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Hold onto your hats, folks, for this is going to be one epic blog!
When I volunteered to write this piece, a wave of panic suddenly hit me. Could I think of 50 great family games to cover? Turns out my terror was misguided. I can think of hundreds of great family games! The challenge has actually been to limit this feature to a measly half century! And my fellow super-bloggers have been making suggestions that are so good, I feel like Santa Claus with a list of best behaved board games!
But before we start, we should probably ponder the philisophicals of this piece for just a moment. “Family Board games”. What are they? Who plays them? Are they different to other games? And is this a ranking run down, or a smorgasbord of cardboard treats from which to pick and choose?
All valid questions, my friends! And in the interests of prioritising brevity over breadth (for we all want to start tucking into the list itself), I’ll keep my reflections short and sweet!
I think of family as a fluid term, unbounded by blood or genetic ties, perhaps the same with family games. A family is 2 or more people who share their lives together. As such, to my mind, family games are those we want to play together. To facilitate a fun, shared experience. As much as nixing solo games pains me, this is a list where sharing between 2,3, 4 or more is caring!
Okay, so we have games people play together. But who are these people? Again, if we think of “family” there’s no upper or lower age limit on who can be in a family. On that basis, I’ve opted for those with multi-generational, accessible appeal. Uniting the wise with the wrinkle-free. And by covering those meaty points, we arrive at this axiomatic conclusion; family games are not really different to any other games. A dash more colour perhaps. A less X rated theme. But generally they are games we all love to play and not just ones for family games night!
So with that all cleared away and in no particular order, here is a veritable banquet of board gaming delights to feast on during your next family game session!
1) Azul Summer Pavilion
The third in the smashing tile laying Azul series by Michael Kiesling, Summer Pavilion combines beauty and crunch. For 2-4 players, you will be drafting tiles over six rounds to complete patterns representing the unfinished Grand Summer Pavilion. The extra twists here are that every round one colour is wild, and each colour scores different value bonuses if you manage to complete any sets! Accessible, replayable, and perfect for families who like pretty, pattern matching games!
2) Ticket To Ride
A granddaddy of gateway gaming fun, the Ticket to Ride series is probably one of the most popular amongst families. And for good reasons! Simple to learn, this euro style game packs in a train load of mechanics into one smooth, accessible experience. With zero player elimination, 2-5 players will be collecting train cards to complete routes in order to score points. Ticket to Ride Europe includes special tunnel and ferry routes, and there are enough expanded map packs with their own unique twists to see you and your family circumnavigate the globe in the comfort and pleasure of a Ticket to Ride train!
3) Catan
No family games list would be complete without Klaus Teuber’s Catan featuring somewhere. Modern classic euro-style gameplay for 3-4 players (expandable up to 6 with Seafarers), your goal is to trade resources and build settlements in order to become the dominant force on Catan. With sheep, wood, what, stone, and brick the must have items, you’ll be building roads and constructing cities with what the dice provide. Once Catan gets under your skin, you’ll be saying “wood for sheep” long after the game has been packed away!
4) King Of Tokyo
Mutants, gigantic robots, and strange aliens? Sounds like every family I know, including mine! In King of Tokyo, it’s fight time! A dice chucker for 2-6 players, you’ll each be trying to balance your energy, health and power with rolls of 6 custom D6. Being mega fierce gets you into Tokyo for VPs, but you’ll be attacked on all sides by everyone else around the table! Win by destroying Tokyo, or being the sole survivor. Either way you and your family will have a blast! And what’s more there’d a tonne of expandable content to keep you fighting in the most fun way for years to come!
5) Kingdomino
Ah, Kingdomino.; first of its name, inspirer of many domino based games in Bruno Cathala’s superb series! One of the most elegantly simple but crunchy filler games in our own collection, 2-4 players will be picking terrain covered domino style tyles in order to build kingdoms and gain area majority points. On your go, the tiles you pick may have juicy point scoring multipliers. But they also determine the turn order in the next round. So pick wisely! Kingdomino has also been re-worked into a roll and write, as well as a more feature packed Queendomino, and most recently, a three mode stone-age themed Kingdomino Origins.
