weird games you played as a kid

[butters]

when the nights closed in, and it was dark by 4.30 but not terribly cold, my siblings and neighbour kids loved to play 'dr frankenstein'. we lived in a close, so there were several cars always parked up and a lamp centrally positioned on the pavement (sidewalk to you 'muricans).

anyway, someone would be dr frankenstein and was only allowed to walk (arms outstretched) mumbling frankensteinish stuff, and the rest hid behind cars or low walls but were free to move around.

eventually someone would get 'caught' and taken to the lamp post, where - in great descriptive detail - dr frankenstein would tie them up and perform all kinds of gross tortures like flaying skin and disemboweling and stuff. the age-range of the kids playing would be maybe 5-10 years old, but we had some great imagination. all made the spookier fun in the dark


we also played lots of regular games, but i just wondered who else played something weird. i know there have to be some of you. all good, clean fun!

 

[chillywilly2]

sounds like after a few nights of playing that there wouldn't be many kids left in the neighborhood

 

[Wrong Element]

This isn't exactly a game, more of an "activity." My kindergarten and first grade years were spent on a military base overseas, and this was an era when boys my age were interested in basically one thing: astronauts and the impending trips to the moon. One of the things about the moon that set it apart from Earth, or so we thought, was that the moon had these features called craters. Well, what are craters other than big ol' holes, right? One thing we all knew how to do was dig holes!

So we must have spent our recess time over a period of several weeks out in the schoolyard just digging a giant hole and calling it our "crater." A classic moon feature, now available on Planet Earth for the first time.

We were easier to amuse back then. Our other pastime was wandering around collecting bottle caps.

 

[butters]

sounds like after a few nights of playing that there wouldn't be many kids left in the neighborhood

oddly enough, the same ones played it many a day and none the worse for wear

This isn't exactly a game, more of an "activity." My kindergarten and first grade years were spent on a military base overseas, and this was an era when boys my age were interested in basically one thing: astronauts and the impending trips to the moon. One of the things about the moon that set it apart from Earth, or so we thought, was that the moon had these features called craters. Well, what are craters other than big ol' holes, right? One thing we all knew how to do was dig holes!

So we must have spent our recess time over a period of several weeks out in the schoolyard just digging a giant hole and calling it our "crater." A classic moon feature, now available on Planet Earth for the first time.

We were easier to amuse back then. Our other pastime was wandering around collecting bottle caps.

that's awesome i wonder if the school ever utilised that hole for something, like planting a tree?

imagination in kids is a wonderful thing to indulge *nods*

we also spent time playing 'narnia', featuring different aspects of the books and warping them whichever way imagination took us. the one i recall best, though, was when a new big drain was being laid alongside the fields (before they were used to build on) and there were these huge (to us) ditches and mounds where stinging nettles grew aggressively. we would play running along the ridges of the mounds and jumping over the ditches, pretending we were being chased by the werewolves (as we called the talking wolves on the baddies' side), the stinging nettles being the werewolves and trying not to get stung/bit as this would turn us into one of them.

 

[adrina]

Kick the can... Like hide and go seek but at night and with a can. Last one not found who got to the can was guaranteed to not be it - if I remember correctly.

Marco Polo... Swimming pool game of blind man's tag. As "Marco" you had to keep your eyes closed, call out "Marco" and the others had to answer "polo". Marco would then try to tag the polos. First one tagged becomes the next Marco.

 

[MelissaBaby]

My brother created his own board game. It was like the Calvinball of board games, it made no sense and right in the middle of it, he'd say, "Wait, I forgot, there's another rule."

Somehow, he always won.

 

[Ann_Tagonist]

Yikes Away!

 

[CandiCame]

So I want to preface this by saying that as a child I primarily lived at my grandparent's house which is in the back of a holler, and to get up the holler you have to walk past half my extended family, so I had a fairly large group of kids to play with because of all my similarly aged cousins.

We were on some Narnia shit. I don't know what the hell was wrong with us.

So if you go past the treeline and just keep going you eventually come to this big fenced off place with a GIANT bolder in it, which I have since learned was a pig pen, but at the time we like... the fucked up part is we all have real memories of this.

