The classic pregame model — drinks, a card game, go — is reliable. But there's a whole range of activities that can make a pregame genuinely memorable and build even more energy for the night ahead. Whether your group wants to get creative, competitive, or just intensely ridiculous for ninety minutes, here are ten ideas that go beyond the standard playbook.
1. Themed Dress-Up Challenge
Give the night a loose theme and make the pregame the reveal moment. This doesn't need to be a full Halloween-level costume situation — it can be as low-lift as "all wear something red" or as elaborate as "70s prom." The payoff is the immediate energy when people show up in their interpretations and the reaction moments that follow.
Execute it well: announce the theme a few days before via the Pregame party room so guests can plan. Have a vote in the room on the best fit before you leave. The winner gets to pick the first bar.
2. Karaoke Warm-Up
Not full-on karaoke night — this is the 90-minute window before you go out. Pull up a YouTube karaoke playlist, or use a karaoke app on the TV, and go through a few songs. The stakes are artificially low (you're in someone's apartment), which makes it hilarious and actually loosens people up dramatically.
Pro move: do one song as a group first to break the ice, then open it to individuals. Nobody wants to go first solo; a group song eliminates that barrier.
3. Group Playlist Curation
Give everyone in the room 2–3 song slots in the pregame playlist. Set a 60-second pitch window where they explain why their pick belongs. Group votes on the final order. This sounds procedural, but it's genuinely engaging, reveals a lot about people's taste, and means everyone is emotionally invested in the music that plays.
Pregame's shared playlist feature makes distributing and collecting picks easy — drop it in the party room and let the group contribute before they arrive.
4. The Group Photo Ritual
Designate one person as the "official photographer" for the pregame. Their job: document the first thirty minutes, including arrivals, fit checks, game moments, and any notable chaos. This creates a time-capsule quality to the night and gives you content to share in Pregame's social feed the next morning.
Set up a specific spot in the apartment as the de facto photo zone — good light, a clean or interesting background — and watch people naturally use it throughout the night.
5. TikTok Challenge Bracket
Pick three or four trending TikTok sounds or challenges, teach the group, and run a bracket-style competition. This sounds more involved than it is — most TikTok challenges take under two minutes to learn and execute. The watching-and-judging part is where the real fun happens.
Film everything. The quality is irrelevant; the absurdity is the point. And having footage of your group attempting the same challenge in seven different ways is exactly the kind of content that resurfaces and gets referenced for years.
6. "Before We Leave" Bingo
Create a simple bingo card before guests arrive with boxes like "someone drops their phone," "one person is twenty minutes late," "outfit change happens," "a game ends in a dispute," "someone makes a playlist suggestion that gets vetoed immediately." Give everyone a card. First person to bingo calls it out; the group verifies.
This is zero-effort to set up (Google Slides or even a handwritten card works fine) and creates a meta-layer of observation humor that runs across the whole pregame.
7. The Group Activity Vote
When everyone's assembled, do a quick voice vote on one of these format-openers: "We play a game" vs "We eat first" vs "We take a group photo" vs "We watch a short video/clip." The act of voting — even on something small — unifies the group psychologically and gives the host clear direction without needing to make every decision themselves.
This works especially well for mixed groups where nobody quite knows the plan. Voting creates instant democratic buy-in.
8. "Best Moment of the Week" Rapid Fire
Go around the room and everyone shares their single best moment from the past week in under thirty seconds. This sounds aggressively wholesome for a pregame, but it does something that's hard to manufacture otherwise: it makes the room feel like a group rather than a collection of individuals. You learn something specific about everyone, it generates natural follow-up conversations, and it's done in under eight minutes for most group sizes.
9. Themed Drinks Round
Choose a theme for the first round of drinks: everyone makes the same cocktail using the same three ingredients, or everyone picks a drink that represents their current mood, or you attempt to recreate whatever drink the host made last New Year's. The actual drink is secondary; the ritual and decision-making is the point.
Share the recipes in the Pregame party room under the supplies list so people know what to bring.
10. Predictions for the Night
Before you leave, everyone makes three predictions for the night: something that will definitely happen, something that's unlikely but possible, and something completely absurd. Write them down (notes app works fine) and compare them in the morning. The hit rate is always surprising and the misses are better.
This creates a built-in debrief ritual for the following day and gives the group a shared narrative framework for the night — which makes the memories stickier and the recap conversations better.
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The common thread across all of these: they create shared experience and inside references that make the group feel like a unit before you ever leave the apartment. That collective identity is what carries you through the night.
Launch your next pregame on Pregame — coordinate every activity, share the playlist, track the supplies list, and keep the whole group in sync from the moment you create the party room.