The Complete List Of Drinking Games For 2 People, Ranked
Tired of the same old movie night with your SO or BFF? Why not get sloshed at home? Drinking games are usually played in groups, but they can be just as fun in pairs. This is the perfect activity for those Saturday nights when the weather is less than inspiring for venturing out, but you still want to have a good time.
From booze-added childhood favorites like "I'm going on a picnic," to that college dorm standby, flip cup, the options are endless. You can play a different two-person drinking game every night for a month and never have to play the same game twice. However, we really don't recommend that sort of gaming marathon for the sake of your liver. For the occasional weekend drunken pajama party for you and your bestie though, drinking games rock! Check out our top picks for two-person drinking games that will turn a boring old movie night into a night to remember.
Flip cup
If you went to college, chances are you've played flip cup. According to a survey from College Stats, flip cup is the third most popular drinking game among college students, coming in behind quarters in the No. 2 spot and beer pong in top place. To get a flip cup game started with you and your BFF, all you need is two lightweight plastic cups, like the Solo 16-ounce plastic drinking cups ubiquitous at keg parties (if you've never been to a keg party, you're a better person than us). You'll also need a table and some alcohol (via BarGames101). Beer is ideal, but you can choose any drink you like — whiskey, tequila, or champagne (if you're classy like that). And hey, there's always "near beer."
Sit opposite your opponent and place your cups on the table in front of you. Fill them with your drink of choice, and drink up! Then, place your cup back on the table upside down and near the edge. As fast as you can, use one finger to flip the cup over so it lands right side up. If you don't succeed — try, try again. And again. And again. Because this game is always better with a crowd than just two people, we had to place it at the bottom of our list.
Quarters
Since you've already got out your plastic cups, you might as well try the second most-popular drinking game from the College Stats survey. You'll need two shiny quarters, and we mean shiny. Go give those babies a good bath before you get started, because you're going to be drinking out of the same cups they land in. You also need booze. Beer is the recommended beverage during this game which can get rather rowdy and end up with you drinking a lot if your technique is off.
Sit opposite your opponent and place your cups in the middle of the table. Fill them with your beverage, then start bouncing your quarter off the table with the goal of landing yours in your cup. Everyone has their own technique for this, but a popular and effective style is to hold the quarter gently between your index finger and thumb so it's parallel to the table. Throw it flat onto the table about an inch in front of your cup, and it should bounce up and in. It's harder than it sounds, so get ready to keeeeeeep trying. Whoever lands their quarter in the cup first wins, and their opponent has to drink from the other cup. Then, refill and repeat.
One more word of caution: Use a card table or cheap IKEA table, not your grandmother's heirloom 18th-century Queen Anne dining set, because depending on the level of zealousness with which you and your opponent fling your quarters, it could get damaged (trust us).
Never have I ever
How much do you know about your BFF, BF, or GF? How much do you want to know? Sometimes not as much as this game reveals, especially after a few drinks! Never Have I Ever is also a great way to get to know a new friend better, and it's an excellent ice breaker (via Keg of Wisdom). Chances are you know the gist of the game, but here's how you play it with booze. Player one starts by making a statement about something they have never done or experienced. For example, "Never have I ever been to a Taylor Swift concert." If player two is a Swiftie and has stood in front of the hallowed stage upon which her highness sang, then player two drinks. If not, then nothing happens, except you both learn that your musical tastes are still intact (we realize this might be an unpopular opinion).
Next, it's player two's chance to make a statement. If you have done or experienced what player two says they haven't, you drink. If not, the game continues (although you should still feel free to have a drink). Keep it as PG as you like or go X-rated; but it's a good idea to read your audience to see what level of raunchiness your partner may or may not be comfortable with. However, in our experience, after several rounds — and drinks — most games end up in the gutter.
