PULTEVENT
New Year's resolution games: 7 ways to reveal, guess and bet on them
A second-floor flat in Manchester, twenty past ten on New Year's Eve. My friend Dan stands by the telly holding a brown envelope that has been in his kitchen drawer since last December. Inside are eleven folded slips of paper, one from each of us. He reads the first one aloud: "Run a half marathon." Everyone turns to look at Priya, who is eating her third mince pie. "I ran a quarter of one," she says, "twice."
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Resolutions are the only New Year tradition that comes with its own built-in comedy. Everybody makes them, almost nobody keeps all of them, and a room full of friends or colleagues knows each other's well enough to guess. Turn that into a game and you have forty minutes of the best kind of teasing, the kind people are in on.
I host parties and company events, and resolution rounds work at both. PULTEVENT puts the game on a TV or projector from a laptop browser, and guests answer, vote and guess on their own phones after scanning a QR code on screen. No app, no sign-up. The phones do need internet, so sort out the Wi-Fi before you start collecting secrets.
Here are seven formats, for a New Year's Eve at home and for the first week back at work.
7 resolution games, from the guessing round to next year's replay
1 Whose resolution is it
A resolution appears on the screen, word for word as someone wrote it. The room guesses on their phones which guest it belongs to, and you reveal the name with a click.
How to run it. Collect them a few days ahead in a private message, not in the group chat. Ask for one real resolution and one that is slightly ridiculous.
It is a round about the people in the room, and it tells you who knows whom better than they let on.
2 How long will it last
Each resolution gets a live vote with four options: gone by the second week of January, makes it to February, lasts until spring, survives the whole year. The results go up as bars on screen.
How to run it. Only use resolutions from people who have said they are happy to be voted on. Skip anything about weight or health.
It is quick, funny and anonymous, and the person being voted on usually agrees with the room.
3 Last year's envelope, on the big screen
If you collected resolutions a year ago, read them out now. Put each on the screen, let its owner give a one-line verdict, and let the room vote kept or broken.
How to run it. Type them into a quiz or a vote beforehand so the screen shows the original wording. Handwriting is funnier, so add a photo of the slip if you have it.
It rewards the group for having a memory, and it makes everyone want to write better ones this time.
4 Resolution on camera
Guests record twenty seconds on their phone: the resolution, and how confident they are. You load the clips as video greetings and play them at next year's party.
How to run it. Set up a quiet corner with good light and ask people to film landscape. Keep the clips somewhere you will actually find them in twelve months.
Next December, the room gets to watch last year's version of each guest make promises. There is nothing funnier.
5 Resolutions for other people
A task randomizer on the screen picks a guest and a small, harmless resolution for them for January: learn one card trick, call your aunt, cook one new dinner, bring cake on the first Friday.
How to run it. Write the tasks yourself and keep them small and pleasant. The point is a laugh, not a public assignment.
It lets people who hate talking about their own resolutions join in without saying anything personal.
6 True or false: resolutions through history
Short statements about how people have made promises at the new year, answered true or false on phones. For example, that the month of January takes its name from Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, with two faces looking both ways.
How to run it. Mix a few surprising true ones with plausible false ones. Keep the explanation for each to one sentence.
A lighter round between the personal ones, and it gives the quiet guests a chance to win something.
7 The team resolution vote at work
Back in the office in January, the team proposes four or five resolutions for the department and votes from their phones. Fewer meetings on Fridays, a shared lunch once a month, one day without internal email.
How to run it. Agree with the manager beforehand that the winning resolution will actually happen. A vote with no consequence gets remembered.
It turns the first team meeting of the year into something people contributed to, instead of a slide deck they sat through.
Collected in secret
Resolutions come in before the party, so the reveal on screen is a genuine surprise.
Everyone votes from a phone
Will he last until February? The room decides, anonymously, and the bars grow live on the big screen.
Works in the office too
Team goals and personal ones, kept kind, make a first-Monday meeting feel like the year actually started.
A reveal worth waiting for
Film this year's resolutions on video and play them back at next year's party.
Collecting resolutions without spoiling the reveal
The whole game depends on nobody knowing what anyone else wrote. Send a private message to each guest a few days before, ask for two resolutions, and keep the answers to yourself. At work, a short anonymous form does the same job.
Some people will send "drink more water." Push back gently. Ask for the one they are actually a bit embarrassed about.
Then build the rounds on the laptop the evening before. Typing ten resolutions into a guessing round takes fifteen minutes.
Keeping it kind
Resolutions touch things people care about: money, bodies, relationships, jobs. A good resolution game laughs with people, not at them. My rule is simple. Anything someone writes as a joke is fair game. Anything they write seriously gets read respectfully and never voted on.
"Can we do the vote on Tom's?"
"Tom's is about his dad. We're skipping it."
At work the bar is higher still. Keep personal resolutions voluntary, and never put anything on the screen that a guest has not agreed to share with the whole room.
A little history for the quiz round
Historians often trace the habit back around four thousand years to ancient Babylon, where people made promises to their gods at the start of the year, such as paying off debts and returning things they had borrowed. The Romans made promises to Janus, whose name the month of January carries.
In the eighteenth century, the Methodist preacher John Wesley started covenant services where people renewed their commitments at the turn of the year. Those make good true-or-false material, and every one of them is easy to check before the party.
On New Year's Eve or the first week of January
At a party, resolution games work best in the hour before midnight, after dinner and before the countdown. People are relaxed, they have had a drink or two, and resolutions are already on their minds.
At work, the first team meeting or the January kickoff is the natural slot. Twenty minutes of guessing and voting before the serious agenda makes the rest of the meeting noticeably warmer. For a remote team, share the stage window in a video call; everyone scans the QR code from their screen and votes from their own phone.
What you need
A laptop running the host console in its browser, a TV or projector connected by HDMI, and guests with phones that have internet. The host console is available in English, and each guest's phone shows the game in the language it is set to, handy for an international office.
The ready-made quiz decks in the program are mostly in Russian at the moment. For resolution games that does not matter: every round is built from your own guests' words.
Trying it first
The demo is free for 3 days and asks for no card. That is enough time to collect resolutions, build the guessing round and run it once with a partner or a colleague. The full version is a one-time licence with no subscription, and pultevent.ru/en shows the current price.
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 a New Year's resolution game on screen
- 1
A few days before, ask each guest privately for two resolutions, one real and one ridiculous.
- 2
Build a guessing round with the resolutions and a live vote on how long each will last.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the TV or projector and check that phones can get online.
- 4
Put the QR code on screen and let everyone join before the first resolution appears.
- 5
Play the guessing round, the vote and a true-or-false breather, skipping anything too personal.
- 6
Finish by filming this year's resolutions to replay at next year's party.
FAQ
How do guests submit resolutions?
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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.
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