These fun St. Patrick’s Day games are perfect for an adults only St. Patrick’s Day party or one with teens! They’re easy to learn, fun to play, and a great way to add a bit of magic to an already fun party!
And don’t worry if you’re playing around kids, these are kid-safe, they’re just more challenging than our other St. Patrick’s Day games or typical St. Patrick’s Day activities for kids!
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St. Patrick’s Day Games for Teens and Older
I love hosting St. Patrick’s Day parties and while I’ve done quite a few for kids (my son loves this pot of gold game), my favorite is to host parties for adults. Or teens – anyone who can understand more complicated rules!
Unlike a Super Bowl party where you really just want good food, at a St. Patrick’s Day party there’s not a game to watch or something distracting people, so you need to plan a little entertainment.
These games are so easy to plan and so much fun! People will leave asking when you’re hosting a party next!
You can play these with adults, teens, or even younger if you wanted to, but they’re bit complicated to understand, so I recommend at least teens and above.
And you could play all of these games at your party or just pick one or two of them. But I definitely recommend the lucky roller one – it’s so much fun! So make yourself a big pot of mashed potatoes and some rainbow donuts then enjoy a night full of yummy food and fun!
1 – Lucky Roller St. Patrick’s Day Game
This game is played kind of like bunko and while I call it a St. Patrick’s Day game, honestly it’s one of my favorite birthday party games too!
Supplies:
You will need the following supplies and a surface area (or they can sit on the floor) for each pair.
- One six-sided die (a bulk pack like this works great)
- Six plastic cups numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 on both sides (so both players can see them)
- Plastic gold coins (or you could use chocolate coins, pennies, M&Ms, poker chips, whatever) – you need a lot so get a big set like this
- Bag or cup for each guest to hold their winnings
- An index card
Setup the Game
Once you know how many people you have playing, divide that number by two so you know how many pairs/playing areas you’ll need. Number the index cards for each pair (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) if you have fourteen people playing. These will be used as the playing area numbers.
Place one index card, six cups, a bowl full of coins, and a die at playing areas throughout the room. You’ll need a separate playing area for each team but they can be as small as a little piece of the kitchen counter – as long as the six cups fits okay.
Once you have the areas setup, give each pair a cup/bowl for their winnings and have them go and find a space. This is where they’ll start the game.
how to play
Similar to bunco, this game is played in rounds and after each round you rotate. Start by splitting your group into pairs and assigning each pair to a starting playing area.
1 – Fill the cups.
To start the round, players must put gold coins in the cups at the table. These gold coins should come from the bowl on the table, not their own personal winnings.
Regardless of how many coins are currently in the cups, they should place the following in the cups at the beginning of every round (in addition to what’s already there).
- 1 coin in cup 1
- 2 coins in cup 2
- 3 coins in cup 3
- 4 coins in cup 4
- 5 coins in cup 5
- 6 coins in cup 6
2 – Everyone plays a round at the same time.
Each pair will do this exact same thing every round and everyone will be playing all at once each round. Some pairs might finish earlier than others, but it doesn’t matter – every pair has to finish every round before you move on.
On the very first round, the youngest person in the pair should start. Otherwise, the person who moved tables gets to start.
The starting person should roll the die and take the coins from the cup that matches the number they rolled and place the coins in front of them, not in their winning cup. So if they rolled a six, they’d get the six coins from that cup and put them in front of them.
They should also take that cup and place it right next to them to indicate that they rolled that number (you’ll see why in a minute).
Then they pass the die to the other player. The other player rolls next and this is where the fun starts.
- If they roll a number that hasn’t been rolled, they do the same as player 1 and place the coins in front of them and take the cup.
- If they the roll the same number that the other player already rolled (in the example above, 6), they lose the round and the game is over. If they have collected any coins in this particular round, they would give the other player ALL of their coins from just this round (not all rounds) and Player 1 would add the coins from Player 2 plus the six they collected this round into their winnings cup. Those are their winnings and stay with them forever.
Note!
If you roll a number that you personally have already rolled, you just don’t win anything but you don’t lose the round. It’s basically a free pass, without winning anything extra.
After player 2’s turn, the play goes back to player 1 to do the same thing. Continue rolling and playing until one of two things happen and end the round.
- Someone rolls someone else’s number (losing the round and giving away their coins)
- The two players in the pair combined successfully roll all six numbers without overlapping once. If they do this, they both win a bonus 10 coins PLUS all of the coins they’ve collected in the round.
As soon as one of those things happen, stop playing and leave any coins that are in the numbered cups in the numbered cups. These will carry on to the next round and be in the cups in addition to the starting 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 cups.
3 – Rotate Pairs
After all of the pairs have finished their round (it should be pretty quick), have the person who won the round move up a number (so 3 goes to table 4, 4 goes to table 5, table 7 goes to 1) and the person who lost stays.
If they got the bonus, the person who collected the most coins in that round moves.
How to Win:
Set a designated number of rounds that you’ll play – say maybe 10. After all 10 rounds are over, whoever has the most coins collected wins. You could also do a biggest loser prize for the least number of coins as well but that’s totally up to you!
