Going, Going!: The Auction Party Game for 2–6 Players

Updated October 2026

Going, Going! is an auction party game for 2 to 6 players on one phone. Each auction reveals a topic, like a movie marathon, a midnight menu or a dream festival, and the lots go under the gavel one by one. Everyone bids imaginary dollars to fill their collection. When the last slot is filled, you defend what you bought and the group ranks the results. It is a bidding game where taste counts as much as tactics, and one of 11 games in the Cold Ones app.

How to play Going, Going!

1. Choose categories and players. Select the categories you want to play, then add 2–6 players.
2. Read the brief. Each auction opens with a topic, a one-line brief and the collection size: 3, 4, 5 or 7 items, depending on the topic.
3. Bid. One lot is up at a time. Every player has a bid button on their own card, and each tap raises the price by $1. The leading bidder is highlighted, and you can't outbid yourself.
4. Close the lot. Hold the judge's gavel for 1.5 seconds to sell to the leader. If nobody bids, the same hold skips the lot, as long as enough lots remain for everyone. Let go early to cancel; "Undo last lot" reverses the last sale or skip.
5. Defend your collection. Once every collection is full, each player pitches theirs. Then the group gives everyone a place and confirms the points.
6. Next topic. A new auction starts with fresh money. Your points carry over until you leave the game.

How the money works

Everyone starts each auction with the same budget: slots × (players + 2) imaginary dollars. Movie night has 3 slots, so each player gets $12 with 2 players, $18 with 4 and $24 with 6. The opening bid is $1.

One rule keeps every auction finishable: $1 stays reserved for each other empty slot in your collection, so you can never bid so much that a slot can't be filled. Spend big on the first great lot, though, and the rest of your collection is whatever the others leave you.

Scoring: pitch, then rank

There is no correct collection, only a convincing one. When all slots are full, each player makes their case and the group decides the order. First place earns as many points as there are players, second place one fewer, down to 1 point for last. With 5 players that is 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Picking a place that is already taken swaps the two players, and you can still edit the ranking after confirming. Totals carry from topic to topic until you leave the game.

8 categories, 24 topics, 803 lots

• Free: Movies & TV (Movie night, Sitcom roommates, Cartoon backup) and Food & Drink (Midnight menu, Brunch worth getting up for, The dinner-party table). That is 6 topics and 184 lots.
• Classic: Sports, Music, Pop Culture and Lifestyle, with 12 topics such as a basketball starting five, a dream festival or the heist movie cast.
• Hot & Spicy: Dating and After Dark, 6 topics for adults.

Most topics ask for 3 or 4 items; the biggest is the all-time soccer seven. The free categories are selected from the start. Classic categories unlock with the Classic or Premium subscription, Hot & Spicy ones with Hot & Spicy or Premium. Within an auction every lot appears at most once, and topics don't repeat until you have played through your selection.

A real topic from the game

Movie night, from the free Movies & TV category, 3 slots:

• Three movies. One perfect marathon. Win the room, not a critics’ award.

The lots come from a pool of 30 films, among them Shrek 2, Interstellar and Parasite. Do you pay big for the obvious crowd-pleaser, or wait and build a strange, perfect triple bill nobody saw coming?

Strategy that works

• Watch the cards. Every card shows how much money a player has left. When a rival is nearly broke, the next lot gets cheap.
• Buy a story. Three items that fit together are easier to defend than three expensive picks.
• Mind the endgame. Skipping only works while enough lots remain. Late in the auction, someone has to buy.

One phone, no account, no ads

All the bidding happens on one phone in the middle of the table. Nobody needs an account, the game works offline, there are no ads on any tier, and the money is imaginary. Going, Going! plays in English, German, Spanish and French.

Want a different kind of round? In Dial It Up you act out a secret number, and Categories is the letter game against the clock. To get the night started, see our pregame games.