6) Carcassonne
Tile laying, area majority, family games don’t come much better than Carcassonne. Whether you are 5 or 155 years old, you’ll be playing this game in less time than it takes to stack the tiles up! Suitable for 2-5 players, your goal is to complete features including cities, monasteries, roads, and farms for victory points. The tile you lay each turn must be adjacent to one sharing a matching territory type. With only a handful of meeples each, you’ll be torn between locking them in until large features are complete, or going for small, quick, point scoring choices. With so many expansions extending the basic game play in brilliantly simple but crunchy ways (and a big box of gaming goodness too), Carcassonne will entertain your family for generations to come!
7) Just One
Can you think of just one? One clue that is! Just One is a brilliant co-operative game for 3-7 players where you are trying to discover mystery words by giving the guessing player unique clues. Think carefully, however, because any duplicated suggestions count for nought! The goal is to get as close to 13 words (points) as you can. The only question is; do you and your family think alike, or will you be able to think outside the box?
8) The Red Cathedral
A euro game you can learn in under a minute and play within the golden hour that represents many family time windows? Sounds perfect to me! The Red Cathedral packs more game play into its diminutive box than the laws of physics should allow. With a choice of just 3 actions per turn, this rondel, resource management game will have you using Guild favours and materials to combo-construct the greatest gothic masterpiece Tsar Ivor has ever seen! With a solo mode and a new Contractors expansion to add even more gaming goodness, this is a brilliantly accessible but crunchy decision packed game that will keep your family entertained, euro-style!
9) DODO
DODO may look like a kids’ only game, but this game will charm and delight you whatever your age. A co-operative game for 2-4 players, your task is to save the clumsy DODO’s (amazing!) wibbly wobbly egg from falling down the mountain and breaking on the rocks below. Can you find the tools and helpers you need to build the bridges that pave the egg’s way down to the boat before its too late? Combining memory, dexterity and real-time excitement, I would have been a DODO to miss this off the list!
10) First Rat
We all know the moon is made from cheese, right? Well the Rats do too, and a bunch of risk taking rodents are determined to board a rocket bound for the stinky satellite! But first, they’ve got to collect the scrap they need to build it. Managing actions for maximum effect, you’ll be moving your rats, collecting resources, and building sections of your ship. With a burrow-ful of different ways to earn points in First Rat, your family will be scrabbling to play it again and again!
11) Sushi Go Party
Cute, food themed close drafting is the dish of the day in Phil Walker Harding’s Sushi Go Party! . A small but strategic step up from the sweetly simple pick and pass csard game, Sushi Go, Party! Mode gives you many more varieties of delicious maki rolls and sashimi to make every game a uniquely tasty, tactical treat! Completing (not eating!) sets of sweet sushi (with a few special actions thrown in just to spice things up wasabi style!), this is a great filling, fast filler game for 2 – 8 players!
12) Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale
If you and your family like something with a little bit of bite, Cartographers is a great flip and write option. One of the few “roll and write” games with direct player interaction, you and as many people as you like (!) will be exploring lands and mapping unchartered territories for points. Played over 4 seasons, you flip cards and draw polyomino shapes on your player board representing the territory types specified. But each season has a specific pair of scoring conditions (Edicts). Plus, hidden in the deck are goblins who are at the control of another player, and will score you negative points unless you can enclose them by game end! A brilliantly replayable, accessible, and crunchy game that now has a load of extra map packs as well as a standalone expansion to keep you messing with each other’s maps!
