Card games for adults

An adult party game where a judge picks the funniest—or most outrageous—white card for each prompt.

Adult content.

Compete to complete three-panel comic strips with the funniest final card.

Adult humor; check the edition before choosing it for a group.

A judge picks a photo; everyone plays the caption card that makes the best meme.

Adult content in the core game.

Play cards face down claiming a rank; anyone can call your bluff, and the loser picks up the pile.

Also called I Doubt It or BS.

Pass a critter card face down and lie—or tell the truth—about what it is; collect four of a kind and you lose.

Each player sees every card but their own; bid on the total of all cards and call when someone overbids.

A 20-questions word game with a twist: one player secretly knows the answer and is steering the group.

A tiny bluffing game: hold one card, decide whether to swap, and bet on having the highest—with a twist for the lowest.

Use one card per turn to deduce and eliminate rivals while protecting a strong hand.

A hidden-team bluffing game where ninjas secretly look at, swap, and strike other players.

A single-night hidden-role game: role cards are viewed or swapped in the dark, then everyone votes.

Give clues using illustrated cards that resemble the secret character, while the guesser eliminates the rest.

Bluff about the spice and number of each card you play face down; a challenger risks big if you told the truth.

Everyone shares a secret location except the spy, who must bluff through questions and guess where they are.

Everyone knows the secret word except the chameleon, who must blend in while players give one-word clues.

A Finnish bluffing game: play cards face down, announce what they are, and pick up the pile if you are caught lying.

The Russian version of Cheat—“trust, don’t trust”—where you shed cards face down and challenge suspicious claims.

Hidden-role Wild West shootouts where the Sheriff, deputies, outlaws, and a renegade all want different winners.

Secretly choose a character each round—assassin, thief, merchant, and more—to build the most impressive city.

Bluff about hidden influence, challenge rivals, and be the last player still in power.

A hidden-role deduction game where the forensic scientist can only answer with scene tiles while the murderer hides.

Teams send coded clues about their secret keywords while the other team tries to intercept the pattern.

Investigators and cultists cut into each other’s face-down cards to find elder signs—or summon Cthulhu.

Also published as Time Bomb; some editions seat more players.

One player invents a secret rule for which cards can be played; everyone else experiments to deduce it.

Cooperate to build fireworks while everyone can see every hand except their own.

One player is a creature hunting the rest, who are stranded astronauts hiding in places across an alien planet.

Play cards face down in a shared line, then decide when to reveal them for attacks, assassinations, and plots.

Dwarves build tunnels toward gold while hidden saboteurs quietly break tools and lay dead ends.

Pack goods into a bag, declare them to the sheriff, and bribe or bluff your way past an inspection.

Resistance members go on missions while hidden spies try to sabotage them; discussion and voting decide who goes.

The Arthurian version of The Resistance: Merlin knows the traitors but must avoid being found by the assassin.

A South American bluffing trick game where players can raise the stakes mid-hand with a shouted challenge.

Uses a 40-card Spanish pack; regional rules vary.

The large-group hidden-role game: villagers hunt werewolves by day while werewolves strike at night.

Needs a moderator.

A bluffing trick game from Nice, related to Truc, where tens and nines are the highest cards.

Uses a 32-card pack.

An Alpine trick game full of bluff, where the strongest cards change every deal and signals are allowed.

Traditionally played with German-suited cards.

Read your opponent and resolve attacks, throws, and blocks like a card-based fighting game.

An asymmetric duel of a hacker against a megacorporation, with bluffing over face-down servers and hidden agendas.

Official production ended; the community group NISEI continues the game.

Each player bids secretly with one suit for prize cards revealed from another; a pure game of bluff and value.

Also known as GOPS; pagat files it under that name.

A Nigerian trick game for a short 35-card pack where only the last trick decides the hand.

Uses a reduced pack; regional rules vary.

The old English ancestor of Pitch: score for high, low, jack, and game while following trump-led tricks.

France’s favorite trick game: bid a trump, score the jack and nine highly, and declare runs and the trump king-queen pair.

Played with a 32-card pack.

A partnership trick game with jokers where the winning bid also chooses uptown, downtown, or no-trump.

