins.

I know people hide things in King Cake for Mardi Gras, and I think something similar is done for St. Nicholas Day in Europe.

Three bowls

Another Halloween party game that’s fortune-based is three bowls, and I’ve heard this called a number of different things. The idea is the same in any case.

One bowl is filled with something good: clean water, or walnuts. The second is filled with something mixed. If you’re using water, that would be dirty water, mixed with sand or dirt. If you’re using walnuts, it would be walnuts mixed with something squishy. Use your imagination. The third bowl is empty.

Then you blindfold your guests. Mix the bowls around in front of them, and ask them to put their hand in one of the bowls. The result signifies their luck.

Clean, pure water or walnuts are good luck. If it’s mixed, it’s mixed luck. If it’s empty, it’s ominous or unfortunate. Play that up however you want.

Basically, if you’re into fortune telling, there are a lot of classic games that would work really well for a Halloween party.

Halloween Party Games for Kids

The best Halloween party games for kids are often just seasonal takes on classic kids games. Instead of “pin the tail on the donkey,” I’ve seen plenty of “pin the broom on the witch” setups. Those are easy to make, and they’re exactly the kind of games I’d expect for a kids’ party in October.

I also love these types of changes for games like tag (especially freeze tag) and bags. For tag, instead of one person being “it,” you can have one person start as a zombie and turn everyone they touch into a zombie, too.

Snap Apple without the candle is a good one for kids, because it’s something you can easily set up to kid height regardless of the age of your kids, and you can make it less competitive by just having the apple on the string and letting a kid try it. Obviously you’ll want a new apple for each new child who participates.

It’s also fun as more of an event. The way I usually run it is I have multiple apples on multiple strings, and I have my adult guests, and we set all the apples. We spin them a bit, so it’s a little bit harder.

And we have the adults compete to see who can do it the fastest. It’s always fun to watch. People get really excited, and it gets messy.

For kids, you can do this in a less competitive way by not having the apples spin. You can also have the apples set at different heights so it’s comfortable for someone who’s a little bit shorter.

The other thing that’s really fun for kids, again, is the apple seed fortune telling. It’s really easy to do, super inexpensive (especially if you’ve got access to an apple tree). You can cut the apples for your kids, and then bonus points if you want to teach your child the way to read the apple seeds so they can read those for their friends. It can be especially fun for slightly older kids that aren’t yet teenagers.

Halloween Party Games for Teens and Tweens

Teenagers are such a fun group for party games because they know exactly what they like (and they’ll let you know). Talking boards and tarot cards show up in media all the time, and tying a party game to a movie can be a fun way to invite this crowd in.

Talking boards were really big in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, and eventually they became the popular game Ouija. If you have a Ouija board, that can be fun for seance nights and Halloween parties for older kids. I’ve made talking boards out of leather and wood. If you’re looking for a seasonal craft, I recommend it.

A fun option for older artsy kids is a tarot game. Here’s one you can run with nothing but blank index cards.

Each person picks a tarot card out of the deck and looks at it secretly. Then they draw their own version of it. The twist is challenging everyone not to use actual visual representations of cups, swords, pentacles, or wands.

Everyone then tries to guess the name of the cards everyone else drew. The illustrator gets a point for every person who guesses correctly, and the person with the most points at the end wins.

Halloween Party Games for Adults

For adults, my picks are Snap Apple with the candle, Snap Dragon, a murder mystery dinner, or a one-shot role-playing game. The candle version of Snap Apple is the one where the apple is on a stick with a candle on the other side, slowly turning. It makes it very challenging and really fun.

A murder mystery dinner is another good Halloween party game for adults, and it’s the kind of thing that can carry a whole evening on its own.

Role-playing and storytelling games

Games like Fortunes, storytelling games, and games like D&D are great for groups. If you have kind of a nerdier crowd who enjoys sitting around playing a game at a table, then D&D or a version of a role-playing game that is made for Halloween specifically can be enormous fun.

The ones I’d recommend, if you’re looking for something more indie than mainstream, are Monster of the Week, which is one of my favorite role-playing games, and City of Mist.

I’ve run both of these in the past, and I’ve played as a player for both of these games in the past. They’re easy to pick up, and thematically you can’t do much better than these for Halloween games. Both of these games can be run more comedically, which is the kind of game I prefer.

If you’re looking for something a little bit more sinister, you can try something like Call of Cthulhu or a themed board game like Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror.

