Standoff (hand game)

For the game using poker cards, see Standoff (poker cards).

Standoff is a simple game for two or more players – ideally a group of 5 to 10 people. It’s kind of like Rock-Paper-Scissors meets John Woo action flick.

I learned the game back in college, through my then-roommate John Shedletsky. The game and its variants go by many different names, but “Standoff” is the name that I use these days. In this post, I’m going to explain several variations of the game, including my own favorite version.

Version #1 (Recommended)

Players stand in a circle, facing each other. The game plays out as a series of rounds.

Before each round, each player pantomimes a gun with one hand, placing it in an imaginary holster by their waist.

Then, on the count of three, all players simultaneously act out one of three choices:

• Shoot an opponent – point your imaginary gun at an opponent of your choice
• Shoot yourself – point your imaginary gun at yourself, touching your temple
• Shoot nobody – point your imaginary gun at the sky

Players then hold their pose while they collectively figure out who has been shot.

Shooting an opponent kills that opponent… unless they are shooting themselves. In that case, your attacking shot is reflected and you die. Note that shooting yourself reflects all bullets fired at you, so you could potentially kill a whole slew of attackers.

If you shoot yourself but nobody aims at you, you actually end up shooting yourself and you die. Note that you do survive if you reflected any attackers.

If two players aim at one another, both players die. Note that it is also possible to die in a whole circular chain of people shooting one another.

Finally, shooting the air serves as a kind of conservative move, played if you think all your opponents might try to shoot themselves.

Any players who were killed are eliminated from the game, and the remaining players continue to the next round. The game continues until only one player remains. That player is the winner. Also note that it’s possible for all players to die, in which case there are no winners!

As with most folk games, performative embellishments are encouraged for maximum fun. For example, my friends and I often pretend to reload our imaginary guns before each round, with the appropriate gesture and sound effect and everything.

Even within this particular version, there are a few modifications you might want to try. In my own personal favorite variation, each player gets two guns, one on each hand. After all, it feels way more badass to wield dual pistols! In this mode, you can either aim both weapons at the same target, or point them at different targets. We typically play that two guns beats one gun – both when firing at one another, and when firing at someone who is shooting themselves. Obviously, though, you could tweak these particulars to your own liking. Another way to play the double pistol variant is to simply make each player lose one of their guns each time they are hit. Effectively, this means that each player has two lives (though they become less powerful after losing a life).

Version #2 (sometimes called “James Bond”)

This version of the game works similarly – players stand in a circle and try to be the last player standing. However, the three actions you can take differ in this version:

• Shoot – point your imaginary guns at an opponent of your choice
• Reload – holster your two guns by you waist
• Block – place your two arms in an x-shape across your chest

Note that in this version, you almost always play with dual pistols, because you’ll have to use both of your arms anyway for the block gesture. However, in the standard version, you can’t direct your guns at different targets or actions.

In this version, each gun can only hold one bullet. That’s why the reload action exists – you have to reload before you can shoot again. Players themselves are responsible for remembering who is loaded and who isn’t.

Blocking, as is probably obvious, successfully deflects an attack. However, blocking does not reflect an attack, like shooting yourself does in Version #1 (see above).

The key decision in this version is gambling on when to reload. This choice is especially foregrounded when only two players remain, one loaded and the other not. The loaded player only wants to shoot when they think the unloaded player will reload.

(EDIT: indie dev Alan Hazelden points out that, from a game theoretical point of view, this version of the game can “deadlock” in a stalemate. If two players remain, and only one is loaded, the unloaded player shouldn’t ever reload until the loaded player shoots. In practice, most players want to avoid this situation, and will still chance a reload just for the fun of it. Nevertheless, it is true that more “serious” players may refuse to budge. The bazooka mod I mention in the next paragraph does suggest one possible fix, and I’m sure there are many other creative solutions!)

As in Variation #1, there are lots of possible variations here. My friend Tim Garbos taught me one variation where reloading your gun three times gets you a bazooka! A bazooka can shoot through a block, but is beaten by a (faster) regular bullet. In this variation, part of the challenge is to keep track of your opponents’ reload counts.

Links

• Folk Game: Standoff | Die Gute Fabrik, reprinted here with permission