A Cajun gambling trick game: stay in and you must take at least one trick, or match the whole pot.

An Italian point-trick game with no need to follow suit, so reading your partner and the trump card matters most.

Usually played with a 40-card Italian pack.

A Nepalese trick game related to Spades: call how many tricks you will take with spades as permanent trump.

Pagat covers it alongside Call Bridge, its close Indian relative.

Partners collect melds, especially seven-card canastas, across a long-form rummy game.

A quick French two-player trick game with an exchange of cards and a premium on holding the trump king.

Uses a 32-card pack.

Two partnerships choose trump and compete over five quick tricks.

A two-player whist where the first half wins better cards and the second half plays out the hand you built.

A Canasta relative played with several decks: finish your hand, then your foot, while building books as a team.

Needs five or six decks.

Avoid penalty cards in tricks—or take the risky path of capturing every one.

Iran’s classic partnership trick game, where a ruler chooses trump after seeing five cards.

Switzerland’s national card family: point-trick games where the trump jack and nine are worth the most.

Traditionally played with a 36-card Swiss or French pack.

A Canadian prairie trick game with bidding, a 32-card pack, and special cards worth plus or minus five.

A two-player Jass-family game where the trump jack and nine dominate and sequences add bonus points.

Also known as Clobyosh or Bela.

A historic gambling trick game: take at least one trick or pay into the pot, which can grow dramatically.

Bid for a contract, call a secret partner, and capture point cards in a Korean trick-taker.

The common five-player game uses a standard deck plus one joker.

A simple bidding game: bid how many of five tricks you can take, up to the daring “Nap” for all five.

Also called Napoleon.

A three-player trick game where you bid by discarding three cards that encode exactly how many tricks you will take.

Predict exactly how many tricks you will win, then navigate the hand to hit that bid.

An All Fours partnership game with bidding, where two fives—the pedros—are among the most valuable cards.

Close relative of Cinch; pagat covers both on one page.

A Midwestern Euchre relative with bidding on six tricks, popular in Iowa.

Bid for the right to name trump, then win points for high, low, jack, and game.

A French-Canadian partnership game descended from Tressette, played without trumps for point cards.

Uses a 32-card pack; also called La Politaine.

A fast Austrian two-player game: reach 66 points through tricks and marriages, possibly closing the stock early.

Uses a 20-card pack.

Partners bid their expected tricks, with spades permanently serving as trump.

A Portuguese partnership game played with 40 cards where aces and sevens carry most of the points.

An Italian trick game where the three is the highest card and you must follow suit with points in mind.

Uses a 40-card pack.

An Australian student-invented trick game loosely based on Hearts, where the leader chooses trumps each hand.

The classic English partnership trick game and ancestor of Bridge: follow suit and win tricks for your side.

The game Mr. Pickwick plays at Dingley Dell in Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers—the usual five-letter answer to that crossword clue.

An old point-trick game where the four jacks—the Yukons—are trumps and hands are refilled after every trick.

A Hungarian game for two or four: win tricks by matching the rank of the card led, with sevens acting as wild cards.

Uses a 32-card pack.

A North German fishing game for partners, with high-value jokers and building by subtraction as well as addition.

A compendium game of several contracts—avoid hearts, queens, or the king of hearts—chosen in turn by each dealer.

A two-player melding classic using a doubled short pack; score for marriages, sequences, and the famous bezique pair.

Needs two 32-card packs.

Partners bid a contract, then use careful trick play to make or defeat it.

A German partnership trick game with a doubled pack where the queens of clubs secretly decide who plays together.

Uses two 24-card packs (9 to ace).

A 17th-century Spanish trick game where one player takes on the other two; the source of many later games.

Uses a 40-card pack. Pagat lists it as L’Hombre.

An American melding and trick game with a doubled pack: score meld first, then win counters in tricks.

Needs a 48-card pinochle deck.

A classic two-player game with declarations for point, sequence, and set before tricks are played.

Uses a 32-card pack.

An 18th-century four-player version of Ombre, once the fashionable game of European salons.

Mostly of historical interest.