Battleshots
This is the alcohol-soaked version of Hasbro's bestselling board game Battleship. You can buy a pre-made game, or you can make your own version with a few supplies. You also need some alcohol of your choice and shot glasses (via Keg of Wisdom). You and your opponent will secretly set up your battleships — or full shot glasses, in this case — then flip a coin to decide who goes first. Player one will call out coordinates of where they think their opponent has sequestered their "battleshots." So, for example, you might call out "D8." If your opponent has a shot ship in D8, they'll respond "hit!" and have to drink the shot. If not, they'll say "miss!"
Keep track of which positions you've already called. How you do this depends on whether you are using a pre-made board game or DIYing it. Next, it's your opponent's turn to guess. The game continues until all of one player's ships have been sunk (or drunk).
Drunk bullsh*t
Usually used to refer to the drama that people start after they've had too much to drink, "drunk bullsh*t" is also the name of a fun drinking game for two. How good you are at lying really determines how much fun this game will be. Born liars will excel at this card game that involves getting rid of your cards any way you can. If your opponent thinks you're bluffing, they can call you on it and make you drink.
To play you need a deck of cards and some drinks (via Bar Games 101). Deal the deck evenly between the two players. Player one starts by placing an ace face-down in the middle of the table. Even if player one doesn't have an ace, they still have to play a card, but they must "bluff," calling out the card convincingly as they lay it down. They can also play more than one card at a time. It's up to player two to determine whether or not player one is telling the truth.
If they suspect foul play, they can call "bullsh*t!," at which point player one must reveal their real card, turning it face up. If it's an ace, player two drinks. If it's not, player one drinks. Player one also has to take the bullsh*t cards plus any cards in the pile that have accumulated underneath them. The game is over when one player gets rid of all their cards ... or when one player passes out on the floor.
Two truths and a lie
In the same vein as Never Have I Ever, Two Truths and a Lie is the ultimate get-to-know-ya game for new friends and lovers. The boozy version is especially juicy. You don't need any materials for this game (except drinks), and the rules are simple: Each person comes up with three statements about themselves — two true statements and one that's a lie (via The Best Drinking Games).
The trick is to disguise the lie in such a way that your partner will find it challenging to discern it from the truth. A bad example of this would be: "I ate chocolate yesterday; I went to college when I was 18; I spent Christmas on the moon last year." Unless you're an astronaut who hates chocolate, it's going to be too easy for your partner to fish out the lie. In this case, you would have to drink. However, if you were a little sneakier about it, and your partner didn't manage to call your bluff, they have to drink.
To successfully pull the wool, PrepScholar suggests coming up with a lie that is something you could have done but haven't actually done yet. The winner of this game is the one who has to drink the least, although we question whether that's really winning.
I'm going on a picnic
We admit, we are all grown up and still love this game. It's even better with booze! If you dig way back in your memory, you almost surely can remember playing this one as a kid. One person starts by saying the phrase, "I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to bring ...," finishing with an item that starts with the letter A, such as "apples" (via Let's Play A Drinking Game). The next person follows, repeating the phrase and then adding an item that starts with the letter B — "I'm going on a picnic and I'm going to bring apples and bananas." Now, please, if you have an ounce of creativity in your body, don't use apple and banana — these are just really boring examples. What else would be fun on a picnic that starts with A? Aunt Agatha? We heard she's a blast at picnics!
So, where does the drinking come in, you ask? Patience, grasshopper. Whenever someone makes a mistake, which usually starts to happen often after the letter F in our experience, they drink. If you said you were going to bring flip flops on the picnic but your partner says "fajitas," they drink. Think you have a memory of steel and can get through the game without wetting your whistle? Start each round by taking a shot and see how that works out for you.
Truth or drink
Are you the honest or daredevil type? In this classic game, pick your poison. Answer your opponent's question truthfully, or accept a dare — or in this case, a drink! To play this version of the classic Truth or Dare, you need some alcohol and glasses. You can use your own creativity to come up with the questions, or you can access the free online game with prompts ranging in risqué rating from none to naughty. Sample questions run the gamut from, "What song are you embarrassed to admit that you love?" to "Describe the first time you had sex, including all the cringy details."
