Bars With Games
in NYC

Ten floor courts, a tropical bar, and math that only works with a crew. The Royal Palms charges $60 an hour per court before tax, drinks and gratuity — so four of you is $15 a head and two of you is $30. It is a walk-in club: sign up at the front desk, take a buzzer, and when there is a wait each party gets one hour. Food comes from a rotating food truck (the calendar names it), and outside savory food isn’t allowed. The honest caveat: it is 21+ Monday to Saturday; family days run on select Sundays, noon–8pm, shuffling from age 8. The local move: it now lists Monday hours, 6pm to midnight — a night older listings, ours included, still marked closed.

The cheapest shuffleboard in Manhattan is the free kind, and this is the easiest place to find it. Plug Uglies’ own site advertises free shuffleboard at both of its bars — this one on Third Avenue between 22nd and 23rd, and a second at 1495 1st Ave on the corner of 78th — along with 13-plus screens and wings. The kitchen does smashburgers with fries: $16 for a double, $20 a triple, $24 the quad. The honest caveat: it is a sports bar first, so come when there isn’t a big game on if you want the table to yourself. No happy hour is posted on its site, so we are not printing one. Older listings put this bar at 256 Third Ave; it is 295.

New York’s serious pool room, and the clock runs per head, not per table. Twenty-five Brunswick tables across 11,000 square feet a block below Union Square, plus ping-pong, coin-op foosball, beer pong and four dart boards that are free. Walk-in pool runs $12.80–$18.90 per person per hour depending on the day, the time and how many of you there are; a reserved table is $110 an hour Sunday to Wednesday and $130 Thursday to Saturday for up to six, paid in full, usually with 24 hours’ notice. Full lunch and dinner menu, open 11am–3am, 365 days a year. The honest caveat: all ages until 6pm, then strictly 21+, with ID checked. It opened in 1989 on the Upper West Side, founded by the comedian David Brenner and the Hunt brothers.

The deepest games menu in Manhattan, with a jazz band playing over it. Nine pool tables, six ping-pong, six shuffleboard and three foosball tables on Christopher Street, at $8 per player per hour Sunday to Thursday and $9 on Friday and Saturday — billed by the minute, so a short game costs less than the hourly rate. Chess, Scrabble, Jenga and the rest are $2 a head, unlimited. Jazz starts at 7pm every night. The honest caveat, in their words: “We do not have a ‘Happy Hour’” — drinks run $5–$13 — and there is a cover after 6pm ($5 Sunday to Thursday, $10 Friday and Saturday). The local move: arrive before 6 and skip the cover. No kitchen, but outside food is welcome.

Same table, same paddles, half the price on a Monday. SPIN’s walk-in rate is $29 an hour per table on Sunday and Monday, $49 Tuesday to Thursday and $59 Friday and Saturday, and a table takes up to ten — a full table on a Monday is under $3 a head. From 9pm on weeknights (10pm at weekends), SPIN After Dark takes half off ping-pong. Eighteen Olympic-grade tables, a full bar and a kitchen across 14,000 square feet between Madison and Park. The honest caveat: its own page shows no Sunday walk-in hours — Sunday is listed for events — so call before you plan one. Saturdays before 6pm there is a $45-a-head all-ages family package for four to ten. A second NYC club is at 1626 Broadway.

Free bocce, indoors, and nobody gets a reservation — including you. Union Hall’s two indoor courts are, in its own words, “always free to use”: first come, first served, open for casual play at all times except scheduled league hours. League nights change by season, so check its bocce league page before you go. The room is the other reason — a 5,000-square-foot converted warehouse with firesides, a library, a garden and a basement venue for music and comedy. The honest caveat: the courts are 21+ at all times, and the whole bar goes 21+ at 6pm. We have seen a weekday happy hour attributed to Union Hall elsewhere, including on our own venue page; it isn’t on Union Hall’s site, so it isn’t on this one.