If your group of friends is interested in tabletop role-playing games, a D&D one-shot can also be a lot of fun. I’ve done these with some of my friends. My improv friend specifically had some really fun haunted house modules for D&D, and I remember the joy of making a really kind of creepy on-theme character for a Halloween one-shot, and it was delightful. It’s definitely something I’d recommend if your group is interested in role playing, and if you have any theater friends or improv friends, they would enjoy that as well.

Outdoor Halloween Party Games

The best outdoor Halloween party game I know is a scaled-down version of Journey to the End of the Night. I helped organize it in Chicago for a few years. It was a giant game of tag across the city. One year, we had more than 600 people chasing each other in the streets.

A scaled-down version of this would be in your city or neighborhood. You start with a bunch of runners wearing blue arm bands and a few chasers wearing red arm bands.

Runners need to start in one place, then visit a few checkpoints (with stamps or signatures to prove they’ve arrived) before getting to the finish line still wearing their blue arm band. If a runner is tagged by a chaser, that runner puts on a red arm band and joins the chaser team. At the end of the game, everyone celebrates together.

Our version thrived on the efforts of an artsy crowd. The checkpoints were themed and staffed with people who signed off for runners who made it that far. It took a bunch of planning, but it was worth it.

You can size this up or down depending on how many people you have, but it’s best with a crowd. That’s what makes it a fun game for very large groups.

Halloween Party Games for Large Groups

Parlor larps are another perfect idea for large groups at a Halloween party. They’re usually themed, so the entire party can be built around the larp. I’ve done plenty of parlor larps. Small ones are more intimate, but big ones with 20 or more people are often my favorites.

Crypt Kickers is a free smaller committee larp if you want to see what parlor play feels like before you build a party around it. It accommodates different group sizes with optional players, and it can be played as a “party within a party” if you’re so inclined.

How Many Games to Plan for a Halloween Party

Plan between three and six games for a Halloween party. For my Halloween parties, if they’re more social parties where you’re standing up, listening to music, having drinks, I like to have three or four really unique things that are happening throughout the night.

One of those things is almost always going to be my pumpkin stew in a pumpkin. I make vegetarian stew. I make it first, and then I put it inside of a pumpkin, and I bake the pumpkin with the stew inside it. And then I serve it at the party. It’s a showstopper. It tastes great. It’s also amazing.

The responses from guests have always been superb. Just make sure that if you do this, you put enough oil on the outside of the pumpkin so that that doesn’t burn in the oven.

The other activities, most recently, when I’ve hosted Halloween parties, included Snap Apple. I still always encourage costumes, whether or not we do a costume party contest. And I serve pumpkin stew inside of a baked pumpkin.

One other tradition we have around here: There’s a trail nearby, and we go for a walk through the woods (in costume) before or during the party. It’s less of a game and just more of an event.

That was enough for our party, including a bunch of fun Halloween music. It turned out to be an enormous success, lots of fun, and it’s the kind of party I would host again. I was happy with the number of events and games, and I was satisfied with the level of planning.

That said, a totally different kind of Halloween party I’ve run in the past is a single one-shot role-playing game.

In that case, I don’t set up Snap Dragon. I don’t set up Snap Apple. I set up instead City of Mist or Monster of the Week or Butter Princess, or another indie RPG that’s on-theme for Halloween.

A single one-shot RPG is enough for a Halloween party if that’s the kind of party you want to host. I’ve played in plenty of these, and they’re immense fun with only a single thing to plan.

What Makes a Halloween Party Games Lineup Work

The hardest part of pulling off a good Halloween party games lineup, for me, is finding the right fit for the friends I’ve invited. The more diverse the friend group, the more diverse their interests.

I can’t just put a one-shot together if I’ve got thirty or forty people coming over. I have to have more social games that people can opt into playing or opt out of. There’s always gonna be people who want to stay in the other room and have a quiet chat while other people are more rowdy, cheering on the people who are biting at apples that are on strings or on sticks with candles on them.

It can be a fine balance to find enough spaces in your house to host all of the different interests of the group of people that you’re inviting over. But the best way to solve that is by knowing the people who are coming and what their preferences are, which is easy if you host a Halloween party every year.

I love Halloween parties. I’ve been hosting them and attending them every year since I was a kid. And these types of party games are such a fun part of the atmosphere. If you’re looking for something fun to add to your party, I’d recommend any of these from personal experience.

More from Autumnal Games

• Fortunes: The Tarot Card Storytelling Game, a storytelling game played with a tarot deck or a regular deck of cards
• Crypt Kickers, a free parlor larp and a good first game for a group that has never played
• The complete guide to murder mystery party kits, if you want a mystery to carry the whole evening
• Browse all our games, or warm up with a free puzzle

Jim Markus

Jim makes games and events that invite people to embrace a shared fiction.