The Best 20+ Adult & Teen Games for Date Night

The best adult games for date night including simple and easy board, dice, and card games for adults to play together. These games make great gifts to buy and are the perfect addition to any home's game basket.

I love games. I'm very good at games, too, which makes it less fun to play with me, but my dear husband is a very good sport and doesn't mind that he usually loses at some things.

Games are a great way to enjoy quality time together as a couple after the kids are in bed. They reduce the pressure on deep conversation and give each of you something to focus on while still providing the time together that your marriage desperately needs.

I don't know about you, but poor Joe and me never have anything to talk about when it's just the two of us. We don't want to talk about the kids or our jobs, but those are pretty much the only things we can think of to talk about, and we end up not talking to each other at all. We're sad.

But when we play games together, we talk. We talk about the plays and about our turns and our scores. It's instant bonding, and we usually end up laughing.

If you are thinking about starting at-home date nights with your husband, games are a great way to go. You can put the kids to bed and set up shop on the dining room table and play.

I should also address the adults-only versions of games that are popping up everywhere. Some of these are funny and interesting, but more often that not, I find them vulgar. We are Christians and value what is good and right and true, not so much what is vulgar and cheap. We don't own any games that we wouldn't want our kids to play (not the same thing as kids' games mind you).

And also, I have been called snobby and uptight by many people in my life, so if you want to play the after dark, adults-only versions of games, be my guest. I'm not, so I haven't included any of them below.

If you're looking for games to play as a family (especially with non-readers), check out this post - 30+ best games for family game night.

The Best Games to Play for Date Night

Here are some of our favorite games to play as a couple with our most favorite listed first:

Scrutineyes - This is our #1 favorite game EVER. I scoured ebay for it years and years ago after remembering playing it as a kid with my mom and sister. Basically, you get these elaborate and intricate pictures and you have to find things in one of the pictures that begin with a certain letter and then you trade with the other players. A lot of the things in the pictures can have different names, and a lot of them are obscure animals and things with precise names. I absolutely positively love it and got Joe hooked too. Problem is this game is no longer made and can these days be hard to come by. If you find it on ebay for less than $30, scoop it up. It's totally worth it.

Prime Climb – This is a new to us game that we totally fell in love with. It's very simple: you roll the dice and either add, subtract, multiply, or divide the numbers on the dice with the numbers your pawns are sitting on. You can jump all around the board, and the first person to get both of her pawns to 101 is the winner. I love this game so much, I play it by myself.

Scattergories - This is a classic game sort of similar to Scrutineyes except everyone works with the same list of categories and the same letter of the alphabet, and you all try to think of words that no one else will think of. For instance, if the category is animal and the letter is C, you probably don't want to write cat because there's a good chance someone else will. You want to write something less obvious like chimpanzee or canary hoping that no one else will write it and you'll get the point. Or, go ahead and write the obvious one because maybe no one else will. It's really fun.

Pass the Pigs - This is another of my all-time favorite games. You have 2 little pigs, and you roll them like dice. Depending on how they land, you score points. You can keep rolling until you get the magic "zero" combination which means you lose all your points for that round or you can stop rolling at any time and keep your points. I think this game is super fun, and I play it with anyone who will play with me. Joe and I like to play it during our at-home dates, too.

Sleeping Queens - This is totally a kids' game, but when I asked Joe what games he thought I should include on this list, Sleeping Queens was his first answer. Our entire family absolutely adores this game and plays it whenever we can. It's a card game where you have to wake up the queens by playing certain cards. You can steal other players' queens, put them back to sleep, and defend yourself. The game ends when the last queen has been awakened, and then the player with the most queen points wins. The version that I linked is the 10th anniversary edition which has extra queens and comes in a tin. We had the original before, but lost it, and then sprung for the one with the tin, and we were glad for it because the extra queens make the game a bit longer and a lot more fun.

SKIP-BO - I love SKIP-BO. I love it so much that I found SKIP-BO Junior and taught my kids to play it. Basically, it's a card game where you have to make piles of numbers from 1-12 (10 in the junior version). You have a big pile of cards, and the first person to get rid of her stack is the winner. It's simple and easy and depends way more on luck than anything else, which makes it perfect for couples where one person is way more word-oriented than the other.

Taboo - This is really a 4+ player game, but we do it as a couple. You try to get your partner to guess a word, but you can't say any of the taboo words in your description. We take turns giving the clues and the other person does the guessing. It's fun that way, and it removes the winner and loser aspect. We work as a team and see how many of the answers we can get.

Actually Curious - This isn't your typical card game. Its tagline is Cards For (Not Against) Humanity. You know that other card game that you definitely can't play with your kids? Well, this is nothing like that one. It's a bunch of cards, and each one has a prompt or question on it. The original white deck has four levels of cards from easy to challenging, including questions like "Share one positive characteristic about each person in the group" and "What are you willing to fight for and why?." The pink Happy Hour deck is all one level, meant to be mixed in with the original deck, and has questions like "What did 12 year old you want to be when you grew up?" and "If I could re-do one moment of my own life, it would be..." I can't wait to take these cards on my next date with my hubby because I know they will lead to great conversations.

Sequence Cats - Joe does not like cats, but he knows that I love them, so he lets me play this game. If you're not a cat lover, there's a dog version and of course a bunch of others including Bible Sequence, Number Sequence, and the original Sequence. Not sure what's on the squares in the original version, but I think they might be playing cards. It's a bit like Connect 4 in that you have to make a line of 4 tokens, but your moves in Sequence depend on what cards you draw.

