7 Campfire Games for Adults

by Bex Band | Nov 30, 2025

As someone who has made a living from going on adventures (I’m an expedition leader and founded a women’s adventure community), I’ve spent more than a few nights under the stars. After years of working in the industry, I’ve collected dozens of fun games to play outdoors. In this post, I share some of my favourite campfire games for adults.

Note that all of these games come from my bestselling book: Camping Games for Adults! Which has loads of camping game ideas for couples and groups – from active running around games, to competitive sitting down word games. The book also includes conversation starters and riddles, perfect to accompany your games around the campfire.

If you enjoy the games in this post, or are looking for a gift for an outdoor enthusiast, grab a copy of the book today!

There’s something magical about camping with friends – the fresh air, the smell of woodsmoke, the laughter that seems to carry a little louder across the trees. Some of my favourite memories have happened around a campfire, long after the sun has gone down. When you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder in the dark, you don’t need huge board games or complicated rules. You just need simple, fun games you can play right from your camping chair. These campfire games are perfect for adults, require no equipment at all…

1. Campers Count

This game is far more addictive than it sounds, and it works brilliantly when everyone is relaxed around the fire. Everyone closes their eyes, and the group tries to count aloud from one upwards, until they reach ten. Easy, right?! Well, there are some additional rules….

Anyone can start the count at any time, and anyone can say the following number whenever they like. But no one is allowed to take two turns in a row.

The challenge is that if two people accidentally say the same number at the same time, the count collapses, and you all have to start back at one. Reaching ten is surprisingly tough; reaching fifteen feels like a triumph. Can you make it all the way to twenty?

2. Campfire Psychiatrists

This is the perfect game for the start of a camping evening when the light is still good enough to see each other clearly. A small group of players – usually three to six – quietly take on a secret “condition” before the guessing begins. Their condition is that they each imitate the personality or behaviour of the person sitting to their right, creating a chain of borrowed identities (the person on the far right takes on the personality of the person first in the row).

The rest of the group becomes the “Psychiatrists”, asking questions to try to work out what on earth is going on. Every time someone answers out of character, the person they’re meant to be copying calls out “switch”. For example, if someone asked Actor 1 what their favourite colour is, Actor 1 is impersonating Actor 2 and says “blue”. This is not Actor 2’s favourite colour, so they shout “switch”. (If it was in fact their favourite colour, they wouldn’t say anything.

If someone shouts “switch” the actors jumble themselves into a new formation at random, adopting a different person’s mannerisms depending on who is now sat to their right. It starts out looking completely chaotic, but as questions continue – especially if you repeat the same one a few minutes later – the pattern slowly becomes clear.

Once someone works out the condition, they will come and whisper what they think it is into one of the actor’s ears. If they get it right, they quietly join the actors, adopting the personality of the person on their right, and the confusion deepens. It’s wonderfully odd, and a fantastic way to get a group laughing around the fire.

3. Just a Minute by the Fire

This fast-paced talking challenge is a brilliant way to have some fun around the campfire. One person chooses a topic – this could be something such as a favourite book, Harry Potter, or could be something that has happened to them from ‘the worst night’s sleep I’ve had in a tent’ to ‘the funniest wildlife encounter I’ve ever seen’. That person then tries to speak for one full minute without pausing, repeating themselves or wandering off-topic.

Someone else keeps time, and the moment the speaker hesitates or stalls, their turn ends. You can take turns picking topics or challenge each other to see who lasts the longest before stumbling.

4. Kit Memory Jumble

This game uses the items you brought with you camping. Bring your kit bag with you to the campfire. Choose 2 players who sit opposite each other. They’ll either need to sit on the floor, or if they can be in chairs, if they have a table between them.

Blindfold your 2 players, then randomly lay some of the camping items between them. Whoever is refereeing the game calls out something that would be useful for camping that is amongst the items without saying outright, for example, “find something that will help me see at night” or “Find something that helps to keep your ent in the ground”.

The blindfolded players then race to feel the items in front of them to find the item in question. When they think they have it, they hold it up. The referee says if it’s correct or not. If it is, they get to keep that item and place it behind them. If not, then they are out of the round, and the other player can have a guess.

Keep going until all the items have been won. The players will get faster as they memorise where everything is.

Each correct item is a point. If you have more players, you can play in teams, a new round of items for a new pair, keeping track of scores to see who is the ultimate winner.

Remember that all these games (and dozens more) are available in my bestselling book Camping Games for Adults. If you love camping, you are going to want a copy of this book!

5. The Forbidden Number

A classic counting challenge! Choose a “banned” number – traditionally, it’s thirty-one, but you can choose a birthday age or anything meaningful to your group. Players take turns counting upwards, saying one, two, or three numbers on their go. So player 1 might say “one, two, three”, player 2, “Four”, player 3 “five, six”, and so on.

The tension builds as you inch closer to the forbidden number, and whoever ends up saying it is out of the round. In a large group, you play another round with the remaining players, and the game keeps going until only one camper survives.

6. A to Zyzzyva

This quiet guessing game works wonderfully around a campfire when you’re winding down for the night. One player secretly picks a word, then announces the entire alphabet range – “from A to Zyzzyva” – as the starting point. “A” is the first word in the dictionary and “Zyzzyva” the last.

The others take turns suggesting random words, and after each guess, the chooser narrows the range to show whether the hidden word falls before or after the guess alphabetically. If the secret word is “lantern”, for example, and someone guesses “forest”, the new range becomes “forest to zyzzyva” (because “lantern” sits between “forest” and “zyzzyva”). A next guess of “mountain” would tighten the range further to “forest to mountain”.

Round by round, the space shrinks until someone hits the exact word. The correct guesser becomes the next chooser, and the whole thing begins again. It’s oddly satisfying and pairs perfectly with a late-night cup of something warm!

7. Chain Reaction Stories

This memory game always gets sillier as it goes, and it’s a lovely way to end the night. One camper begins with a short phrase – something like, “Camping under the stars.” The following person repeats it exactly and adds a new phrase that begins with the final word. For example, “camping under the stars”, you could add “stars and stripes”, so you say “camping under the stars and stripes”. You can change the last word from a singular to plural and vice versa.

The next person repeats this and adds a new phrase to the end, for example, ‘stripey pyjamas’

Soon you’ll end up with ridiculous chains such as, “Camping under the stars and stripey pyjamas”, and so on. Each person must repeat the entire sequence perfectly before adding their twist. The moment someone stumbles or forgets a section, they’re out, and the game continues until only one memory master remains.