Camp Games to Try With Your Friends

Trekking out into the wilderness for some quality time with your friends and their families leaves plenty of opportunity for all kinds of outdoor activities and camp games! No matter how many people you have, there’s a game that requires zero to minimal equipment for your situation. Before you go for a glamping or a camping adventure, be sure to bring along these camp games for large groups, a couple of friends, teens, or kids — we collected the best options for everybody!

Camp Games for Teens

For family reunions or when you need to put on your camp counsellor hat, here are some camp games to keep teens occupied!

1. Birthday Line Up. Without talking, everyone must communicate in a non-physical and gentle way to line up in order of birthday by month and day. This can be used for other lineups too; by height, first name, favourite colour etc.
2. Red Light, Green Light. A classic to get everyone moving, have one player stand a good distance from the group, enough that they have to yell to be heard, and have them operate a traffic light system. Their backs are turned on “green light” as the group tries to move forward to reach the person who’s ‘it.’ When the traffic light person decides to turn and yell “red light!” everyone must stop moving or they’ll be caught, then they’ll have to start back at the beginning or they’re out! Whoever reaches the traffic light first is next to be ‘it!’
3. Animal Alphabet. Starting with the letter A, go around in a circle naming animals with the next letter as you go through the alphabet until you reach Z. Complete the alphabet as many times as you can as a team in a certain amount of time or until you get all the way through etc. The alphabet game can be for many other categories, such as sports teams, musicals, bands, food, etc.
4. Giants, Wizards and Elves. This game is like giant rock paper scissors tag and is perfect for getting out lots of energy and is a very popular camp game! Establish 2 safety zones, the middle zone and two separate teams. Both teams will convene and decide what to be – giants hold their hands up above their heads, wizards hold arms out in front of themselves and wiggle their fingers, elves create pointy ears with their fingers and hold their hands over their ears. Designate one team representative from both teams and meet in the middle with the rest of the teams behind them. Elves beat wizards, wizards beat giants and giants beat elves and the winning team chases the opposing team to tag as many people as possible to join their own team before the opposing team reaches the safe zone.
5. One Word Stories. This game is fun to do as fast as you can. Using one word at a time, go around the circle and tell a story, the goal being to have a throughline. You can decide as a group if there’s a theme you want to stay in or what you have to eventually include in the story.
6. Rock Paper Scissors Olympics. For big groups, you can play rock paper scissors olympics! Divide the room or space into three sections – bronze, silver and gold. Everyone starts in the bronze section and pairs up, winning best out of three to advance to silver. Silver members pair up and advance to gold when winning best out of three, or move back to bronze to begin again. The goal is to get everyone to have five rounds in the gold section!

Teens can be some of the most energetic humans to play these kinds of games with and their enthusiasm is infectious. For more ideas of games to play with teens, take a look at these options!

Day Camp Games for Kids

These are simpler games to play with the littles! When you’ve got kids to entertain, here are some go-to day camp games for young kids that you can pull out whenever you need.

1. Hide and Seek. Always good to get little kids running, and play a game of hide and seek. And then make it a hide-and-seek tag game! Have a designated safe zone and if the kids don’t make it there before they’re caught, they become a searcher, but if they make it in the safe zone, they “win.”
2. Drip, Drip, Splash. This is an especially good game for summer and all you’ll need is a bucket of water and a sponge or a cup of water. Begin by sitting in a circle, and selecting someone to be “it.” The person who is “it” will move in a circle, dripping water on everyone’s head until they “splash” the water on someone by dumping the remaining water in the cup or squeezing the entire sponge over the person’s head. This person must jump up and race in the opposite direction around the circle from the person who’s “it” and whoever doesn’t make it back to the open spot first, is “it” for the next round.
3. Duck, duck, goose! This game is the dry version of Drip, Drip, Splash! Instead of using water, the person who’s “it” will tap each person on the head, reciting “duck, duck, duck” until they select a person to race around the circle, when they’ll yell “goose” as they tap on the person’s head. Whoever does not make it back first to the empty spot is “it!”
4. First Names. Have the kids count the letters of their first name and then find another person with the same amount of letters in their name. If someone doesn’t find a match, they can use a nickname or another name someone calls them to achieve another number of letters to find a match! To make this a little more difficult, have them do this without speaking!
5. Going to A Party. To start this game, say “I’m going to a party! Do you want to come? You can only come if you bring something!” The object of the game is then to guess the link or the theme. It can be the number of letters in a word, it can be only things that are blue, only things that end in “y” or any other link you can think of!
6. Stand by Me. This can be a good ongoing game to use throughout the day during other activities because this is a never-ending game, but have everyone standing around you and strike the silliest pose they can think of. They must remember this pose and where they are in relation to those around them, as every time you say “Stand by me!” they will have to replicate the exact pose!

