21 Fun Games You Can Play With Uno Cards

The cards from a game of Uno are fun to play with, but you don’t have to only play Uno.

One time I was out and about with my family, and I had forgotten the standard deck I usually have on me. I did have a deck of Uno cards, though.

This got me thinking of ways and games you can play with Uno cards in a pinch.

To my surprise, there are a ton that work really well, and the special cards (reverse, skip, draw two, wilds) add a fun twist to these games.

After playing around with them, I came up with this list of 21 games I think you should try!

1. Guess The Number

This game needs at least 2 players, and it does best if there are less than 5.

Players draw one card from the deck and, without looking at it, place it on their forehead. The goal is to guess their card before the other players.

Starting with the youngest player, you take turns asking a single YES or NO question to help you determine the exact color and number of your card.

For example, you may ask:

• Is this a numbered card?
• Is it an even number?
• Is my card less than 5?
• Is my card red?

Taking turns, everyone may ask one question at a time. Keep track of who started and make each person gets even turns.

The first person to solve wins the round and gets a point. The first person to five points (or whatever number you agree on) wins the whole game!

By adding the special cards in there, it makes it a little more interesting because you can’t assume that you have numbered card.

2. Go Fish

Go Fish is a classic card game, and an Uno deck will do the job in a pinch.

I find that taking out the special cards works well for this game, but you can leave them in, if you wish. Just make them like another numbered card (or be mean and make it so that you reverse, skip turns, draw two, or draw four if they ask for it and miss!).

With 2-6 players, give each person a hand of 5 or 7 cards. Pair up and remove any pairs in your hand.

Then, starting with the player to the left of the dealer, the player asks one person a question:

“Do you have any ______?”

The person replies either:

• “Yes.” and gives them the card. The player then pairs the card and removes it from their hand.
• “Go fish!” The player then must draw one card and then play moves on to the next player.

Some people play that if the person asks for a card and gets a “Yes” reply, they go again, until they get a Go Fish! Others just let the person ask once.

Play goes on and on until someone gets rid of all their cards. At this point, this player wins the game!

If you have many players, we like to keep playing until everyone is out to determine first, second, third, and so on.

3. Uno War

The game of War has been played for many, many years, and it can be played with any deck of cards as long as you have a defined hierarchy of cards.

In Uno, the numbers do this clearly, but the special cards, less so.

If you don’t want to make war complex, play with just the numbered cards in the normal way.

Here’s a quick rundown:

• Deal the entire deck between the people playing.
• Everyone flips over one card from their pile at the same time.
• The highest card wins the whole pile and moves it into the stock pile.
• If there is a tie (called “war”), the players in the tie put one card face down and one card face up next to each other.Then, they flip the face-down card and compare. The higher card flipped up wins every card in play.
• When you run out of cards, shuffle your stock pile and turn it face down and start again.
• Play goes on until you either give up or one person holds ALL the cards.

If you wish to add the special cards, here is what my family and friends have experimented with in this past:

Name of Card	Optional Rule/Place
Wild Draw Four	Highest card of all
Wild	Second highest card
Draw Two	The person who flips this must now give up two extra cards and lose the hand
Skip	This person doesn’t play the next hand
Reverse	For this hand, the low card wins

Note: War is on our list of the best card games for those with a brain injury. Check out other games on our list here.

4. Memory

This game is easy with Uno cards, you don’t have to change a thing from the original Memory game.

Memory card game is a classic matching game played with a deck of cards.

To play, shuffle the cards and lay them face-down in a grid formation.

Each turn, a player flips over two cards. If they match, the player keeps the pair and gets another turn.

If the cards don’t match, they are flipped back face-down, and it becomes the next player’s turn.

The game continues until all pairs are found.

The goal is to remember the positions of the cards and collect the most pairs. The player with the highest number of pairs at the end of the game wins.

5. Find The Items

For this active game, remove all special cards so you only have numbers left.

Now, get all your players around the shuffled deck of cards. Flip one over.

Every must race to gather items in the room matching the number and color of the card.