The best weekday drink prices in this section, and the pool table is free one night a week. Monday to Friday, 4–8pm: $5 Coors Light and Bud Light, $4 Tecate, $7 well drinks and wine, a $9 beer-and-shot, $1 off drafts and $2 off cocktails. On Sunday nights the pool table is free, and Thursday is trivia at 8pm. The honest caveat: this is a sports bar with an allegiance — the official Eagles bar in the East Village and a Penn State bar on fall Saturdays — so on a game day the room belongs to the game, not the table. There is no happy hour at weekends, when it opens at 11:30am for kick-offs.

It beats most happy hours by not having one. The Genny is always $4, or $6 with a shot, and the four Brewskee-Ball lanes at the home of Brewskee-Ball are currently free; the Buoy game is always free. Seventeen years at Grand and Havemeyer, with hand-cut fries and a hot knish as the menu and a $60 pitcher of fresh-lime margaritas that pours six. The Brewskee-Ball league still takes sign-ups. The local move: a group can reserve a lane through LaneRez instead of waiting on a busy night. The honest caveat: “currently free” is their phrase, which means it won’t always be — and the doors don’t open until 5pm on weekdays, 2pm at weekends.

The arcade for people who think they’ve played everything. The cabinets are built by independent developers — most of them, the bar says, playable only here — in a 21+ room with a stage, a backyard and something on most nights, from Killer Queen open-hive nights to a monthly playtest. Happy hour runs Monday to Friday, 5–8pm: $6 for a Narragansett and a whiskey shot or an Estrella and a tequila shot, $6 wells and $8 frozens, with $4 Budweiser drafts and $6 Randwiches hot dogs off the clock. The honest caveat: its own site lists both 5pm and 6pm as the weekday opening time, so treat the first hour of happy hour as a maybe. It runs to 4am on Friday and Saturday.

A $3 draft on the Upper West Side, poured next to twelve pinball machines. Monday to Friday until 6pm, 10oz drafts of Garage Beer and select rotating taps are $3 and well drinks $8 — and the bar opens at noon on Fridays, which makes Friday’s window six hours long. Sixteen rotating drafts, a bottle shop and burgers. The machines take quarters, dollar bills or an app depending on the cabinet, and there is a quarter machine for change. The local move: Tuesday at 7:30pm is a weekly IFPA pinball tournament. The honest caveat: the $3 pour is ten ounces, not a pint — about $4.80 a pint, which on 72nd Street is still a steal. Kids are welcome with a parent until 9pm.

Skee-ball, pool and darts until 4am every night — the East Village dive that does all three. Skee-ball, two pool tables, darts and sixteen taps in one long room on 5th Street that has been pouring since 1993. The week has a shape: pool league Monday, trivia Tuesday at 7pm, skee-ball league Thursday. Outside food is welcome — a genuinely useful policy at 1am — and it takes cash and cards; 21+ with ID. The back room can be booked for a group, and walk-ins are always welcome. The honest caveat: Ace Bar doesn’t publish a happy hour on its own site. We have seen one attributed to it elsewhere, including on our own venue page, and we are not repeating it until the bar does.

The only bar on this page where you can do a wash between games. The laundromat side runs from 8am (7am at weekends) and stays open until 2am every night but Monday; the pinball bar opens at 5pm on weekdays and noon at weekends, also until 2am. There is no happy hour and it doesn’t need one: cans and bottles run $5–$8 (Tecate and High Life are $5), soju is $4, wine $9, frosé $10, and a Roberta’s pizza is $12. The taps pour local beer, Greenpoint Black Duck Porter among them. The honest caveat: there is no cocktail list — beer, wine, soju and frosé only — so the friend who needs a martini drinks it somewhere else first.

Fine for a family or an office that can’t agree; not the reason you came to New York. The 42nd Street branch of the arcade-and-sports-bar chain runs a weekday happy hour, 4–7pm, per its OpenTable listing — and publishes no prices for it, so ask before you order. It is open late for Midtown: until 1am Wednesday to Friday and 2am on Saturday. Go here instead: two blocks north, Lucky Strike does unlimited bowling with shoes for $31.99 a head from 7pm Monday to Thursday — a price you can actually plan around. For classic cabinets, Barcade’s three Manhattan rooms are in our gaming cafes guide.