13) Labyrinth
No freaky David Bowie goblin ghoulishness in the brilliant tile moving maze game Labyrinth! With plenty of re-skins and even a 3D option, you’ll be sure to find a version that your family will love. Simple to learn and play, you must slide a path tile into a row or column in order to make a continuous path leading to the item you are seeking. But wherever you push a tile in, another will be forced out, and all the tiles in that line will shift along one. With an ever-changing game space, this is a brilliantly simple but highly interactive spatial puzzle that is brilliant for those too young to have watched Labyrinth as well as those too old to remember it! Haha!
14) Akropolis
A new game on the scene, Akropolis is a game for 1-4 players that has you building up as well as out in ancient Greece! Learnt in seconds but packing more crunch than a sunburnt sandal, you’ll be managing your stock of stones to get the point scoring plazas and territory types you need. Drafting tiles from a common pool each round, what you leave behind could be just what your opponents need! And with a solo mode and simple but brilliant scoring variants offering even more replayability and puzzly fun, Akropolis should be high on every family’s top gaming list!
15) Canvas
Whilst fun family feuding makes for great tabletop time, sometimes it’s nice to sit down and play a chilled game together. And Canvas is a showcase for calm, gorgeous, set collecting loveliness. Suitable for 1-5 painters(!), you are building up beautiful works of art by layering feature cards together to make compositions. But each card contains a combination of icons that will only score if they are visible when your picture is complete, and they match the scoring cards in play for the game. If you like your family time free from knuckle clenching tension but with a cool, competitive edge, Canvas and its new expansion is a great choice!
16) Wingspan
Birds of a feather flock together. And if your family is anything like mine, they’ll be crowding around the table to play Elizabeth Hargrave’s legendary tableau building Wingspan. An absolutely stunning engine builder, you will be managing resources to attract beautiful and powerful birds to your habitats. Chain combinations of feathered friends just right, and you’ll be earning your wings in no time! With a cracking Automa factory solo mode and European and Oceania expansions (not to mention Asia which is coming soon!), Wingspan offers cool competition and endless replayability within its gorgeous gameplay.
17) Drop It
Drop it! The name says it all! Or does it?! Because there’s more to this family favourite than meets the eye! You might be dropping wooden shapes into a vertical game board. But where you drop them, what you drop, and what that does to other pieces already in play is where the fun really lies! Easy to learn, simple to play; with a pinch of luck, you’ll be dropping it like it’s hot around the gaming table!
18) Junk Art
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in these austere times, recycling has never been more important! So when you combine junk with art, what do you get? With a card based city tour determining how your artwork is going to evolve, you’ll be battling against up to 5 other artists to make this junk a work of art! A brilliant stacking, dexterity game with 10 modes, Junk Art will have everyone around the table picking and placing in seconds!
19) Sagrada
La Sagrada Familia means “Temple of the Holy Family” so Sagrada had to make this list, right? Well, it’s actually making the list because it is indeed a top family game! Drafting dice to create beautiful stained glass windows is the goal in this gorgeous, abstract strategy game. Placement to achieve colour and number based personal and public goals can be tricky. But if you have favour tokens to spare, each game will include a random set of tools to help! And with this expansion, you can compete for colours with up to 6 players!
20) Catch The Moon
Reach for the stars and you might just catch the moon is a motto our family lives by. And in this enchanting dexterity game by KOSMOS, you will be doing just that! Taking turns to place lovely asymmetric wooden ladders onto a solid cloud base, you must avoid letting any fall! Tense, family fun ensues when the rickety ladders slide, shift and wobble. Will they stay? Will they fall? Taking just seconds to set up and learn, roll the dice and try to catch the moon!
21) Cascadia
2021 Spiel des Jahres winner Cascadia has habitats at its heart. In this wonderful tile laying game for 1-5 players, the goal is to create harmonious ecosystems suitable for the keystone species of the Pacific Northwest. Calm, chilled, spatial puzzly play is the order of the day here. With points for achieving randomly drawn scoring objectives and territory majorities (“corridors”) by end game, this is a gorgeously themed, infinitely replayable placement optimisation game that provides crunch in a very cool way!