For example, if you pull a red 3, you need to be the first to get three red items (or items with red on it).

If you are, you get to keep the card. Players come back to the deck and the next card is flipped.

Keep playing until someone has 10 cards (or whatever number you agree on).

This game really works as a card game for three players. Check out other ideas on our massive list at the link.

6. Uno Whist

Whist is a trick-taking game similar to Euchre or Bid (if you play those too).

An Uno will do the job nicely with this game.

Remove all special cards (keep the numbers only). You’ll have 76 cards now.

Remember: Uno has 0-9 numbered cards, and 1-9 appear twice for each of the four colors. Learn more about how many cards is in Uno.

From here, the game plays out as Whist normally would.

Whist is a trick-taking card game typically played by players in pairs.

The objective is to win the most tricks. At the beginning, partners sit opposite each other.

The dealer distributes the entire deck of cards clockwise, one at a time.

The top card of the remaining deck determines the trump suit.

Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each player plays one card per trick.

The highest-ranked card of the leading suit wins the trick, or the highest-ranked trump card if played.

Players must follow suit if possible; otherwise, they can play any card.

After all cards are played, scores are tallied based on the number of tricks won.

7. Card Toss

This is a great game for kids (and some adults love it too), and it couldn’t be simpler.

Find a container and set up a common distance away from it. All players take turns tossing cards one at a time into the container.

For every card you get in, you get a point.

When the deck is gone, the one with the highest points wins!

8. Number Grab Card Game

For this game, you need to remove special cards and leave only the numbers.

You need a minimum of three players here.

One person flips the card off deck face up.

The other players say the name of the number. The first to say it wins the card.

Then, rotate jobs so every takes turns being flipper.

Play continues until the deck is gone. Then, count your winning cards. The highest number wins!

For an added challenge, flip over two cards at a time and add some math into it. Add, subtract, or multiply the cards and yell out the answer to win.

9. Higher or Lower

Higher or lower is another simple yet fun game to play with a deck of Uno cards.

Remove the special cards and shuffle the deck.

Flip the first card face up. Guess if the next card will be higher or lower.

Flip the next card. If you’re wrong, it’s round over!

If you’re right or the card is the same number, you get to keep the first card and guess for the one that just flipped up.

Continue guessing until you lose. Count the number of cards you kept. Those are your points.

Reshuffle the deck and let the other players go. Compare points to see who won the round.

If you want to make the game longer, keep playing until someone gets to 25 points.

10. Old Maid

For this game, remove the wilds but feel free to keep the skips, reverses, and draw twos (though they don’t have any special role).

Also, remove all 0s except for one!

From here, play Old Maid in the standard way, except now you’re matching number and color and the remaining zero is the Old Maid.

Old Maid is a classic card game typically played with a standard deck of playing cards, excluding one Queen (the Old Maid). In this case, it’s our single zero.

The objective is to avoid being left with the Old Maid card at the end of the game. The cards are shuffled and dealt to all players.

Players take turns offering their hand face-down to the opponent next to them, who selects one card without seeing it.

If a pair is formed, such as two matching numbers or two matching suits, those cards are discarded.

The game continues until all pairs have been made, except for the unmatched Old Maid card. The player left with the Old Maid loses the game.

11. Simple Patterns Game

This is a game more for kids. You take the deck of Uno cards and play three cards which make some kind of pattern.

The other players or kids must then figure out what the pattern is and find cards to continue the pattern.

Feel free to use more than three cards if you need to make the pattern clear.

For example, if you play the blue 2, blue 4, and blue 6, the other must then play blue 8.

The pattern is blue cards going up by two or even cards.

Or, you may play Red 1, Blue 2, Yellow 3, Green 4, and then the next cards would be Red 5, Blue 6, Yellow 7, Green 8.

12. Spoons

Spoons is a simple set game and it works well with the numbered cards of an Uno deck.

Get one fewer spoon than there are players for the game. So if there are five players, get four spoons!

Now, deal out four cards to each player and flip the top card of the stock pile to start a discard.

The goal is to match all four cards in a set, either the same four numbers or four in a run of the same color.