Day camp games can be some of the most fun to play, particularly if you’re out glamping with your friends and their kids! If you’re looking for more ideas or you have picky kids, give these 50 different camp games a try!

Active Camp Games

If you’ve got some energy to burn or you and your friends prefer high-intensity activities, give these games a try! These are also great for big groups!

1. Flashlight Capture the Flag. This game is best played at night with flashlights and different coloured glow sticks, but divide into two groups and define the parameters of your field as well as whose side is whose. Hide the glow sticks within the respective sides leaving an inch or so of the glowstick visible and have the opposite teams hunt for the glowsticks with their flashlights within a set timeframe. Whichever team collects the most will be the winner.
2. Camouflage. Establish someone to be “it” and the rest of the group is scattered and attempting to stay hidden behind whatever is available. This game is the ultimate outdoors game, particularly in the woods. The goal is to reach the designated home base before being caught by the person who is it and there are four turns for you to get to home base. The person who is “it” has four chances to find all the camouflaged participants, closing their eyes and counting to 25 as the participants move closer to home base each time. Once found, the person who’s it must call out the name and location of the person and they will join them as “it” to help find all the camouflaged participants. Try to play this game fast for the most fun!
3. Candy Bar Tag. Play tag as normal, but the person who is “it” must tag another person before they can say the name of a candy bar. The twist is once a candy bar has been named, you cannot say the same candy bar twice! Someone who is tagged can be out or they can run alongside the person who’s it to help catch the next person.
4. Four Corners. Typically played indoors, all you need is to designate four corners of a space, each corner of which is given a number, and tag someone to be “it.” The person standing in the middle counts to 10, calls out a number and opens their eyes to catch whoever isn’t in the right corner! Whoever is in the wrong corner is caught is the new “it.”
5. Tortoise Tag. The great thing about the game of tag is you can always count on the amount of running and the countless variations of how to play. In this version, players can avoid being tagged by flipping onto their backs with arms and legs in the air like a tortoise stuck on their backs. This will only get them ten seconds of immunity though, after which if they’re tagged, they must freeze and remain frozen until untagged by another player.
6. Scream-a-thon. If you’ve got a lot of wiggles to get out, try this game. Everyone lines up, takes a deep breath, and starts running as they scream as loud as they can. You run until you can’t scream anymore on that one breath and whoever has run the farthest wins.

Rainy Day Camp Games

Sometimes the weather just decides not to be agreeable for outdoor activities and we have to pivot to some fun indoor games. Here are some camp games you can get up to on a rainy day.

1. Charades. Charades is a classic game and can be used in almost any dynamic. One person acts out a word, phrase or otherwise for the rest of the group to guess. Typically, no spoken words are allowed to be used, but you can make noises to indicate what you’re trying to have the others guess. You can come up with the charade on the spot or write down answers on pieces of paper and pick them out of a hat.
2. Monday Comics. Play this game as a group or split into groups of 4 or 5 and keep in mind this game requires pencils and paper. Each member of the group draws two silly pictures and puts the pictures into a pile. Then each member writes two captions that had something to do with the pictures they drew and then the real fun starts. One at a time, players pull a picture from the picture pile and a caption from the caption pile to reveal a panel in the comic. The goal of the game is to giggle, but try to make the comics tell a story! They’re not meant to truly make sense though. Don’t worry, these comics didn’t quite make the Sunday Comics, which is why they’re the Monday Comics!
3. Polaroid. This is a great imagination game and can be played at any point where you’ve got some downtime. One person begins the polaroid by describing an object, such as “a pineapple.” The person next to them then adds more detail, such as “a ripe pineapple on a pineapple plant,” the person next to them may add something like “growing in red soil” and so on. The point isn’t to make it into a story, but to simply describe what you see in your mind’s eye and create a picture together in your imagination. Try playing with your eyes closed to really immerse yourself!
4. Finish the Lyric. Played in teams or as a group, one player begins the lyrics to a song and the player who finishes the lyric correctly gets a point or can be the next to be “it” to sing a lyric. This is a great campfire game!

These are just some of the camp-inspired games to get you started on what to play while you’re out glamping or camping. Games are a fantastic way to pass the time when hiking or just to add another layer of fun to your kayaking excursion. For more inspiration on camp games, check out what you can find here! However you decide to spend your glamping adventure, be sure to see what accommodations are available at our three gorgeous glamping locations!