22) Horrified
Are you ready to battle monsters you usually see from the safety of the big screen? In Horrified, you and up to four other players will be working co-operatively to beat the best aka the worst monsters that Universal Studios’ writers could come up with! And with minis included, they are on the board for all to see! Will you save the town from the likes of Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and The Mummy? With these villainous creatures coming at you all at once, you’d better keep your wits about you as you roll the dice and move around the board fending off these frightfully fun beasts!
23) Takenoko
What family wouldn’t want to feed a hungry panda? In Takenoko, 2-4 players compete to grow bamboo to satisfy that little bear. Using your actions wisely each turn, you must grow the right amount of the right species of bamboo in order to complete your objectives. The Imperial Gardner is on hand to help boost your crop, but the weather dice could change everything in an instant! As such, the pressure is on to water and harvest what that little panda needs before your fellow green fingered opponents!
24) Quacks Of Quedlinburg
Ask any family if they want to see a cauldron explode, and I guarantee they say yes! But remember that cauldron could be yours! In the brilliant push-your-luck game, Quacks of Quedlinburg, players are trying to fill their cauldrons with the perfect mix of ingredients to earn themselves rubies, money and VPs! Some ingredients will make your cauldron explode, but others grant special powers! Each round, players simultaneously draw tokens from their bags and place them around their cauldron board in the hope of being furthest around their cauldron at game end. Will you play it safe and stick with what you’ve got? Or risk it and keep drawing ingredients? Only you can decide what happens each round in this excellent, colourful, exciting family game! And if you like your games with a cauldron full of fizzy fun, there are several expansions for even more Quack-tastic play!
25) Splendor
Splendor is a superb fast playing, resource managing, open drafting card development based game for 1-4 players. Racing to gain prestige points, you will be collecting gems to trade in for cards that give you permanent rubies, emeralds and other sparklers, and/or straight up VPs. With just one action per turn, you decide whether to collect gems, trade gems for a card, or reserve a card to buy later. There are also 3 randomly drawn public objectives each game that reward high value prestige if you can satisfy their requirements! Learnt in seconds, Splendor is a great option for a family games night!
Okay, we've hit 25. Let's take a breather from family games for 20 seconds. Grab a glass of water and get ready for the final 25 family games to play on a family games night, Christmas, or just whenever you're fancying a bit of competitive family games fun!
26) Magic Maze
Do you ever crave silence when the family is around? Well in Magic Maze you get he best of both worlds! In this real-time, co-operative game for 1-8 players, your goal is to get heroes to their favourite stores in the magical shopping centre (as well as out again!). The twist is that visual and audio communication is extremely limited as you race around the ever developing board! With time ticking away, do you know how the minds of your family members work well enough to plot and plan a successful route? Magic Maze is high intensity, fast playing family fun!
27) Sleeping Queens
Uh Oh! The Rainbow Queen, Cake Queen and other sleepy Queens are napping! It’s the Kings’ job to rouse them from their slumbers! Sleeping Queens is a light, fun, strategy based card game for 2-5 players that has enchanting artwork and combines a fun combination of memory, set collection, hand management and take that - not bad for a set of cards! Using just one action card per turn, will you be the King of Queens, or will you be sleeping on the job?
28) Cockroach Poker
Cockroaches? Poker? What kind of family do we think you are? Well have no fear as Cockroach Poker has nothing to do with either really! Okay so the cards have some creepy crawly critters on them. But this is a fun reverse-set collecting card game all about bluffing! Rather than trying to complete sets, the goal here is to force your opponents into taking them! By presenting a card face down to another player each turn, they get to decide whether you’re telling the truth or telling a big old fib! Get it right and the card goes back to you. Get it wrong and it stays with them. Alternatively, you can peek and push. But again, if the receiver gets it right, that critter comes crawling back to you! Colourful creepy crawly card play that’s a great filler at family game night!