You'll see from that last question that the key is to keep things interesting by avoiding simple "yes" or "no" answers. If you're going to tell, be ready to tell all. If you're not ready for the truth, then take a shot. As the game progresses and the liquor flows, everybody tends to get a little less tight-lipped and a lot more generous with the details.
Power hour
This isn't so much a competition as it is an endurance test. All you need to play is two shot glasses, some good music, and a can of cheap beer (Miller High Life perhaps?) or another drink of your choice. Its simplicity is one of the reasons it ranks so high on our list. Use caution, though. As its name implies, Power Hour lasts for 60 minutes, and there are 60 opportunities to take a shot. This is a marathon not a sprint, so unless you are a world-champion drinker with a liver of steel, tequila is probably not a good choice! Drinking Game Zone recommends six to seven cans of beer each.
As for the music, some PH devotees choose to make their own playlists. While there are variations of the game, typically, each song snippet should be 60 seconds long. If you have other things to do in your life besides DIY your drinking game playlists, you can find Power Hour playlists on streaming services and even Power Hour video playlists on YouTube made by people who apparently have nothing better to do with their time (thankfully, because what would we do without them?) Now, fill your glasses, and press play. You'll start each 60-second segment with a shot. How long can you last? The first one to fail to drink loses!
Ed Sheeran's favorite words
Here's a drinking game backed by science. Data science, that is. If you're an Ed Sheeran fan, or a data science nerd, this game's for you. Towards Data Science conducted some really pointless research and created a word cloud illustrating singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran's most used words. Then someone somewhere decided to put this research to equally pointless use by creating a drinking game out of it. The sheer silliness of it garners it a high ranking in our book.
Get your favorite booze and put on your favorite Ed Sheeran tunes (or the ones you can most tolerate) and drink every time he sings the words "baby," "miss," and "love." If you're particularly thirsty, you can increase your drinking frequency by also quaffing on the words "cause," "she," "come," and "now." It's utterly pointless research and an utterly pointless game, but we love it anyways. If you get bored with the word version, you can also play the subject-matter version. For example, every time Ed croons about his hair or heartbreak, take a drink.
If you're not an Ed Sheeran fan, you can play this game with many other artists/songs. A classic is the Police's song "Roxanne." Every time Sting sings the namesake — 26 times in 3 minutes 15 seconds — take a drink. Or how about drinking every time André 3000 sings "hey ya," Beyonce sings "uh oh," or the King of Pop sings "beat it."
Speed facts
How well do you know your opponent? In this fast-paced game, you go back and forth in rapid-fire stating facts about each other (via Keg of Wisdom). This game is super fun and is best played between two people who know each other really well, because it's based on the quantity of facts known and recall speed. It will be a very short game if you play it with someone you just met.
With super simple rules and no materials needed, it can be played anywhere, as long as you have some booze. Player one starts by stating a fact about player two, for example, "You're from Cincinnati." If that's false, player one drinks. Then the game continues with player two stating a fact about player one. And so on and so forth. Now, you could potentially be dishonest and tell player two they're wrong then they're right, thereby making them drink much more than they need to, but that would be poor sportsmanship. You also want to avoid stating facts that are plainly obvious, such as "you have brown hair," because that's just not trying very hard.
Drunk war
Topping our list is the boozy version of the classic card game, only with slightly different rules and the potential for a lot more fun. To play you need a deck of cards and some drinks (via Have a Cocktail). Deal the deck evenly between the two players. Each turn, both players turn over the top card in their hand. Whoever has the higher card wins the round and takes both cards (aces are high). If both players turn over the same value card (e.g., two fours or two jacks), that starts a war. At this point, both players drink.
To battle the war, each player then lays one card face-down and one face-up. Whoever has the higher card takes all the cards, and the loser drinks. However, if the face-up cards match, another war starts with each player taking a drink. Once the war is won, you continue gameplay until another war or until one player collects all the cards and is declared the winner.