We called it, "The big rock" because we were dumb kids, but there was a SATYR that lived there. But none of us called him a satyr, we called him, "The old man up the mountain," because we didn't know what a satyr was, but he looked like a satyr, and we would just go up there and he lived under the big rock, but you had to like, crawl up under it, and the ground eventually got real low, like no adult would be able to crawl under it like that, but on the other side was like a house, kind of like a tinyhouse, and this dude just lived there. He wasn't mean or anything, and it never seemed supernatural or anything, we would just go up there. That's the whole game. We all made this satyr up and have memories of this but that obviously didn't happen so I have no idea. Kids have messed up imaginations.

Something else we would do is cut vines off trees (on the bottom, they grow like around trees, not hanging down) and swing over ravines with them, which is an objectively stupid thing to do, but the game was to see who could do it the stupidest without dying. Like to see who could get out the farthest without the vine breaking. I've always weighed next to nothing so I was really good at this.

I know we did a lot of other weird shit because a lot of the time we would just run off into the hills but I can't remember anything else right this second.

We did that thing kids do where we just made shit up, like just 'played pretend' so we'd go out there and just make up wild scenarios and tie people up and shit. I don't remember any of the specifics. I remember we found this doll, I think it was one of the guys from Jurassic Park, like lying out in the woods and his face was all fucked up, probably from being out in the woods like that, but we elected to bring him home and incorporate him into our overarching toy world, and he was the advisor to the king (there were two kingdoms at war, it's this whole other thing) and everyone thought he was evil because he had a fucked-up face and his name was like, "Evil McEvil" or something like that, but the twist was he was actually really nice and legitimately tried to help people.

Also we would "play" Dragon Ball Z but it was basically improv theater done really shittily because we were little kids where everyone was assigned a role and we larped improv fanfiction. I was normally Vegeta because he was my favorite character and I was the oldest and that used to mean something. We did that at school too.

Also we would just go and like... bother nature. Like we'd go and find a turtle or a crawdaddy or something and be like, "Yo look how cool this animal is, let's make it late for something." One time I punched my brother in the gut, like real punch, not a brother punch, like actually hurt him, because he pulled the tail off a lizard for no reason. So we played, "hurt lizards get punched". My cousin told him that they could regenerate and he wanted to see it I guess. He was real little.

I was actually a pretty bitchy kid, so often we would play, "Candi tells us what to do" and I feel bad about that.

We would also play 'war' using the same scenerio we used for our toys but larping where we'd get toy guns and use rocks for grenades and it was basically imaginary paintball with a plot.

Something else I remember is we used to set the game cams off just because we were told several times not to. Like just to be dicks. I don't know why I did that. That was mean. That was a game to us. But we shouldn't have done that.

 

[30bandits]

not so much weird but nothing needed to buy to play. it was a game of neighborhood helpers tag...it would canvass the entire neighborhood. on top of garages, in the trees, under cars or porches….everyone put a foot in and there were different saying to take your foot out of the circle...the last foot in was "it" and everyone else ran and hid somewhere in the neighborhood. once you were "tagged" you were it too and had to help catch everyone else. the first one tagged was it the next game. simple, free to play, and kept us busy for hours. always at night though, we played some type of sports during the day.

 

[Comshaw]

We still play weird games even as adults, they're just more elaborate is all. How about a T-Rex race on our local horse race track?

https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedUKNews/videos/2873562136203390/

Comshaw

 

[RedAllan]

In autumn we used to build forts out of piles of leaves in our school field, some were quite intricate with maze like walls. Then we would attack each others fort, there might have been a flag to capture has an objective, or it might just have been an excuse to throw leaves over each other.

 

[stickygirl]

'Jump the plank' game was fun: we'd find a scaffold plank and put a brick underneath to act as a fulcrum. One person stood on the end and then other kids would try and dislodge them by jumping on the other end. Pretty soon we were jumping from the branches of a tree to get some extra power. Lots of fun.

 

[Go_Fuck_Yourself]

"Red Rover" was always a fun time in my youth...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rover



example of the adult version...and then "daydreaming" the next day at church service.


https://imgur.com/VXAuuCc.gif

 

[Polyacrylate]

The neighborhood kids (we were rural, so to the extent that we had a neighborhood, anyway) would would often "make up a game", which very often was just LARPing cartoons and videogames without costumes.