The Bavarian national game: queens and jacks are always trump, and the declarer calls an ace to find a partner.

Uses a 32-card pack.

The American cousin of Schafkopf, popular in Wisconsin, where the picker takes the blind and plays against the table.

Uses a 32-card pack.

Germany’s great three-player game: bid for the right to play alone, take the skat, and win at least 61 points.

Uses a 32-card pack.

A Chinese partnership point-trick game with changing trump ranks and tractors of consecutive pairs.

Also called Sheng Ji. Uses two decks.

Hungary’s national card game: three players bid through a passed-around talon for contracts such as winning the last trick with the trump seven.

Uses a 32-card pack.

A Russian bridge-like partnership game with auction bidding and scoring for honors and tricks.

An elaborate Swedish three-player trick game where a lone player draws from the stock and picks from many contracts.

A Kurdish bidding and melding game, almost identical to three-handed double-deck Pinochle.

Uses a doubled 24-card pack.

“Looking for friends”: a big-group Chinese trick game with several decks, where the trump maker calls cards to form secret teams.

Needs several decks with jokers.

A Latvian three-player point-trick game related to Schafkopf, with queens, jacks, and diamonds as permanent trumps.

Uses a 26-card pack.

A casino banking game: bet on the player or banker hand and let fixed drawing rules decide who lands closer to nine.

Draw toward 21 without busting while the dealer follows fixed rules; the familiar casino banking game.

Combine betting-board payouts, poker comparisons, and a race to shed cards in sequence.

Also encountered under names such as Michigan Rummy; local versions differ.

Draw and discard to collect a hand worth as close to 31 in one suit as possible, then knock.

Also called Scat or Blitz.

A historic banking game of the American frontier where players bet on which rank the dealer turns next.

Combine betting decisions with ranked card hands across many distinct variants.

Player count and duration depend heavily on the poker variant and stakes format.

A Victorian stops game: play cards up in suit sequence, collect stakes for the Pope (9 of diamonds), Matrimony, and Intrigue, and race to go out first.

Remove the 8 of diamonds; traditionally played with an eight-compartment staking board, but chips in bowls work. Appears in Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers.

The most popular poker variant: two private cards, five shared ones, and four betting rounds.

A cooperative, story-driven living card game where investigators build decks and play through linked horror scenarios.

Four players need extra core content.

A collectible game where you ride ever-stronger vanguard units and lean on a rear guard to break through.

A collectible game where you digivolve partners from a raising area and manage a shared memory gauge.

A collectible battle game with leader cards that awaken mid-game and an energy area that powers attacks.

A 78-card trick game where one taker plays against the rest, aiming to win enough points with key trumps.

Needs a French tarot pack.

Cards serve as roles, buildings, materials, and clients in a dense, combo-heavy game about rebuilding Rome.

Long out of print; check the edition before buying.

A deck-building civilization game where your nation evolves from barbarian to empire, each with unique cards.

Build a civilization tableau whose card icons power increasingly disruptive abilities.

Austria’s favorite tarock game: the declarer calls a king to find a secret partner before play.

Needs a 54-card Tarock pack.

A two-player living card game of honor and conflict between clans, with hidden bids and province battles.

Cast spells, summon creatures, and reduce an opponent’s life using a constructed deck.

Player count, deck size, and duration vary by format.

Build a hero deck and cooperate to defeat a villain before its scheme succeeds.

Partners draw, discard, signal, and wager across four comparisons in a Basque classic.

Usually played with a 40-card Spanish deck; regional scoring varies.

Choose phases and build a space empire through worlds, developments, production, and trade.

A cooperative living card game where heroes quest through Middle-earth scenarios, playable fully solo.

Direct a vampire faction through political deals, combat, and multiplayer influence.

A collectible game based on anime franchises where damage cancels on climax triggers and levels rise with damage.

Summon monsters and use spells and traps to reduce an opponent’s life points.

A simpler Austrian tarock for four, played with 40 cards; the declarer calls the trump XX to find a partner.

Needs a Tarock pack.

Bid secretly with number cards for mouse and vulture cards; tied bids cancel each other out.

Also sold as Raj.