PULTEVENT
Mardi Gras party games: 7 for a Fat Tuesday night away from Bourbon Street
A third-floor apartment in Minneapolis, minus eleven outside, and a king cake that arrived that morning in a box packed with dry ice. Purple, green and gold beads fill a salad bowl by the door. The host grew up in Metairie, moved north for work eight years ago, and every February she tries to explain to her friends from the office why a small plastic baby is baked into the dessert. This year she has a better plan than explaining.
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Far from the Gulf Coast, a Mardi Gras party has a problem: most guests know the beads and not much else. They don't know about the krewes, the colors, the season that starts on Twelfth Night, the unwritten rules of the king cake. A few rounds on the TV fix that without anyone giving a speech, and they turn a house party into a small carnival of its own.
PULTEVENT runs it from your laptop. Connect it to the TV over HDMI, show a QR code, and guests play on their own phones in the browser with nothing to install. Phones need internet, so share the Wi-Fi when you hand over the beads. Everything here works for ten guests in an apartment or sixty in an office break room.
7 Mardi Gras games for a house or office party
1 Who's behind the mask
As guests arrive, snap a photo of each one in their mask. Later, Guess the Photo shows them full screen, one by one, and the room shouts or votes who it is before you reveal the name.
How to run it. Use a phone on a stand by the door and a plain wall behind. Same angle every time makes it harder.
Masks change people more than they think. It's surprisingly hard, and the reveals get big laughs.
2 Carnival trivia
A quiz from phones about the season: what the three colors stand for, which day the carnival season starts, what the person who finds the baby in the king cake has to do next year, what Fat Tuesday comes right before.
How to run it. Write the questions so a newcomer can guess and a New Orleanian can show off. Stick to facts you can check.
Guests learn the traditions by playing, which beats any explanation from the host.
3 The costume and mask vote
Categories on screen, votes from phones: best mask, most feathers, best use of purple, most committed to the theme. Bars grow in real time as the room decides.
How to run it. Close the vote only when the last late guest has arrived. It's a rule people will remind you of.
Guests who went all out get their moment, and those who grabbed a mask at the pharmacy still get a vote.
4 The krewe race
Split the room into krewes with silly names. The horse race plays in 3D on the TV, and each krewe's riders play from their phones.
How to run it. Let each krewe pick a name and a captain. Announce them before each heat like a parade marshal.
It's fast, loud and needs no knowledge at all. After the trivia, it's the reset the room needs.
5 True or false: the king cake edition
Statements about Mardi Gras customs, some real, some invented. Guests vote true or false and the answer appears on screen with a short explanation from you.
How to run it. Mix one or two real customs that sound invented. Those produce the loudest groans.
Short, quick and good for the moment when the king cake is being cut and passed around.
6 Second line dance battle
Clear the living room, put on brass band music from the DJ deck, and let two teams dance off with handkerchiefs and umbrellas. The rest vote for the winner from their phones.
How to run it. Hand out paper napkins as handkerchiefs if you have nothing else. Umbrellas are optional but worth it.
It gets everyone moving, and it's a nod to one of the city's best street traditions.
7 The bead raffle
The QR raffle gives every phone a ticket. At the end of the night, draw winners for the special beads, the big medallion strand, a leftover slice of king cake, a mask.
How to run it. Draw before midnight if you care about tradition. Mardi Gras ends when Lent begins.
Every guest has a chance at something, and the night ends on a cheer instead of people slipping out.
Carnival trivia without the lecture
The colors, Twelfth Night, the krewes and the king cake baby, told as quiz questions guests answer on their phones.
Masks make a game
Photograph every guest in their mask at the door. Later the room guesses who is behind each one.
Beads by raffle
Every phone gets a ticket. The good beads, the ones with the big medallion, go by draw.
Parade music, room to dance
A built-in DJ deck for the second line, and a dance battle when the room is warm.
A carnival away from the parades
Most Mardi Gras parties outside Louisiana are made by transplants. Someone grew up on the Gulf Coast, misses it every February, and wants to share it. The games on this page are built for that: they teach the traditions to people who have never caught a throw from a float, and they give the host a way to talk about home without making a speech.
If you're not from there, keep the trivia honest. Check every fact twice, and skip anything you can't verify. A guest from New Orleans will notice.
The king cake question
Every Mardi Gras party has one. Who got the baby? The tradition is that whoever finds the small plastic baby in their slice is responsible for the next cake, or the next party. You can build a whole game around it: before the cake is cut, open a vote on who will find the baby. Close the vote before the first slice.
"I think I swallowed it."
"Then you're still hosting next year."
An office Mardi Gras party
Mardi Gras is a good excuse for a work party in the dead of winter, with no gift exchange to organize. Run it in the break room at four: a big TV or a projector, the trivia, the costume vote and the raffle. Thirty minutes is enough. Mask photos are optional at work, and some colleagues will want to keep their faces off a screen, which is fine.
For a team that works in several offices, share the stage window in a video call. Remote colleagues answer from their phones through the same QR code.
Music for the night
The console has a built-in DJ deck, so you can queue brass band music, zydeco and carnival songs from the same laptop as the games. Keep the volume low during trivia and turn it up for the dance battle and the raffle.
Test the sound in advance. A TV's speakers can sound thin for dancing, and a small portable speaker helps.
Dates and setting up
Fat Tuesday falls on a different date each year, in February or early March, the day before Ash Wednesday. Most parties happen on the Tuesday itself or the weekend before. Build your rounds a week out.
The free 3-day demo needs no card, so plan it inside that window: write the trivia, test the mask photos and run the race once with your household. The full version is a one-time license, no subscription; the price is on pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run Mardi Gras party games on a TV
- 1
A week before Fat Tuesday, write the carnival trivia and the true-or-false round.
- 2
Set up a phone on a stand by the door for mask photos and prepare the costume vote categories.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the TV, test the sound and queue some brass band music.
- 4
As guests arrive, hand out beads, take mask photos and put the QR code on screen.
- 5
Run trivia and the mask round first, then the race, the king cake vote and the dance battle.
- 6
Close with the bead raffle before midnight, when carnival gives way to Lent.
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