Phase 10 - Honestly, Phase 10 is not my favorite game because it takes a long time to play, but it is another one where winning is mostly luck. It's a card game that's sort of like rummy, and you have to get series of 10 different phases in order to win. A lot of people love it and say it's their favorite game. It has over 1,000 5-star reviews on Amazon, so don't trust my opinion on it.

Rummikub - I love this one. It's another luck game, this time where you use tiles instead of cards and basically play rummy. I played this as a kid with my grandmother (not Old Grandma, my dad's mother), and I still laugh at all the weird things she said while we played on her front porch. I like to play with my kids now, but it's also great for Joe and I to play. There's a good bit of strategy and creativity involved in Rummikub because you can shift around the tiles to suit yourself as long as everything is played at the end of your turn.

Uno - I love Uno. If you've never played it (where have you been all your life?!?), it's a card game where you lay down number cards that either match the color or the number of the card played before you. Very simple, but there are also special cards that can thwart your opponent and mess everything all up. It's another great game where the winner is mostly determined by luck, and it is super fun. I remember playing this with my whole family when I was a kid, and we had such heated battles that we had to make a little arrow on a piece of paper so we'd remember which direction the play was supposed to move. Great times.

Yahtzee - I love Yahtzee, too. I used to play Yahtzee with Old Grandma for hours. We both got really good at it. There's a lot of strategy involved in Yahtzee although it's a very simple game. You roll dice and add up the totals and record them on the score pad. You have to get certain combinations of dice in order to win. It's super fun and a great adult game because kids don't totally understand the strategy behind using certain boxes at certain times.

Scrabble - I love Scrabble, but I'm also really, really good at it which makes it not so much fun for Joe. I'm a word nerd, and he just isn't, so we don't play very often. But it's still worth mentioning because it's super fun. I linked to the tile lock edition which is only about 50¢ more than the regular version but eliminates the annoying problem of the tiles sliding around on the board.

Boggle - I also love Boggle. I love it so much that I sometimes play it all by myself. But it's a nice date night game because you're looking at the same letters and trying to come up with words. Basically, you shake up all the dice which have letters on them and they settle into spots, and then you have to find words using adjoining dice. Again, I'm a lot better at this than Joe, so we don't play that often, but I love it when he indulges me and takes a stab at it.

Dragonwood: A Game of Dice and Daring: I got this game for our kids, but Joe and I love it, too. It's a card and dice game where you have to battle against and collect foes. But then, you can also collect cards that help you to battle and make it easier to collect the monster cards. It's a little complicated to explain but very fun.

Farkle - We just discovered Farkle last week. Literally, last week. I got Pocket Farkle to take with us on a date night. It's the size of an old film canister, and it was fun. It's a dice game where you have to get certain numbers in order to score points, and you can keep rolling as long as you're earning points, but if you get a roll with no points, you lose all of your points from that round. We bent some of the rules to suit ourselves, but we really liked the game. I can see us playing it with the kids, too.

Rack-O - This is another super simple game. You have 10 cards, and you have to get them in order from smallest to biggest, except that you can't actually switch them around. You can only change them out for cards you draw from the draw pile, so you have to be clever about where you put those cards in order to win the game. I used to play this with Old Grandma when I was a wee little girl, and I like playing it with Joe just as much.

Bananagrams - Bananagrams is a little like Scrabble in that you use letter tiles to make connecting words, but that's where the similarities end. In Bananagrams, you have to race against each other to use all your letter tiles. The first person to go out wins. It's a lot easier because there's not as much strategy in that you don't score the words themselves, just race to make more and more words. It doesn't matter if you use all 3-letter words, as long as you play words and use your tiles.

5 Second Rule - This is a game from my wishlist. In this one, you get a category and then have 5 seconds to list 3 things from that category. It's fast-paced and funny because the players often get tongue tied trying to spit out an answer in time. In such a short time period, all kinds of wrong answers will pop out. You'll be amazed at how much you know but can't think of in time! It is technically for 3 or more players, but there's no reason that you couldn't go back and forth with your husband, challenging each other.

Ticket to Ride - I haven't actually played this game, but it has been on my wishlist for quite a while. The premise is that you have to ride a train all over the United States (although there are versions for Europe, Asia {expansion pack only}, and other places) and collect as many cities as possible in 7 days. It is a fast-paced game that requires concentration, which makes it perfect for an adult date night, but it is easy enough that you'll be able to play it with your older kids as well (recommended for ages 8 and up). It's a great investment because, in addition to being able to play it over and over, there are loads of expansion packs that change the game completely. The only thing that's holding me back from buying this at this point is that it requires a big area to play, and our dining room table is always covered with papers and junk. It would take an hour to clean it off, and then we wouldn't have time to play the game.

Blokus - I haven't played this one before, but it's also on my wishlist. It's another simple game - you place colored tiles on the board, making sure that each one touches one of the corners of a tile you've already placed. It sounds easy enough, but like all of the above games, there is a lot of strategy and planning involved. From what I've read, it's pretty easy as a two player game, unless each player plays two colors which effectively makes it a four player game. I'm really looking forward to getting this one.

There you have it, 20+ games that you can play for your at-home date night or even take along to a date night elsewhere. I hope these games will help you to bond with your husband in a way that you haven't before, and you will both enjoy the time you spent playing together.

There are lots more fun family bonding games in these lists, too: