Pillow Queen

A very fun game that can be played amongst kids of almost all ages! And that’s not all – we even made it ourselves.

• Number of players: At least five.
• Age range: 7+
• Place needed: One big room, mostly empty so that all the players can sit in a large circle with a lot of space in the middle.

You will need:

1. Either some chalk to draw rectangles big enough for players to sit in it, or sofas.
2. Lots of pillows, either the ones that are on sofas or the ones that are on beds – or both. Don’t use floor cushions!

Warning: This game can be a little rough. Don’t play in the living room with lots of glass tables and decorations!

How to play: (Rules are emboldened text. NOTE: No offence to boys but since it’s Pillow QUEEN I will write ‘her’ and not ‘him’!)

1. Each player chooses a ‘house’: a chalk rectangle on the floor to sit in, or a sofa.
2. All the pillows are dumped in the middle of the room.
3. At the count of three, all the players grab as many pillows from the pile as they can in one go and bring them back to their ‘houses’. One player could have seven pillows and another only one.
4. Now the real fun begins! One player gets up from her place, leaving her pillows in her house, ‘going shopping’. She walks slowly in a circle passing by all the players and tries to snatch the pillows from the other players, who have to protect their pillows. She can go around the circle one to three times and has to carry all the pillows she managed to snatch with him, until she sits down.
5. The pillows left behind in her house, or any other vacant house, can be stolen by any other players. However pillows cannot be snatched from the player who is walking with pillows (‘going shopping’.)
6. When the first player sits down, the second player ‘goes shopping’ and so on all around the circle.
7. Inevitably one player will have the most pillows. When this happens, all the pillows are given to that player. That player becomes the ‘Pillow Queen’.
8. The Pillow Queen arranges all her pillows into a ‘fort’ or a ‘throne’ and sits on it.
9. All the players loot the Pillow Queen who tries to protect her pillows as well as she can.
10. The game ends!