$5 drinks until 8pm every day, and fourteen private karaoke rooms to take them into. Every day from opening until 8pm, draft beer, house wine and wells are $5, and the specials board adds $5 Fireball shots and $6 beer-and-shot combos. Fourteen private rooms plus a bar with open karaoke, and a 4am close seven nights — doors at 4pm Thursday to Sunday, 6pm Monday to Wednesday. Service-industry workers get 20% off rooms and drinks. The honest caveat: the room rate isn’t on its website right now, so get the hourly price when you book — and Monday to Wednesday the happy hour is only two hours long, because the door doesn’t open until 6. Outside drinks are not allowed.

Williamsburg’s most famous bar deal is still running, and the karaoke comes with it. Alligator Lounge still promises free pizza every day — its site says “ask us how it works”, so ask at the bar what your drink gets you. Karaoke goes on at 10pm on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, and 11pm on Saturday, with trivia, comedy and bingo on the bill too; groups of ten or more can reserve for karaoke. Open 3pm–4am on weekdays and 1pm–4am at weekends. The honest caveat: there is no karaoke on Monday or Tuesday, and the pizza terms aren’t written down anywhere we could read.

The best drink math of any karaoke bar on this page: two for one until 8pm. Albatross — which bills itself as the oldest gay bar in Queens and the Queer Cheers of Astoria — pours two-for-one Monday to Friday, 5–8pm, then stays open until 4am every night. Karaoke, trivia and drag are all on the weekly calendar, which the bar posts on Instagram (@albatrossastoria) rather than on its website. The honest caveat: it doesn’t publish which drinks qualify for the two-for-one, or which night the mic is on this week — ask at the bar, and check Instagram before you build a night around it. The N and W stop at Astoria Blvd, a short walk away.

A bar with bowling in it, not the other way round. The Gutter opened in 2007 — the first new alley in Brooklyn in 40 years — with eight vintage lanes brought in from the Midwest. Lanes are $30 per half hour Sunday to Thursday and $35 on Friday and Saturday, shoes $6, socks $4, and it is open until 4am every night. It is 21+ at all times, and there are no single-lane reservations: small groups walk in. The Spare Room behind the lanes books shows. The honest caveat: eight lanes, no bookings and a 4am close add up to a beer-in-hand wait on a Friday at 10pm — go early in the week. The 12-lane Lower East Side sibling is the one that admits all ages.

Sixteen lanes in a concert hall, and the price only makes sense if you fill one. Walk-in bowling is $35 per lane per half hour, every day of the week, for up to eight people, which is about $4.40 a head at a full lane; the old $30 weekday rate is gone. Shoes are required, at $5.95. Sixteen lanes inside a working concert venue, Blue Ribbon doing the food, and a bowlers’ lounge with service to your lane. Usually 21+ after 6pm, with all ages welcome on weekend days. The honest caveat: it is closed Monday and Tuesday, opens at 6pm Wednesday to Friday and 11am at weekends, and show nights change the hours — check the calendar first. Its occasional 50%-off bowling specials are announced on its social media first.

Ten dollars for two hours of bowling, if you can get there by 1pm. $10 a person buys two hours of unlimited bowling with shoes, every day from 10am to 1pm. After 1pm the same two hours is $25 Sunday to Thursday and $40 on Friday and Saturday. It is a full entertainment room — NEOverse immersive lanes, 40-plus arcade games, pool tables, a full bar and a kitchen — open 10am–2am daily. The honest caveat: booking online adds a 21% non-refundable fee to the whole reservation, tax included. Walk-ins are welcome but not guaranteed; on a weekday morning, walk in. More cheap lanes in our bowling guide.

Fifty lanes in Times Square, and the only sane way to use them is Night Strike. Monday to Thursday from 7pm and Sunday from 6pm, unlimited bowling with shoes is $31.99 a head, walk-in only. On Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 3pm, Family Unlimited is $22.99. Every day it is buy two games, get the third half off, and arcade play is half price on Wednesdays. The honest caveat: it turns 21+ after 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and every deal is walk-in only and subject to lane availability, so on a busy night you wait for a lane like everyone else. Open until midnight most nights, 1am on Friday and Saturday.

