The Poverty Games

**If you are a poor newly wed in the need of entertainment, or an intense fan of Petrelly (Petrece?) and want to emulate our lives through imitation, then this blog post is a How-To just for you!**

As Peter and I live on a tight budget we don't have a lot of store bought games in our home. Nevertheless, we are super creative people who can't be kept down by the man, so we play the games we don't have anyway. YOLO! Here are some of our favourites that you can play with only two players; perfect for date nights or for people who only have one friend, just like us.

Mancala:
Mancala is an African game of stones. That's what the internet tells me, anyway. Here are an outlined set of rules also found on the internet for those who have never played:

• Mancala is played with seven pits per player.
• Your pits are the 6 small pits on your side of the board, and the larger Kalaha pit on the right hand side.
• Each player starts the game by placing 4 stones into each of their 6 small pits.
• A turn consists of taking all the stones from one of your pits, and then dropping a stone into each successive pit in a counter-clockwise fashion
• If the final stone is placed in your Kalaha, then you get another turn.
• If the final stone ends in one of your empty pits while stones sit in the pit opposite then all of those stones are placed into your Kalaha.
• The winner is the person with the most stones in his Kalaha
• The game ends when all of a player's pits are empty. At that point, the other player places the remaining
  stones in her Kalaha.

We don't have a Mancala board, or rather, we DIDN'T have a Mancala board until last week when I made one out of an old egg carton and a bunch of tiny Legos. SUPER SIMPLE. I don't even think you need more guidance than that... Here's what our board looks like just incase. 

Stunning, right? Our big pits of points were just the carpet to the right of our sides.  

Battleship: 

I'm assuming everyone knows how to play Battleship. If you don't know, rules are here. To play Battleship at home without a board all you need is to draw two 10x10 grids on your individual paper - X axis 1-10, Y axis A-J - which you cunningly hide from your opponent to make sure they're not a cheater cheater pants on eater. Pencil in where your ships are on one of the grids, and then continue play as usual. This was one of Peter's and my go-to games to play when we were long distance, seeing as the boards don't need to interact at all. SCORE. 

The Floor is Lava: 

Again, a game that I assume and hope all of you know very well. This filled many of our Friday and Saturday nights when we were engaged because we had no friends and usually we had my house to ourselves as my roommates DID have friends. To play, rearrange the furniture in your home, or just in your immediate playing area, to create new obstacles for each round. Once you have your arena prepared, you then take turns assigning your opponent to retrieve or place an item at a certain spot in the area. You CANNOT TOUCH THE FLOOR, because it is lava, as the game name indicates. Peter and I usually ruled that you could not use the same route twice in one game because we're hardcore and essentially olympians, but do what you prefer. 

Checkers: 

Masking tape and small tokens of a uniformed colour (Legos, Bananagram tiles, pieces of paper etc.) create the perfect Checkers board. The last time we played we just used the tiles of the kitchen floor as squares and Bananagram tiles as checkers, one of us letter side up the other letter side down. Pretty much the easiest board ever, albeit a large one. 

Peter beats me at every game we play. It's practically spousal abuse. ;)

The Rainy Day Game: 

This game became to be and named because it was created on a particularly rainy weekend. We used Rook cards which have four colours (yellow, black, red, and green) and assigned a category to each colour. Yellow was Physical Challenge, green: Disney Quotes, red: Harry Potter Trivia, and black: Truth. When we recreated this game the weekend before our wedding with my sister Sharah we switched it up, adding the categories "take an embarrassing picture" and "spot the real trivia fact." The categories can really be whatever the heck you want, and you can use face cards too. Whatever ensures your figurative ship won't sink (get it? Whatever floats your boat?! bahahahahahahaha I am so funny to me).
In order to play, once you have decided your categories, you simply put the deck face down and take turns drawing a card, then completing the challenge attached. 

It's a really simple game. I feel like it doesn't sound simple... but it is. Here is some photographic evidence of how fun it is. 

Here we see Sharah completing "Take an Embarrassing Picture." The picture being her about to receive an intense swirly.

Physical challenge: with a pineapple on his head, Peter must dance and lip-sync to Best Years of Our Lives for my roommates

Poker: 

Granted, with poker you still need a deck of face cards, but chips are something you can improvise with. We generally use Uno cards divided into different colours and distributed as chips. Green = $1, Yellow = $5 Blue = $10 Red = $20. 

As you can probably tell, I'm running out of fun games that we play, especially ones that would be interesting to you. We also enjoy marathoning shows on Netflix, ordering Pizza, making forts, saying we are going to make a fort but then giving up before we start and watching Netflix instead, naked wrestling, shadow puppets on the ceiling above our bed, twerk-offs, gossiping, talking in weird voices, naked hugging, watching fantastic movies that are categorically awful, and planning our future as Rich People (it's capitalised because it's important). 

