Since we play the game Boneyard so much, we thought it would be a good idea to post the rules here. The kids in our Youth Group usually love it, so other Youth Groups probably would too.

Object of the Game

Boneyard is basically hide and go seek in the dark. You have to turn off all of the lights in the church, except for one particular area, which is designated the boneyard. (In our church, we have a particular stairwell that we always use for boneyard, because it’s somewhat isolated—meaning that turning the lights on there doesn’t illuminate the rest of the church—but, at the same time, fairly central to the church.)

Everyone hides, and the person or people who are “it” attempt to find them. In this version of hide and go seek, people are allowed to move around freely—they don’t have to remain in the same spot for the entire game. When someone is caught, that person goes to boneyard. To catch someone, you don’t have to tag them, you just have to find them, and tell them to go to boneyard. For example, if you were it, and you found Odele, you would just say, “Odele, go to boneyard.” Or, if you’re not able to make eye contact with him or whatever, and need to make it clear, you might say, “Odele, hiding under the table, go to boneyard.”

The tricky part about Boneyard is that people can be freed. If someone is free, they can go to boneyard, and free anyone who is currently caught, by tagging them. Once they are freed, they can go and hide again. (When you’re it, you’ll often walk by boneyard and find a bunch of people there, and then walk by a few minutes later and find it empty.)

The object of the game, of course, is for the people who are it to catch everyone, and have everyone in boneyard. With a fairly large group, such as we have, this rarely happens. There have only been a couple of instances where the person who was it has won. (That is, until John started as a Youth Group leader, and now he regularly catches everyone.) At the beginning of the game, you should set a time limit for the game, so that people will know how long they’ll be playing; you may want to have multiple games, so that the same person (or people) don’t have to be it for hours upon hours.

Rules for People Who are It

The following specific rules apply to people who are it:

• No “cherry-picking”—that is, if you’re it, you can’t spend the whole game guarding boneyard, in case people get freed.

As you might have noticed, there aren’t a lot of rules for the people who are it. The game is usually stacked against them, so we don’t want to tie their hands too much.

Rules for Game Participants

The following rules apply to people who are participating in the game, and hiding from the people who are it:

• No hiding in boneyard. (This may not be applicable for you, but if the location you choose for boneyard has somewhere that people can hide, it will.) If you’re free, you’re not allowed to hide within the boneyard, so that you can keep freeing people when they get caught. (You can, of course, hide close to boneyard.)
• Similarly, if you’re free, you’re not allowed to stand in boneyard and pretend that you’re caught, so that you can free others as they get caught.
• No hiding in bathrooms. Since people who are it wouldn’t be able to freely go into the bathrooms to find you—i.e. a man couldn’t go into the women’s room, and a woman couldn’t go into the men’s room—it wouldn’t be fair.
  • If you are playing this game in a church, as we do, there will probably also be other places that people aren’t allowed to go. For example, in our church, we don’t allow people to go into the sanctuary. If this is true for you, you should make it clear at the beginning of the game which areas are out of bounds.