Times up!

Needs at least 4 people, a pen and paper and a bowl/hat. And a stopwatch.
Tear the paper so you have about 25-35 pieces of similar size, then give these out to the players. Everyone writes down a famou name on each of their pieces of paper. Shuffle them up in the bowl. Divide into teams. Set stopwatch for 1 minute.
Round 1: one member of the first team describes the name on the paper without using any of the words written on the paper. The team gets to keep the paper if it’s correctly guessed. After a minute, play passes to the next team with a reduced number of papers in the bowl. This continues until all names have been guessed. Count the number of pieces of paper kept by each team and make a note. Return the papers to the bowl.
Round 2: same as round one, but the describer can now only use one word. No miming, no eye signals, one. Word.
Round 3: same as the previous rounds but the describer must stay absolutely silent and can only mime. The team that scored the most over 3 rounds wins.

I’ve played this with strangers and with friends and family alike and it’s always fun.

The key is low effort social engagement

• Person do thing
• Two rooms and a boom
• charades

Some things are good with groups, but require a little more commitment:

• One night ultimate werewolf
• Avalon
• code names

The Jackbox Party Packs are good for groups up to 8. Sometimes 10, sometimes 6, its game to game dependant.

“Werewolf” type games can be expanded to larger groups, its a social deduction and bluffing game where players are slowly eliminated and in turn vote out other players they deem the hidden enemy

TLDR; Use poker decks to clone 3 sets of Love Letter

I’ll recommend some boardgames.

Once you go over 7-8 players, the options are greatly reduced. The available genres become (mostly) limited to social deduction

Social deduction, all about trying to figure out other peoples cards. And lying, lots of lying.

• Love letter, 6 players, 20 cards, ~13 tokens, for points
• Avalon, 7-10 players, ~30cards, tracking mat/paper
• Secret Hitler, 7-10 players, ~30 cards, tracking mat/paper, has a print-at-home version.
• Ultimate werewolf/vampire/etc, ~10-12 players, ~13-15 cards, phone app (for narration, free)

*None of the above are very good for playing as teams (i.e. two ppl taking a single player spot)

Group Games games that do well with teams

• Codenames, various versions.
• Forbidden Island/Dessert/Sky - co-op game for various number of players

As a special mention, Challengers is a board game that allows you to create simple yet fun card drafting tournaments. There are two editions, each allows you up to 8 players, and if you have both they can be combined into 16ppl tournaments

For your numbers, you’d need to buy 2-3 copies of the same game. Not ideal, even if you have the budget.

I’d say, print yourself three copies of Love Letters, you can find the cards online, or just play with 2-3 poker decks. Its the best game in my library, simple yet deep. We’ve been playing it at least once a week for 3 years now. I’ve even managed to play once with a mob of disinterested teens ;)

The one where you stick a piece of paper on your forehead you have to guess what is written by asking yes/no questions to someone sitting in front of you.

Card games. We used to have card nights every week back in the 70s. One of the most fun games was something called Racing Demon. Each player has a full pack and all play at the same time. We would have 15 people sitting on the floor in a circle, all screaming. It gets CRAZY. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerts There are hundreds of card games, with a huge range of skill required. There are a lot of trick-taking games similar to bridge where you play with a partner - euchre, whist, 500. All you need is a few packs of playing cards. (Everyone brought their own pack for Racing Demon, lol.)

Hammershlagen (misspelled)

Bags

Beer pong

Quarters

President’s and Assholes

Cribbage

Poker (pick your poison)

Speed bump (the card game, but it’s your body your choice after all)

Everyone is John

Pterodactyl is one of my favorite stupid games to play.

You just sit in a circle and see if you can make the person next to you to laugh while you say “pterodactyl” with your lips curled over your teeth so you look kinda like a pterodactyl.

Twister

It’s been a long time and I’m not sure of it’s current state, but some friends and I used to have a blast play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (I think there’s a couple other games out there now that are similar)

You kind of need the right setup for it to work well, a big TV or projector you can hook up to a computer and everyone needs their own laptop, etc.

The basic idea is- picture the bridge of the enterprise (or your starship of choice) you’ve got a bunch of people with their own consoles responsible for different aspects of the ships operation, the helm, engineering, weapons, etc. That’s what you’re doing.

I think at some point they added support for support fighters and such to accompany the main starship so if you have more people they have something to do.

We also made up a couple extra positions, like a captain who didn’t really have his own console, he just got his own chair front and center and a fancy hat and gave out orders.

Board games like:

• Wits & Wagers
• Say Anything
• Hues and Cues
• Codenames
• Scattergories
• Racko

In my experience the most popular and fun “party games” are boardgames such as Top Ten, Time’s Up, Hot & Cold or Codenames (more or less in that order). They work best for 6 to 10 players. Though I don’t think they shine in a highly competitive tournament setting.

Randomness exists in all of these games but I consider it very balanced/smoothed out so it shouldn’t really affect the outcome. Not all of the games I mentioned have permanent teams, but that can easily be changed with house rules.