The only mini golf on this page with a real happy hour — and it is half off. Monday to Friday, 4–6pm, Puttery takes 50% off drinks and appetizers. Two themed nine-hole courses, the Lodge and the History Museum, with unlimited play at $32 for adults and $15 for kids, $27 for a single nine, or $35.99 for unlimited play plus an entrée. Five levels on 14th Street, with a rooftop bar and a weekend comedy club in the building. The honest caveat: it is all ages until 6pm and 18+ after — not 21+ — so the family window closes at exactly the moment the happy hour does. Walk-ins welcome; open until 1am on Friday and Saturday.

Simulator golf priced per bay, not per person — which makes the off-peak hour almost cheap. A bay is $35 an hour Monday to Thursday, 10am–4pm, for up to six people. After 4pm on those days it is $69; Friday from 4–9pm and weekend daytime run $99; late slots (Friday and Saturday after 9pm, Sunday after 6pm) are $49. Clubs for adults and kids cost extra, first come, first served. On game days the bar runs $5 drafts and $20 beer buckets, and every Knicks game gets a watch party. The honest caveat: this is full-swing simulator golf, not mini golf, and the price doubles at 4pm on a weekday. Every real course is in our mini golf guide.

The quiz with the most at stake, and a $6 warm-up. Every Wednesday, 7:30–9:30pm, six rounds — General Knowledge, Music, Top Tens and Visual ID — for a $75 bar tab for first, $40 for second and $15 for third, plus a berth in the twice-yearly finals. It is free to play, and Pete’s does not take reservations, so come early for a good table. Conveniently, happy hour runs Monday to Friday until 7pm: $6 draft beer, $6 wells and $6 wine, with $5 Athletic non-alcoholic cans. The local move: get there by 6:30, buy a round at happy-hour prices and hold the table. Shows here are 21+ unless listed otherwise.

A real neighborhood bar that happens to own about 250 board games. That number comes from the Grub Street review e’s quotes on its own homepage, Jenga included. The weekly bill is the reason to plan: an NYC Trivia League quiz on Tuesdays at 7pm — $2 a player, with a two-drink minimum; comedy on Mondays at 8pm; $9.50 beer-and-shot combos on Thursdays; and from 9pm until the kitchen closes, Sunday to Thursday, a burger, a shot and a beer for $16. This October it has also been running $10 frozen drinks all night on Wednesdays. The honest caveat: e’s doesn’t post its happy-hour times on its own site, so we are printing only the specials it does.

The board-game café that pours beer, at $10 a head. That buys three hours at a table Monday to Thursday, $12 Friday to Sunday and on holidays, with more than 500 games on the shelves; reserving a table costs $15 a head for the same three hours. Bubble tea, coffee, beer, sandwiches and salads. Open from 10am at weekends and 11am on weekdays, until 11pm — midnight on Friday and Saturday. Tuesday and Friday at 7pm are Riftbound Nexus nights, and there is D&D for over-18s. The honest caveat: the kitchen closes three hours before the room does, so eat early or eat first.

The rare escape room that prints an off-peak price. Book Monday to Friday before 5pm with promo code 2026 and it is 20% off: $32 a head for four to twelve players, $35.20 for three and $44 for two. After 5pm and at weekends it is $40, $44 and $55. Six rooms, and every game is 100% private — “you will never be paired with strangers” — for ages 10 and up. The local move: a weekday-afternoon team outing costs a fifth less than the same room on a Saturday night. The honest caveat: there is no bar, so the drink comes after, on 32nd Street — our Koreatown happy hours guide has the block.

Not an escape room, and better for the friend who would hate one. Teams of two to six suit up in hazmat gear and race the clock through game rooms; fail the last one and you get blasted with paint, foam or slime. Missions start at $34.95 a head, and the 90-minute Arcade Bomb Battle — eat and drink while you play — at $19.95, with prices moving by tier, day and group size. Beat all three missions to unlock the 18+ Cash Bomb, played for $1,000. The Bomb Bar has arcade games, cocktails and food, and Wednesday is half off canned beer and wine. The honest caveat: it is closed Monday and Tuesday, and the $19.95 ticket is the arcade battle, not a bomb mission — check which one you are booking.