The Best Backyard Games for Any Party
My friend Kevin hosts a Fourth of July party every year. The first year, there was no plan. People stood around, ate some burgers, made small talk, and went home by 8 PM. It was fine. Forgettable. The kind of gathering you attend out of obligation and leave with no stories.
The second year, Kevin bought a cornhole set.
That party went until midnight. People who'd never spoken to each other were talking trash by the second round. Kevin's wife's coworker — a quiet accountant named Dennis — turned out to be a cornhole savant and attracted a crowd of spectators. Rivalries formed. A bracket was drawn on the back of a paper plate. Someone bet twenty dollars on a match between two people they'd met forty-five minutes earlier.
That's the power of a yard game. It gives people something to do besides stand in a circle and ask about each other's jobs. It creates structure without formality, competition without stakes, and conversations that start with "nice throw" and end with genuine friendships.
Here are the games that consistently deliver.
Cornhole: The Undisputed King
I know, it's obvious. Cornhole is to backyard parties what pizza is to food — universally liked, hard to mess up, and something you can argue about endlessly (underhand vs. overhand, beanbag weight, board angle, how many drinks before your aim gets better and then catastrophically worse).
The reason cornhole works so well is accessibility. Everyone can play. Your sixty-year-old uncle, your twelve-year-old nephew, the person who's never held anything resembling a sports implement — everyone can toss a beanbag at a board. The skill ceiling is high enough that good players can show off, but the floor is low enough that bad players still have fun.
My setup recommendations: get a regulation-size set with solid wood boards. The cheap ones with fabric stretched over a frame wobble and slide, and it matters more than you think when competitive energy kicks in. Spend 150 on a decent set and it'll last a decade. LED hole lights for night play are a $20 add-on that extends your cornhole window into the late hours, which is when the best games happen.
House rule worth adopting: the "redemption rule." If the trailing team can match the winning team's score on their final throw, the game goes to overtime. This creates absurd pressure on what would otherwise be a meaningless toss, and the crowd reaction when someone hits a clutch bag is genuinely electric.
Spikeball: The Game That Turns Everyone Into an Athlete
Spikeball showed up at a beach one summer and within two years it was at every tailgate, park, and backyard in America. There's a reason. It's genuinely, aggressively fun.
For the uninitiated: it's a small trampoline-like net placed at ankle level. Two teams of two. You serve the ball off the net and then it's basically volleyball rules — three touches max per team, alternate hitting it off the net. There are no sides. It's 360 degrees, so you're constantly circling, diving, and doing things your body hasn't done since you were fifteen.
The learning curve is about ten minutes. Your first few rallies will be awkward. By your third game, you're diving for balls and celebrating spikes with people you met an hour ago.
A word of warning: Spikeball can get intense. I've seen a casual game escalate to the point where a grown man dove headfirst into a rose bush to keep a rally alive. His commitment was admirable. His arms were scratched for a week. Set up on grass, not near anything with thorns, and maybe stretch first — the game demands more lateral movement than you'd expect.
KanJam: Frisbee But Better
KanJam takes the basic pleasure of throwing a frisbee and adds a target and a partner, which turns out to be the recipe for immediate addiction.
Two teams of two. Each team has a cylindrical can about fifty feet away. One partner throws the frisbee at the can while the other stands near it and can deflect or swat the disc into (or onto) the target. Direct hit on the can: 2 points. Partner deflects it to hit the can: 1 point. Partner swats it directly into the slot on the front: instant win. Frisbee goes in the slot on a throw without being touched: also instant win, and the crowd will lose their collective minds.
What makes KanJam special is the partnership dynamic. You develop chemistry with your teammate quickly — you learn their throwing tendencies, they learn your deflecting range, and by the third game you're executing plays you didn't discuss. It's like the buddy-cop movie of yard games.
Setup takes about ninety seconds. The cans are lightweight and portable. The whole thing fits in a bag you can carry with one hand. For tailgating — which I covered in the tailgate party playbook — KanJam is arguably the best option because of how little space and setup time it requires.
Ladder Golf (Ladder Toss): The Sleeper Hit
Also called hillbilly golf, redneck golf, or "that game with the balls on strings," ladder toss doesn't look exciting. It's two ladders made of PVC pipe, each with three rungs, and you toss bolas (two golf balls connected by a string) at them from about fifteen feet away.
It looks like nothing. It's incredible.
The scoring is straightforward: top rung is 3 points, middle is 2, bottom is 1. First to exactly 21 wins. But the "exactly" part is crucial — if you go over 21, your score resets to 13. This creates a fascinating endgame where a team at 20 needs to hit only the bottom rung and anything else hurts them. I've watched people choke on the bottom rung five times in a row while their opponent claws back from a 10-point deficit. The drama is unreasonable for a game involving golf balls on a string.
