Lesser Evil

Would you rather lick a bus handrail, or give a toast at your ex’s wedding? One player sets out a poison, everyone else offers something worse, and the whole table votes on which they’d swallow. Read the room and you score.

3 to 8 players
One phone, or a phone each
English and Persian cards
Nothing is sent anywhere

How to play

A “would you rather” party game for three to eight, where neither option is any good. Pass one phone round, or play on a phone each.

Everyone holds six poison cards. Each round, one player is the Judge.
The Judge lays one card as option A.
Everyone else secretly offers a card from their hand as option B, to make the choice as hard as possible. The Judge reads the offers without knowing whose they are and picks the cruellest; its owner scores 1.
The Judge argues for both options. Then everyone but the Judge votes in secret: A or B?
On a split, everyone on the bigger side scores 1. If everyone agrees, every voter scores 1 and the Judge loses 2. If it’s exactly half and half, only the Judge scores, 3.
Everyone has one Double Down: play it with your vote to double its points. If that vote scores nothing, it’s gone for good.
Hands fill back up to six and the Judge moves one seat on. First to the target wins.

With “Host a table” each phone deals its owner’s hand from one shared code and keeps only its owner’s score. The phones are the cards: lay offers face down in the middle for the Judge to shuffle and read, and turn the votes over together.

The cards were written for this site, separately for each language. Nothing is sent anywhere.