Riveting Survivor Party For You And Your Friends

This at home version of Survivor is doable in one day but I must recommend doing this over a weekend camp out. There you can incorporate an extra element of the game including building shelter, fire, finding the water source, going without luxuries and rationing food. You can also more fully appreciate reward challenges such as chocolate. As an alternate option, you can start the game in the morning before breakfast and play all day in a park. The at-home-in-one-evening option is still fun but any reward challenges will have to be modified from winning food or matches to winning small gift certificates or something like that.

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Survivor Island

This is great if it’s summer as the outdoors will give you more space and a better Survivor feeling. However, you can do this indoors. We played a round indoors one year and it was still fun. Have an area or room set up for Exile Island. If it’s outside, pick a spot that has much flora. If it’s indoors, pick a room that will have enough clutter. This element is beneficial for hiding the individual immunity idol. The exiled tribe member won’t be in exile for too long so keep that in mind when hiding the immunity idol.

Set up an area for tribal council. Have a couple tiki torches, controlled fire pit, bench or beach chairs and a private voting area. If you are indoors, set up a separate room for tribal council with enough seating, candles, lit fire place (or several candles if no fire place) and a separate voting area.
Designate 2 places that are away from each other for each tribe’s camp. There the members will have a few moments to discuss strategy and alliances throughout the game.

Do include the following optional yet effective elements. Give each tribe a matching buff/scarf or anything you can find. Prepare a simple and rustic hidden individual immunity idol, tribal immunity idol and individual challenge immunity idol. Prepare a unique canister for the votes to be cast in. Also, have a video recorder set up for cast off members to say a few parting words. This is fun to watch after the game is over.

Tribe Challenges

Here you will find a variety of challenges. Use as many as you wish, add a few yourself or alter some as required. Depending on which version you will be playing (weekend campout, all day or condensed evening), you will have to decide which challenges to use for immunity or reward. You will also need to decide when you want to set up a merge depending on how many players you have attending. You can play the challenges in any order you choose. Some, however, are better when the numbers dwindle a bit. Just remember that after the first tribal council, the winning team will have at least 1 extra person and must sit the extra members out in challenges (not back to back though).

Survivor Tribe Challenge 1- make a puzzle out of the words “outwit, outlast, outplay” and divide the pieces into thirds. Place each third into a bag. Three members from each team will have to perform a challenge to get a bag of puzzle pieces. First tribe member will have to toss a marble into a cup from a designated throw line. Second tribe member will have to complete 20 proper push ups. Third tribe member will have to throw a snake eyes (2 dice rolled with 1’s). Fourth tribe member will have to untie the challenging knots on all three puzzle bags to release the pieces. The remaining tribe members will solve the puzzle. The first tribe to solve the puzzle will win.

Survivor Tribe Challenge 2- tribe members are tied together with a rope. They will navigate together in a yard area or nearby park searching for 5 treasure pieces. These treasure pieces can be anything you want but make sure it will be clear to the teams that those indeed are the pieces they need to find. First team to collect all 5 pieces wins.

Survivor Tribe Challenge 3- each tribal member will face a member from the opposite tribe. They will be in a sufficient sized space for a one on one type of dodge ball. They will each have 3 or so nerf balls or bean bags. They will have 30 seconds to see how many times they can hit the other tribe member. The team who scores the most hits will win.

Survivor Tribe Challenge 4- purchase enough unique food items for your tribes to eat. Some items can include chocolate covered ants, savory crisp mealy worms (I’ve seen these in candy stores), small jar of beef stew baby food, slices of boiled cow’s tongue and anything else that is not so ideal for the palate. Have 2 of each kind so 1 member from each tribe will face off to eat the same thing. Have the food items covered so the tribal members do not know what they are about to eat. Have the tribes sit across from each other in front of a covered food item. Start at one end with 2 members, 1 from each tribe. Those 2 will race to see who will eat up the entire food item first. The winner will score 1 point for their tribe.

Survivor Tribe Challenge 5- both tribes are blind folded except for 1 member on each tribe. They will be the eyes and guide for their tribe. The blind folded members will listen to their guide to complete the following task. There are pieces of fruit (such as a whole watermelon, pineapple and cantaloupe) scattered in the playing area. The blind folded tribe members must gather the fruit and place in the fruit basket which will be near the caller. First tribe to collect all their fruit wins.

Survivor Tribe Challenge 6- tribe members will be in a relay race position with their legs bound and locked. Get some inexpensive locks from the dollar store or hardware store. Use dog chains or a small rope with loops at each end for the locks to go through. The first member will not be bound. They will have the set of keys. They must solve a riddle before they can race to their first tribal mate to try the keys to see which one will unlock their lock. Then the second member must race over to the next tribal mate to see which key will unlock their lock and so forth until the last member has been freed and crosses the finish line. Basically, instead of a torch relay it is a set of keys relay.

Survivor Tribe Challenge 7- draw for pairs of tribal members from each tribe to face off. One tribe member will try to make the other tribe’s member laugh. They have 1 minute to do so. If the member laughs, then the other tribe gets a point. If the member does not laugh, then their tribe gets a point.

Individual Challenges

Here are a few individual challenges. Use as many as you wish, add a few yourself or alter some as required. Play them in your chosen order. I would limit the amount of reward wins versus immunity wins once the individual challenges are in play.

Survivor Individual Challenge 1- set up an area for a memory game. Have survival type items like rope, flint, matches, rice or whatnot. Try to have 18 pairs so it’s not an easy version. Cover them up. Have each castaway take a turn to uncover two items. If they make a match, they get a point and those items are no longer eligible for another player to receive a point for. Keep them in the game though to keep the level of difficulty the same for all players. You can play this in a couple ways depending on the number of players and the amount of time you have. You can allow each person 3 turns, or whoever makes 3 successful matches first will win, or play until all items have been matched or have a 15 min time limit. Whoever has the most matches, wins immunity.

Survivor Individual Challenge 2- have a survival true or false quiz. Give each player a piece of paper/cardstock with a T on one side and an F on the other. Read out the statement and once all players have decided and are showing their answer choice, reveal the correct answer. Whoever scores the most correct answers will win. Have a tie breaker question ready just in case.

Survivor Individual Challenge 3- have the survivors stretch out their arms to their sides, holding a bucket of water in each hand. Whoever can hold the buckets up the longest will win.

Survivor Individual Challenge 4- see which player can stand in tree pose (standing on 1 leg with the other leg bent and with the foot placed on inner thigh of standing leg) the longest.

Survivor Individual Challenge 5- have survivors put a puzzle together. Grab a few kiddie ones from the dollar store. Whoever completes it first will win.

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Have the last 3 survivors go to the final tribal council where they will plead their case in front of the jury (the last 7 to be voted off) to win the title of sole survivor. Their big prize could be $5 from each player that was collected in the beginning or a nice gift certificate for dinner for 2 or anything else you like. All the planning involved with this ultimate party is more than worth it! Definitely get your guests involved with some preliminary set up or recruit your family to do some grunt work. I guarantee you and your friends will have a blast and will reminisce for the coming years about this incredible Survivor party experience.