The bola physics are also wildly unpredictable. The way they spin and wrap around the rungs creates moments of genuine surprise — a throw that looks terrible will sometimes helicopter around the top rung and hang on, while a throw that looks perfect will bounce off and land in the grass. There's enough skill to reward practice and enough chaos to keep everyone in it.
Giant Jenga: Engineering Meets Anxiety
Take regular Jenga and make each block about a foot long and two inches thick. Stack it up. Now you have a tower that's about four feet tall when built and about five and a half feet tall when it inevitably crashes to the ground, usually accompanied by a scream and a spilled drink.
Giant Jenga is less about competition and more about communal tension. Everyone gathers around the tower. Everyone watches the current player carefully poke and prod blocks, testing for loose ones. The tower sways. Someone whispers "oh no." The block slides free. The tower holds. Everyone exhales. The next player steps up and the tension resets.
When it finally falls — and it always falls with spectacular violence, blocks scattering across the patio — the collective reaction is one of the purest expressions of joy available at a backyard gathering. People who weren't even playing will cheer. It's communal catharsis built from wooden blocks.
Building tip: sand the blocks lightly before your first game. Fresh-cut wood can be rough and blocks sometimes stick. A light sanding creates smoother surfaces and more precarious stacking, which is the point.
Bocce Ball: The Sophisticated Option
Bocce is the game you set up when you want to feel like you're at an Italian villa instead of a suburban backyard, and honestly, the illusion works.
Two teams. One small target ball (the pallino) gets tossed out. Each team takes turns throwing their larger balls, trying to get closest to the pallino. Closest ball after all balls are thrown scores points equal to however many of their balls are closer than the opponent's closest ball. First to 12 or 15 wins, depending on how long you want the game to last.
Bocce is pleasantly strategic. You can play offense (getting close to the pallino) or defense (knocking your opponent's ball away). You can deliberately move the pallino by hitting it with your throw. There's a risk-reward calculation on every toss that rewards both skill and cunning.
It's also the most conversation-friendly game on this list. The pace is slow enough that you can chat between throws, hold a drink in your non-throwing hand, and maintain an actual conversation while playing. This makes it ideal for dinner parties, family gatherings, or any event where you want activity without chaos.
A decent bocce set costs 60. Get one with a carrying case — the balls are heavy and rolling them around loose in your garage is asking for a stubbed toe.
Washers: Cornhole's Scrappy Cousin
Washers is cornhole for people who want something smaller, louder, and arguably more satisfying. Instead of tossing beanbags at a board, you're tossing metal washers into a cup set inside a wooden box.
The clang of a washer hitting the cup is one of the great sounds in backyard gaming. It's sharp, definitive, and deeply satisfying. There's no ambiguity — it's either in or it's not. The cup is small enough that making it feels like an achievement every time.
Standard rules: 1 point for landing in the box, 3 points for the cup. First to 21 with cancellation scoring (your points cancel out your opponent's in each round). The boxes can be placed closer together than cornhole boards, making washers ideal for smaller yards.
My father-in-law introduced me to washers. He built his set from scrap wood and plumbing washers from the hardware store. Total cost: about eight dollars. It remains the most-used game at every family event. You don't need a premium set. You need two boxes, a cup each, and some washers. Done.
Kan Jam Plus Grill Equals Perfect Day
Here's the ultimate setup, and I've run this configuration at three different parties to universal acclaim.
Set up cornhole near the patio for the casual players. Put Spikeball in the open grass for the athletic crowd. Bocce goes on the far side for the talkers. Get the grill running — and I mean properly running — between the activity zones so the smell of whatever you're cooking pulls people in that direction every twenty minutes.
Rotate games. Let people try everything. The natural competitive sorting will happen on its own — the serious players will gravitate toward cornhole and Spikeball, the social players will cluster around bocce and giant Jenga, and everyone will periodically abandon their games to check on the food.
Music, but not too loud. You want background energy, not a concert competing with conversation. A Bluetooth speaker at moderate volume with a playlist that nobody objects to. Classic rock, throwback hip-hop, whatever fits your group. The music should enhance the vibe, not dominate it.
The Secret Ingredient: A Bracket
I learned this from Kevin, the guy who saved his own party with a cornhole set. At his third annual Fourth of July, he showed up with a bracket drawn on poster board. Sixteen teams of two. Single elimination. Winner gets a trophy he bought at a thrift store for three dollars.
The trophy — a small gold cup on a marble base, originally awarded for what appeared to be a 1994 middle school spelling bee — is now the most coveted item in our friend group. It's been won and lost and passed around for three years. People practice for Kevin's tournament. They form alliances. They scout opponents. They create team names.
All because of a three-dollar trophy and a bracket.
Structure creates stakes. Stakes create investment. Investment creates stories. And stories are the difference between a party people attend and a party people remember.
Buy a cheap trophy. Make a bracket. Watch your backyard party become legendary.