Marriage is the greatest thing I have ever done in my life. 

Truth or Dare

One of my absolute favourite party games to play is Truth or Dare.

The funny thing is, when I offer this as a suggestion at festive gatherings, I frequently get eyebrow raises or eyeball rolls in return. Regardless, I can be very persuasive, even if faced with a room of nay-sayers, thus the game often commences and everybody has a fantastic time.

Maybe you too are sitting here trying to read this post but struggling because your eyes are straining over the effort of not rolling in a deep sarcasm spasm. If this is the case, then this entry, my friend, is dedicated to you, and The Problem of Truth or Dare. The Problem is, most people seem to have limited this beautiful masterpiece of a game into one truth and one dare, both in the halted mindset of pre-pubescent youths trying the "adult" (and sketchy) party life for the first time in their basements. The truth: "Who do you like??" and the dare: "kiss so-and-so on the MOUTH!"

As a seasoned Truth or Darer myself, I have not played a game which included either of these since I retired my first training bra. It is time for you to do the same, and embrace whole heartedly the beauty which is T&D.

The Truths 

First things first, Truths should avoid delving into love lives at all cost. Ultimately, no one really CARES who likes who, and if they do, that usually means your players don't want this truth to be revealed publicly yet. The art of T&D is being able to embarrass everyone a little bit, but by embarrassing yourself along with them. Therefore, don't ever force someone to answer a truth that you yourself would cringe if it was asked you (same rule applies to dares).
Think about embarrassing things, but do not ask "what's something embarrassing that has happened to you?" People usually repress embarrassing events so that they can function throughout an average day, without needing to go home and cry in their bed. That being said, embarrassing memories are the type which get burned into everyones' brains, so your function in creating a Truth is finding ways to discover these traumas, so that you can enjoy their stories.
Thus, what is something which has happened to you which was traumatising?
Good truths can be things such as:

• Have you ever, in your teenage or adult life, messed your pants in public? Tell us the story.
• What has been your most terrifying moment in someone else's bathroom? 
• Have you ever been under anaesthesia? What did you do/say as the drugs were wearing off?
• Have you ever used a word incorrectly to an embarrassing degree? In your first language or another? 
• When did you first learn about sex? What was your reaction? (People usually have hilarious anecdotes about their 7 year old self first being told about the Birds and the Bees. I do (okay, I was 9).) 
• What was the most embarrassing/painful/uncomfortable date you ever went on?

Another category of Truths goes into the hypothetical. These can be in "If" forms or "Would you rather" forms. Again, think outside of the usual. You want questions that will make people debate and think, and definitely questions that will make them cringe and laugh.

• Would you rather streak naked through a crowded place filled with your friends and people you admire and have EVERYONE see, or, have your parents streak naked through a crowded place where you see, and you cannot close your eyes or look away?
• If you had to add an extra limb to somewhere on your body, what would it be and where would you put it? 
• Would you rather receive $1 million dollars once, or receive $50,000 every time you sneezed, but you also change genders automatically with every sneeze? 
• If you could be in any movie what movie would it be, and what MINOR or supporting character would you play? 
• Would you rather eat ice-cream flavoured poop, or poop flavoured ice-cream? 
• If you were one of the Muppets who would you be? 

The Dares 

Dares are usually the more tricky ones for people to think up, which is a shame, because they also have the potential to be the best and most hilarious part of every game. Again, you want to focus on finding tasks for people to do which will be embarrassing and fun, but not humiliating or degrading. Think of things that people have to put effort into doing, because often their effort alone will be laughter ensuing for everyone involved. Adding time limits to tasks which need a completion can also be helpful because everything is a tad more entertaining when done in panic and desperation. Maybe that's why dating is so side-splitting... 

Favourite dares: 

• Put something in your back pocket and twerk or dance until it falls out. 
• Find lipstick and apply it to another player without using your hands. 
• Attempt to lick your own armpit. 
• Eat a food of another player's choosing without using your hands. 
• In your best Gollum/Smeagol impersonation, attempt to seduce another player of your choice. 
• Blindfolded, apply makeup or nail polish on another player. 
• Perform a sock-puppet show of Lés Miserables or another lengthy and well known story. 
• Pick the nose of another player. If no other player is willing, pick your own nose, and show the results like it is a piece of art and you are an art expert/tour guide.  
• Trade outfits with another player and remain like that for the rest of the game. 
• Lick the belly button of another player. 
• Allow someone to post a status on your Facebook, or poke someone of their choice, your friend or not.

Tonight I spent time at a friends house with a group of fantastically creative people. They were not at all hesitant to play T&D and I am glad, because it was legendary. Hopefully this post will have inspired you to get out there and play yourself. 

I believe in you and your creativity.