29) Dixit
Do you fancy yourself as the best storyteller in your family? Well now’s your chance to find out! In award winning Dixit, 3-8 players compete to gain the most points by end game. To start, each person has a hand of cards. The Storyteller for the round picks a card from their hand and uses it to create a sentence. Other players then pick a card from their own hand that they think best matches the sentence. The twist is that scoring depends on getting the balance between creativity and accuracy just right. If everyone guesses your card correctly (or nobody does), everyone except you scores. If some players pick your card, however, then you and the correct guessers score. Dixit is therefore a great choice for families who love to tell tales!
30) Tiny Towns
Who knew planning a town could be this much fun?! Well, we do now! Tiny Towns is a spatial puzzle of the most interactive sort! Playing mayors of a tiny forest town, 1-6 players will be constructing their cities one building at a time. And what does your development blue-print need? Resources. And who gets to pick them? Someone else! Not so simple now then! With each building needing a specific combination of resources, will you be able to collect what you need and fit the building on your board in the best possible place? With buildings dependent on others for scoring, you’ll be prioritising spatial synergies in this rock solid family game!
31) Trails Of Tucana
We love roll and writes and flip and writes. Usually the crunchier the better! But sometimes, it’s great to pull out a game that everyone can play straight out of the box. And Trails of Tucana is that kind of experience. Using cards that represent terrain types, up to 8 of you will be exploring the Island, connecting up trails domino style that lead to valuable artefacts. And with 2 different island configurations, scoring objectives, and randomised terrain draughting each turn, this is one accessible, combo fun, and highly replayable exotic adventure!
32) Prehistories
Who is the toughest in your family? Who is the fastest (not just at family games, in general)? In Prehistories, speed comes up against strength in this great bidding, polyomino placing, cave painting challenge game all about vying for tribal supremacy! With mammoth burgers on the menu, each round you must decide whether to send your fiercest or fastest warriors off to hunt. And with bidding determining what you can catch, the walls of your cave will hopefully fill up with all your carnivorous conquests! Hand management, spatial puzzliness, and placement optimisation come together in this great family choice!
33) Forbidden Island
Forbidden Island – the waters look lovely. But don’t be fooled! In this light, co-operative action management game from the designer of Pandemic, you and upto 3 other players are racing against ever shifting sands – will you be able to save the ancient relics before the island takes both them and you down below the surface forever? With a modular board, varying difficulty levels, and asymmetrical player powers providing a new experience every time, Forbidden Island is a great family gaming option.
34) Isle Of Cats Explore & Draw
The Isle of Cats is a phenomenal polyomino tile laying, close drafting game. But the designer also recently released a flip and write version called The Isle of Cats Explore and Draw that distils the clever, crunchy game play of the original into a more portable, faster experience. Swapping out close drafting and tiles in favour of simultaneous card selection and dry wipe boards, the cats of many colours, public lessons, and treasures are now on offer to all. But of course you can’t have them all. Limited to choosing one column per round, it is down to you to fill your boat in the way that achieves maximum points by end game. With a few special powers on offer, will you rescue victory from the jaws of defeat in this colourful, puzzly family fun game!
35) Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
When is a Taco not a Taco? When it’s a cat, a goat, a cheese, or a pizza, of course! In this say what you say, not what you see game, 3 – players will be chanting their way to victory (with a few hand signals thrown in for good measure! The anticipation builds until the word someone says matches the card they lay down onto the central pile. Then it’s a race to place your hand on the pile. Get there last, and you’ll be left picking up all the cards! But…watch out for several special creatures. When they hit the table, its every player for themselves as you scramble to do their actions and touch the deck! Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza is crazy, portable family fun where looking silly and laughing out loud go hand in hand!
