In the paper we introduce the new game--the unilateral $${\mathcal{P}}$$ -colouring game which can be used as a tool to study the r-colouring game and the (r, d)-relaxed colouring game. Let be given a graph G, an additive hereditary property $${\mathcal {P}}$$ and a set C of r colours. In the unilateral $${\mathcal {P}}$$ -colouring game similarly as in the r-colouring game, two players, Alice and Bob, colour the uncoloured vertices of the graph G, but in the unilateral $${\mathcal {P}}$$ -colouring game Bob is more powerful than Alice. Alice starts the game, the players play alternately, but Bob can miss his move. Bob can colour the vertex with an arbitrary colour from C, while Alice must colour the vertex with a colour from C in such a way that she cannot create a monochromatic minimal forbidden subgraph for the property $${\mathcal {P}}$$ . If after |V(G)| moves the graph G is coloured, then Alice wins the game, otherwise Bob wins. The $${\mathcal {P}}$$ -unilateral game chromatic number, denoted by $${\chi_{ug}^\mathcal {P}(G)}$$ , is the least number r for which Alice has a winning strategy for the unilateral $${\mathcal {P}}$$ -colouring game with r colours on G. We prove that the $${\mathcal {P}}$$ -unilateral game chromatic number is monotone and is the upper bound for the game chromatic number and the relaxed game chromatic number. We give the winning strategy for Alice to play the unilateral $${\mathcal {P}}$$ -colouring game. Moreover, for k ≥ 2 we define a class of graphs $${\mathcal {H}_k =\{G|{\rm every \;block \;of\;}G \; {\rm has \;at \;most}\; k \;{\rm vertices}\}}$$ . The class $${\mathcal {H}_k }$$ contains, e.g., forests, Husimi trees, line graphs of forests, cactus graphs. Let $${\mathcal {S}_d}$$ be the class of graphs with maximum degree at most d. We find the upper bound for the $${\mathcal {S}_2}$$ -unilateral game chromatic number for graphs from $${\mathcal {H}_3}$$ and we study the $${\mathcal {S}_d}$$ -unilateral game chromatic number for graphs from $${\mathcal {H}_4}$$ for $${d \in \{2,3\}}$$ . As the conclusion from these results we obtain the result for the d-relaxed game chromatic number: if $${G \in \mathcal {H}_k}$$ , then $${\chi_g^{(d)}(G) \leq k + 2-d}$$ , for $${k \in \{3, 4\}}$$ and $${d \in \{0, \ldots, k-1\}}$$ . This generalizes a known result for trees.