A fun activity I remember when larger numbers of us kids were together was a game in which everyone joined hands in a circle, and, as a group, run clockwise until somebody fell. The fallen were out, the circle tightened, and everyone ran counterclockwise. Until somebody fell. Tighten. Clockwise. Tighten. Counterclockwise. And so on. Last one standing wins. That now sounds like a great way to make someone vomit, but I never recall that happening as a kid.

 

[butters]

forgot about this thread one thing, though, is that the replies pretty much agree that kids are kids wherever they're from and do stoopid, fucked-up, imagination-driven fun things just because.

 

[JohnnyPump1970]

Kick the can... Like hide and go seek but at night and with a can. Last one not found who got to the can was guaranteed to not be it - if I remember correctly.

Marco Polo... Swimming pool game of blind man's tag. As "Marco" you had to keep your eyes closed, call out "Marco" and the others had to answer "polo". Marco would then try to tag the polos. First one tagged becomes the next Marco.

Kick the can was a big one for us kids...along with sock wars, king of the mountain, and smear the que*r.

 

[Kantarii]

My brother created his own board game. It was like the Calvinball of board games, it made no sense and right in the middle of it, he'd say, "Wait, I forgot, there's another rule."

Somehow, he always won.

Hey, now, he’s not the only one to create his own board game The one I did was a mixture of Dungeons & Dragons, Chutes & Ladders, and some SciFy/Fantasy elements.

 

[Jada59]

Maybe not so much games but...

We had a lot of books. I worked in the library at school and got my hands on one of those old timey ink date stampers that hooked onto a pen or pencil. I made pockets inside of all the books and inserted cards into them. I kept a register and checked the books out to my friends, charging them a penny if the book didn't get returned in a few weeks.

I gave dance lessons and put on variety shows. I dressed the guys in drag. They would lip synch and dance. Parents would howl in laughter.

My dad was also rounding us up for shows. He had tons of sheet music, we had all kinds of instruments and puppets and he would get scripts for plays from the library. Good times!

We decorated our bikes and wagons and did neighborhood parades.

My best friend and I held contests at school. Two things were skwiing and skwating. As in skiing and skating but without the skis or skates. That could only be done in the snow. If no snow, we made up other things like puddle jumping. We voted on who was the best and I handed out badges that I made at home.

 

[heathergives]

We had Lawn Darts, until I accidentally speared my friend with one...

 

[RetroTin88]

It's not really a game, but a form of chicken.

There was a ravine that bordered a freeway without a fence, and there was brush that you could throw rocks through lining the freeway. We'd pick up rocks and, late at night when you're supposed to be in bed, when there weren't many cars driving by, we'd throw them through the brush.

The goal wasn't to hit cars, but the anticipation of having to run if you did hit a car really got the adrenaline flowing. But when I was 13, I did stupid shit from time to time. Not like now.

 

[TallMan69]

I remember ‘Mother, May I….?’ Where if any question wasn’t prefaced like that you had to go back to the starting line. Kind of like a progressive version of ‘Simon says’ in needing to abide by the tagline name of the game to get far. Also remember ‘Redlight, Greenlight. Seemed a little similar to the premise of ‘Mother, May I.’ I remember certain phrases from hide and seek. “Apples Peaches. Pumpkin Pie. Who’s not ready, holler I.” And at the end when one couldn’t find any last hiders: “Olly Olly all come free.”

Remember the ‘Marco Polo’ thing a lot growing up at the local pool and in hotel pools with a much smaller group of friends and family. Remember a swimming version of freeze tag. It was pretty fun as you had to swim through the frozen person’s legs to unfreeze them. Also remember a popular swimming pool game called Prison Base. Two teams and players could get captured and freed all depending on who left the side of the pool last.

Later in PE I remember a pretty aggressive form of dodge ball called Warball. Remember the Ben Stiller movie Dodgeball. Pretty close. No pirates though. Lol. Multiple balls were in play and one had to have really good senses and reflexes as well as playing as a team. Like classic Dodgeball rules if you got the ball the throwing player on the opposite side is out. And there was an almost anything goes rules throwing the ball at an opposing player so it could get ugly. But for adolescent boys it was a favorite.

 

[Buttered96]

We played a lot of basketball and of course the floor is lava on the playgrounds. We played Power Rangers where we were the Rangers and fighting evil. I am pretty sure we rode our bikes across the entire city. Sometimes we played house.

 

[dreamysub]

We were playin doctors, not sayin more lol

 

[RosevilleCAguy]

Tag while riding bikes.