Make it last longer!
If you want the game to last a little longer (I like the quick games), you can increase the number of cards and coins! Instead of just doing one six-sided die, make these adjustments:
- Use two dice instead of one.
- Have cups labeled 2-11 (skip one since you can’t roll a one).
- Put one coin in cups 2 and 3, two coins in cups 4 and 5, three coins in cups 6 and 7, four coins in cups 8 and 9, five coins in cups 10, and 11, and six coins in just cup 12.
2- Short Shamrock Straw
This is another round robin and luck of the draw game, but it’s a fun one and gets people all sorts of anxious and competitive – in a good way! It plays on the idea of pulling the short straw and getting lucky!
Supplies:
- St. Patrick’s Day straws (make sure they’re all the same) – one per person who will playing the game
How to Play
Before you start playing, count how many people are playing and make sure you have that exact amount of straws. Then cut out of the straws shorter than the others – just one!
This game is played in rounds and each round is super simple. You can either have guests stand in a circle or just play while people are mingling with other guests (but it gets a bit harder if they’re all moving around because you won’t know who picked a straw and didn’t).
Hold the straws in your hand, covering the bottom of the straws, so that they’re all even heights – or at least mostly even. You just don’t want people to know which one is the cut straw.
Each round have everyone pick one of the straws from your hand. The person who gets the short straw is out and this completes the round.
For the next round, remove one straw (since someone is out) and do the same thing. Continue doing this with one person getting out each round until only two people are left and the person who draws the full-size straw in the final round wins!
How to play with a larger group
If you have a larger group, I recommend starting with two short straws instead of one and after a couple of rounds, you can increase it to three short straws to get people out quicker and move the game along.
How to Win
Continue playing until there is only one long straw remaining. Whoever pulls the long straw in the final round wins.
3 – Don’t Get Pinched
This one is much easier than the last and just a fun St. Patrick’s Day variation on one of my favorite black and white party games!
Supplies
- St. Patrick’s Day buttons (you could also do this with St. Patrick’s Day necklaces if you want it to be a little easier)
- Bucket or basket for buttons
- Printable list of St. Patrick’s Day words
How to setup the game
Print out the St. Patrick’s Day words on both a regular white card stock and in large poster format (only costs like $6).
Place the buttons in the basket along with the words on a table near the entrance of the party. Hang the poster up on the wall somewhere that everyone can see.
How to Play
When people enter the party, they should take a button from the basket. Or if you’d rather wait until everyone arrives and start playing all at once you can do that as well. In that case, simply hand out buttons when you’re ready to play and explain the instructions below.
Everyone will start with one button. If they say one of the words on the St. Patrick’s Day word list and someone hears them, they must give their button to the person who heard them. If someone has collected more than one button and gets caught saying one of the words, they have to hand over all of their buttons.
Continue playing until only one person is left with any buttons and if you never get there, set an ending point and the person with the most buttons at the ending point wins!
4 – St. Patrick’s Day Trivia
Print out this free printable St. Patrick’s Day trivia game that comes with challenging questions for teens and adults for a fun trivia themed activity! It’s perfect because let’s be honest, most people aren’t going to know a lot of St. Patrick’s Day trivia!
5 – Chase the rainbow dice game
This fun chase the rainbow game will be a huge hit with teens that love Skittles and with adults who like competition! The game will have players rolling dice trying to keep their Skittles from getting taken by other players – whoever has the Skittles at the end wins!
6 – Lucky Dice Game
This St. Patrick’s Day dice game is another game of chance game that will have players trying to roll the right dice to keep gold coins, win prizes with green coins, and avoid the red coin that will get them out of the game! It’s the perfect easy to setup and easy to play game that everyone will love!
7 – St. Patrick’s Day Charades
If you want a classic, try this St. Patrick’s Day charades game. Irish words are surprisingly tough making this one better for teens and adults than kids (although kids can certainly play).
St. Patrick’s Day Prize Ideas
Since all of these games are a bit more skilled than say these St. Patrick’s Day games for kids, I recommend doing some sort of fun prizes for the individual who wins! Here are some prizes that gone over really well for me in past years!
- Gift card to a local Irish Pub or restaurant
- A green gift card like Whole Foods, Amazon, Holiday Inn or Starbucks
- $17 green dollar bills
- A keltic charm or jewelry type gift
- A big bag of Lucky Charm marshmallows (I’d do this with something else but it’s a fun one)
- An Irish cookbook
- An Irish movie night pack including things like Braveheart, popcorn with Kerrygold butter, and more!
More St. Patrick’s Day Games
If you want even more games to try, how about one of these?
- St. Patrick’s Day bingo – while this is kid-friendly, this could totally work for adults too!
- Would you rather St. Patrick’s Day – an Irish inspired St. Patrick’s Day game that’s perfect for any age!
- Leprechaun hunt – this fun St. Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt will have teams trying to find leprechaun items first!
- Pot of gold games – two fun games using one easy DIY pot of gold game!
- Guess the rainbow – use the Skittles leftover from the Skittles dice game above to see who can guess how many Skittles will be in a pack!
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