PULTEVENT
Family reunion games: 7 formats for kids, cousins and great-aunts
Aunt Denise color-coded the name tags: blue for the Hendersons, green for the Ortiz side, yellow for anyone who married in. By two in the afternoon the rented hall is loud, the potato salad is into its second cooler, and a tall cousin from Ohio is standing by the grill because nobody is quite sure who he is. By four he will be the family's horse racing champion.
★ Free for the first 3 days, no card required
A reunion is a strange crowd to entertain. Ages run from eight months to ninety-one, half the people have not seen each other in ten years, and the only thing they share is a last name or two. I run reunions the way I run weddings: one screen everybody can see, games everybody can join, and a scoreboard that turns the family branches into teams.
The tech is simple. My laptop runs the host console in a browser, a TV or projector shows the games, and relatives join from their own phones by scanning the QR code on screen. No app, nothing to register. They do need internet on those phones, which is worth checking before you book a pavilion in the middle of a state park.
Seven formats for a family reunion
1 Branch vs. branch scoreboard
Split the room by family branch and match the team colors to the name tags. The scoreboard stays on the big screen all afternoon; you add points after each game, and at the end the awards ceremony gives every branch a fun award and one of them the cup.
How to run it. If one branch is twice the size of the others, split it by generation. Nobody minds, and the grandparents will enjoy beating their own grandkids.
It gives a loose, mingling crowd a reason to cheer for the same thing, and it lets second cousins find out they are on the same team.
2 The family timeline
Timeline hands out event cards that have to go in order, earliest to latest. Fill it with your own history: when the grandparents married, the year the family moved to Texas, the first grandchild, the flood.
How to run it. Get the dates from the family historian (every family has one) and double-check the controversial ones.
People learn their own family story by arguing about it. The younger cousins walk away knowing things nobody ever told them.
3 Old photos: who is this?
Guess the Photo puts one photo on the full screen and the room guesses who it is, then you reveal the name. Use baby pictures, prom photos and that one shot of Uncle Mike with a mullet.
How to run it. Scan albums with a phone camera. Keep the photos in the order you want the laughs, not in the order they arrived.
It is the round the older relatives talk about in the parking lot.
4 Video greetings from far away
Relatives who could not travel send short clips ahead of time, and the video greetings section plays them on the big screen. You can pick one, or hit the random button and let the room see who comes up.
How to run it. Ask for horizontal video and a clear first line: who you are and which branch you belong to.
A great-grandmother in a nursing home in Florida waving at eighty relatives is the part of the day people remember.
5 Family trivia from phones
A quiz you write in the quiz builder, answered from phones. Who in this family has run a marathon? Which aunt was on local TV? Where did Grandpa serve? Four answers per question, a countdown, and the correct one lights up green.
How to run it. Pair the kids with grandparents. The kid taps, the grandparent knows.
It is the fastest way to introduce a hundred people to each other without anyone standing up to speak.
6 Horse Race
A 3D racecourse with stands and starting gates: six horses, each ridden from a guest's phone. Tap to gallop, jump the hurdles, switch lanes to pick up coins. The final score is the finishing place plus the coins, and bots fill any empty stalls.
How to run it. Run a kids' race, a grandparents' race and then a final with the winners of each. Everyone else picks a horse to cheer for.
The loudest ten minutes of the reunion. The quiet cousin from Ohio will turn out to be very good at it.
7 Family credits
End the afternoon the way a movie ends: family photos cycling on the left, a scroll of names on the right. Type a heading in capitals, such as THE ORIGINAL CAST or FOOD BY, and whatever you type beneath it rolls as the names in that section.
How to run it. Put the grandparents first, the organizers second, and the babies born since the last reunion under their own heading.
It says thank you to the people who organized the day, in front of everyone, without anyone having to make a speech.
Branch against branch
The team scoreboard turns the Hendersons and the Ortizes into rivals for an afternoon. Points go up on the big screen after every game.
The family, in order
A timeline round built from your own dates: weddings, births, moves across the country. Teams sort the cards and argue about 1987.
For the ones who could not come
Video greetings from relatives who could not travel play on the big screen, one at a time or at random.
A race the eight-year-olds win
Horse Race is a 3D derby where six guests each ride a horse from their phone. Kids beat grandparents at it, which is the point.
Indoors, outdoors and the sun
A projector in daylight is a pale gray rectangle. If the reunion is outdoors, put a big TV in the shade of the pavilion or wait for dusk for the screen games. A rented hall or a church basement with the blinds down is easier.
Bring a long extension cord and a spare HDMI cable. In rural parks, check mobile coverage when you book: guests play on their own data, so you do not need Wi-Fi, but you do need signal.
Collecting photos and videos
Give one organized cousin the job two weeks ahead. They collect a baby photo from every household, a few old group shots, and the video greetings from people who cannot come. A shared folder works fine; the deadline matters more than the tool.
Ask for the story behind each photo. It makes the reveal twice as good.
Give the organizers a break
The people who organize a reunion usually spend the day carrying coolers and never sit down. Run the games yourself, or hand the laptop to a teenager who likes screens, and let the organizers play on a team for once.
The console can also be driven from a phone with the phone remote, so whoever runs it can stand among the family instead of behind a folding table. That matters more than it sounds: a host behind a laptop looks like tech support, a host in the room looks like part of the party.
All ages at once
The trick with an eight-to-ninety age range is to never ask anyone to do something alone. The quizzes are team rounds with one phone per group, the photo round needs no phone at all, and the horse race is short enough that a six-year-old stays focused.
Great-aunts rarely want to hold a phone. They do want to be right, loudly, in front of the family.
What to know before the day
Every phone that plays needs internet; nothing runs offline. The English version of the host console is in progress, while guest screens already follow each phone's language. Most stock quiz content is Russian at present, so the family trivia and the timeline are built from your own material, which is exactly what a reunion needs.
Relatives overseas can still take part if someone sets up a call and shares the game window.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, an event host since 2014 with more than 500 events behind him. The TOP 100 Awards named him best host in Moscow in 2024 and in Saint Petersburg in 2023. He wrote the console for his own nights first: pultevent.ru/en.
Try it free for 3 days, no card needed.
How to run reunion games on one screen
- 1
Two weeks out, collect photos, family dates and video greetings through one cousin.
- 2
Build the timeline, the family trivia and the credits; sort the photos in reveal order.
- 3
On the day, set the screen in shade or indoors and connect the laptop over HDMI.
- 4
Split the family into branch teams, match the colors to the name tags, and show the QR code.
- 5
Alternate quiet rounds and loud ones: timeline, photos, trivia, horse racing, greetings.
- 6
Add up the scoreboard, run the awards ceremony, and end with the family credits.
FAQ
How many people can play?
Do older relatives need smartphones?
Can we play outdoors?
Is there a ready-made family quiz in English?
Can relatives who live abroad join?
Does it work without internet?
Can a teenager run the laptop?
What does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
All audience interactions, a second screen and timing in one app. Guests join by QR — internet is needed for you and for them.
Start free