36) Scrabble
Scrabble might not have the whizz bangs of many modern board games but it’s a classic for good reason. This veteran family word game has been around even longer than me (and that’s saying something!). Using letter tiles to form words for points, the rules are that simple. But opponents’ use of your own vocabulary based efforts to gain double and even triple word scores could leave you simmering with R A G E!
37) Dobble
Keep your eyes peeled and don’t try to fathom the magical mathematics that go on behind the scenes in Dobble! Pattern matching of the most competitive order, Dobble will have you and up to 7 other family members racing to spot the one matching symbol on your card and that of the card in the centre. I don’t know how the designers do it, but that’s part of the devilish delight! With 5 different mini games based on the same 55 cards, you’ll have a blast dabbling in a game of Dobble whether you are 7 or 107!
38) Quirkle
Mix, match, score and win! That’s the aim in Qwirkle. Super simple to learn, 2-4 players will be competing to place wooden tiles of the same shape or colour in a line. And if you get all six shapes or colours, you’ll get bonus points for creating a Qwirkle! With lots of different versions available, how you and your kin Qwirkle is up to you. But whichever way you choose, you’ll have fun in this light, strategy game!
39) Everdell
A recent but already treasured addition to our own family game collection, Everdell is a beautifully illustrated tableau building, set collection, hand management, open drafting game of woodland critters and constructions. Berries, pebbles. Twigs, and resin are your currency as you seek to develop your 15 card forest city. But the real power lies in synergies that exist between the woodland folk. And with limited actions per Season, the more combos you can craft, the better your final score will be. A gorgeous, crunchy, clever game that will delight and entertain your family!
40) The Adventures Of Robin Hood
We all know the tale of the legendary robber with a good heart. But in The Adventures of Robin Hood, you and your family can put on your feather caps, grab your trusty arrows, and work together to bring his adventures to life. What makes this co-operative game so unique and innovative is that it uses a living game board i.e. one that changes every time you play, and “remembers” what you have previously explored or found! With an accompanying gorgeous hardcover book, this game provides experiences that you and your family will never forget!
41) Point Salad
It can be a battle to get my family to eat healthily, but everybody wants second helpings of veggies when we play Point Salad! 6 different veggies and a smorgasbord of different ways to score, you pick 2 vegetable cards or one scoring card each turn. But watch out! Not all combos are tasty treats – some will give you negative points and leave a bitter taste in your mouth! A brilliantly simple but addictive, light, card drafting, set collector that offers over 100 ways to score, this game is a veritable point salad indeed!
42) Downforce
Ready, set, bet! Controlling millions of dollars and playing with fast cars. What’s not to love? In Downforce, 2-6 players are competing to own race cars that race around the board track. Using a card driven mechanic, the speedsters will make their way around the chicanes and down the straights. But as well as propelling your F1 forwards, your cards also move your opponents’ cars! As such, you must balance your need for speed against the power push you’ll give other players! In a brilliant twist, you will also be betting on the positions of the other racers. So even if your car is slower than a Peel P50 with a flat tyre, you could still win the big bucks and the game!
43) 7 Wonders Architects
7 Wonders and 7 Wonders Duel are legendary games by Antoine Bauza. And last year, he added 7 Wonders Architects to the series. Concentrating on just the construction side, this game is a race to build one wonder and be the player who has amassed maximum points by end game. With a choice of one card from 3 each turn, you’ll be gaining military strength and scientific knowledge alongside your ancient architectural project. Simple to learn and fun to play, it offers your family a accessible introduction to the 7 Wonders series that anyone can play. And if your family like what they build, you’ll be ready to explore the weightier, crunchier 7 Wonders!
44) Castles Of Burgundy
One of the longer duration family games on this list, The Castles of Burgundy is a Stefan Feld classic and masterpiece of simple but crunchy game play. By allocating dice to actions around your board, you will be planning, trading, and building your French estate for maximum points over the course of 5 rounds. With only 2 primary actions available per turn, however, it is down to you to decide how best to manage your resources and achieve combos that unlock bonus moves for even more points. Every option will reward you with something, but knowing what to do for the best is where the devilish dilemmas will arise!