Draw one card from the stock or discard pile each round. Then discard what you don’t want.

When you have your set or match, put it down and pick up a spoon.

The last player out gets a letter from the word “Spoons.”

Then, play again. When a player spells the whole word, they are out. The last player standing wins.

13. Uno Blitz

For this game, we’re playing a variation of Dutch Blitz with Uno cards.

Before playing the game, there are some setup and rule changes to do:

• Remove Draw Twos, Wild Draw Fours, and Zeroes.
• Red & Blue are considered “boy” cards; Green & Yellow are “girl” cards.
• Reverse makes the pile in the center start counting DOWN.
• Skip allows you to SKIP the next number.
• Wild lets you move onto the next number.

After this, we play as if we were playing Dutch Blitz with regular cards.

Check out our guide at the link above.

14. Card Houses

Use the cards to build the tallest structure you can before it falls. The tallest structure wins!

15. Crazy Eights

I know, this one seems silly.

After all, when Uno was invented, it was created as a enhanced version of Crazy Eights!

But if you don’t want to play the new version, remove the special cards and play Crazy Eights!

The objective is to be the first player to get rid of all their cards.

Each player is dealt a hand, and the top card of the deck is placed face-up.

Players take turns playing a card of the same suit or rank as the face-up card.

If a player doesn’t have a matching card, they can play an “eight” and choose a new suit.

The game continues until one player has no cards left, declaring them the winner.

16. Pattern Game (SET)

This is a twist on the game, SET.

Lay out the cards in a 4 x 4 grid face up.

Look at all the cards and a way to connect three of them together in a pattern. When you see one, yell SET and pick up the cards.

Replace the cards from the stock and keep looking. When there no SETs possible, lay down another row and keep going.

When all the cards are gone, count the number of SETs each player collected. The one with the most wins.

SETs can happen when you can logically group them together with a common element. Example include:

• Three cards of the same color
• Three cards in consecutive number order
• Three cards of the same value

Feel free to go beyond this and explore other patterns like even or odd numbers, counting by threes, numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence, and/or numbers that add or subtract (2, 3, 5).

17. Color + Number Match

Play this one like an easier version of memory. Instead of needing to match the number and color, you only need to match one!

18. Sorting Card Game

Remove special cards. Players all get 12 cards face down.

The dealer calls a “sorting” quality. Then players pick up the cards and must sort or order them according to this condition.

The first one done, puts their hands on the table and yells SORT!

If they did it correctly, they get a point, and the deal passes to the next person. The first one to 10 points wins!

Sorting conditions may include:

• Ascending
• Descending
• Evens Vs. Odds
• By color
• Combinations of these elements!

19. Snap

Snap is like Slapjack but with numbers! Remove the special cards and deal out the entire deck between the players.

The first player puts their top card in the middle. Then, players take turns putting one card on top of the middle pile at a time.

When two of the same number are put on top of each other, players race to slap their hand on top of the deck and yell SNAP!

The player who does so first, gets to pick up the whole pile and add it to theirs.

Eventually, players will run out of cards. They can still play by watching for a SNAP.

The winner is the one who ends up with all of the cards!

20. The Domino Effect

Note: This game is only for use with an old and unneeded UNO deck.

Fold each card down the middle to make a card-like domino. Practice setting the cards up like Dominoes and knocking them down.

Now, set a timer. The goal is to create the longest domino train by the end of the timer.

Here’s the kicker: the only cards that count are ones that fall down when knocked down.

So you still need to make sure it’s a good train!

21. Move It

I first heard of this game as a workout activity.

With a standard deck, you assign each suit a type of workout (i.e. push-up for clubs, jumping jacks for spades, etc.). Then, you flip over a card and do the # of exercises shown by the number and suit.

With your UNO deck, do the same thing, but now you decide on which color is which exercise. Simple exercises to assign include:

• Push-ups
• Crunches
• Situps
• Pullups
• Squats
• Jumping Jacks
• Lunges
• Planks (the number becomes the number of seconds)
• Burpees

Check out how to make Uno a drinking game for more fun!