45) Pandemic
When Pandemic came out in 2013, nobody predicted the real life global crisis that changed the world forever just a few years later. And so the theme and goal of this game have never been more relevant: work together to tackle 4 diseases before its too late! Racing against time (and new epidemics!), you must co-operate and manage your own specialist skills and strengths in ways that best help quell the rising infection rates and worldwide spread! A brilliantly designed game that has spawned multiple variants since (including legacy campaigns), the Pandemic series will keep your family gripped during any gaming session!
46) It's A Wonderful World
A firm favourite in our family, It’s a Wonderful World is an absolute champion close drafting, dystopia building, engine cranking resource management game for 1-5 players. It’s simple to learn but so tricky to master! Picking and passing cards each round, you choose between (1) constructing buildings for end game VPs and ongoing production, and (2) recycling cards for immediate materials. The more buildings you construct, the more resources they’ll produce at the end of each round. And with bonuses linked to majority production, you’ll be wanting to churn out materials like a boss! With each card presenting a decision dilemma, this is a fantastic, family game that now has several expansions to elevate the quick, crunchy game play even higher!
47) Framework
The Prince of Polyominoes has done it again and designed another great tile laying game, Framework! With more crunch than Nova Luna and more players than Patchwork, Framework is easy to learn but hard to master. Open drafting from a pool of tiles each round (with first player always having to take the final tile too), 1-4 players are racing to complete “tasks” by placing tiles that show different colour frames adjacent to those with matching scoring objectives. Once a task has been done, players place tokens on them. The visual twist is that tiles may contain coloured frames that are different to the scoring objective on those very same tiles! If you like your polyomino games with a little less mean and a light touch, this is a great family option!
48) My City
Reina Knizia is a king amongst game designers. And My City is a fantastic example of his puzzly pedigree! A legacy game that is not just one-and-done, My City combines the excitement and novelty of a single-play chapter based title with the longevity of a normal board game that can be played again and again long after the envelopes have been recycled. In the game, 1-4 players will each be developing unique cities through the ages, adding elements that will continue through the subsequent chapters and into the replayable game. In My City, it seems you really can have the best of both worlds!
49) Space Base
When we play games, we LOVE getting stuff when it’s other players’ turns. Ganz Schon Clever, Machi Koro 2….the bonuses are extra jubby when they are provided by the opposition. And Space Base takes this idea and shoots for the stars! A superb, fun card drafting, engine builder about amassing a fleet of super space shuttles, you’ll be dice rolling your way to VPs from the get go. To get the best rockets, you’ll need to manage your spending, income and VP rewards. But with each double D6 roll giving you the chance to upgrade, and an emphasis on early spending sprees to kickstart momentum, you’ll be flying high in no time! Of course, every roll could reward your opponents with some of the good stuff. But manage your fleet well and the passive rewards you get could far surpass anything you give yourself each turn!
50) Rummikub
Rummikub is really where our family game nights began – even before we realised we were a gaming family! Brilliantly simple to learn but so tricky to master, this game builds on the vintage card game Gin Rummy and replaces it with numbered tiles. The objective is simple; make sets (“runs”) of at least 3 identical or consecutively numbered tiles. You can create new sets or, as the game progresses, manipulate those already in play on the table. Racing to be first to place all your tiles, this game amps up into a seriously fun brain burning session! And with wild jokers being both good for immediate placement but scoring seriously bad -30 points if you are left with one at end game, choosing whether to lay down short sets or shoot for longer runs can be a really enjoyable mind melter!
Well, there we go! We did it! 50 Top Family games for you to add into your next gaming sessions together. And with Christmas right around the corner, what better time than to explore some new family fun games options!
That concludes our list of Top 50 Family Games. Is there any family games you think we have missed? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. Be sure to send us some pictures of your family games night if you're playing one of these games!