Suggestions for family game night

[Allegra]

Catan may be a bit much for a 5 year old.

Might I suggest looking into Apples to Apples?

Apples to Apples has been banned from our family because certain members take it way too personal. Some people can’t handle subjectivity.

 

[Allegra]

Uno is an excellent game for a 5yo and older people like it too. We really love Catch Phrase, but the downside of it is that it requires everyone to be a reader. There are two dice games that are also really fun. One is called Farkel and the other is Don’t You For Get It. The second one is really fun for younger kids who are working on math skills and they can play it with some adult help.

 

[jlc2k2]

Thanks to everyone who replied! There are some great suggestions here. I actually wasn’t familiar with the concept of cooperative games, I think that’s perfect for my family. I believe I have seen Pandemic in the game section in the stores, but the subject matter is a turn-off for me, so I didn’t look into it. I hadn’t heard of Forbidden Island but that looks like great fun.

For a cooperative game that’s suitable for my youngest, I think I’ll get Race to the Treasure, that seems to be popular.

Has anyone played Tokaido? My 15-year old is interested in Japan, I’m thinking she might like that.

What about Pandemic puts you off? I completely get it if you just don’t like the subject but I wanted to ask because it is an excellent game with a ton of replay value. Especially with the older kids.

 

[ForeverJoy]

What about Pandemic puts you off? I completely get it if you just don’t like the subject but I wanted to ask because it is an excellent game with a ton of replay value. Especially with the older kids.

We got Pandemic Legacy for Christmas and I’m so excited to play it this summer!

 

[Bataar]

As an avid board gamer, here are my recommendations:
Carcassonne
Dominion
Forbidden Island
Gravwell
Mission Red Planet
Sheriff of Nottingham
Small World
Ticket to Ride
Tsuro
Vegas Showdown

 

[jlc2k2]

We got Pandemic Legacy for Christmas and I’m so excited to play it this summer!

It was excellent! My husband and I got it not long after it came out and played every night until we completed the story.

 

[friardchips]

Hi,

I’m trying to get started a weekly family game night. The games could be board games, card games etc. Family consists of my wife, who is not accustomed to playing such games and I’m not sure what kind of games she would like; 15-year old daughter who is not really enthusiastic about games but willing to go along; 10-year old daughter who loves strategy games (chess, checkers, Stratego etc.); and 5-year old daughter who is fairly bright for her age, but intensely competitive and tends to be a sore loser, though she seems to be getting better at that.

I’m looking for some multi-player games that are not intensely competitive, the kind in which you are not so much completing directly against the other players, but trying to attain some individual goal. I’m planning to get the classic Game of Life as that seems to be a good example of what I am looking for. I’ve also considered Catan, although I’ve never played it before, and don’t have a good sense of how it would go over with my family. I get the impression that it’s one of those long-running games that you can’t begin and end in an evening, which is probably not optimal given that our house is crowded and my wife wants to see everything put away at the end of the evening.

We already have the following multi-player games: Scrabble, Parcheesi, and several variants of Monopoly. Oh, we also have Twister and Jenga, although those were big failures in the past with my 5-year old. Looking for something calmer.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Hi. Have you ever played a game called ‘Boggle’?

You shake the letters inside this transparent plastic container and then they fall into place. Then, using a timer, you take however many turns of the timer to guess as many words as you can made up of the letters, and write them down. Afterwards, you read out the words, and the person with the most words, wins.

What about something older like that game where someone tries to give clues as to what the word or phrase by drawing etc…sometimes known ways can be the best ways.

 

[louisak]

What about Pandemic puts you off? I completely get it if you just don’t like the subject but I wanted to ask because it is an excellent game with a ton of replay value. Especially with the older kids.

I’m not saying it isn’t a good game - I really know almost nothing about it. It’s just that the whole subject of infectious diseases is - let’s just say it’s not something I would enjoy spending an evening thinking about. Not my idea of a fun way to spend time.

 

[louisak]

Well avoid monopoly. It destroys families.

Try kids Trivial Pursuit, maybe one of those dance-off computer games.

Monopoly is a ruthlessly competitive game, I can see why it would cause strife in some families. It so happens that we have a couple of Monopoly-parody games, titled Dog-opoly and Cat-opoly, which my 10-year old loves to play. My 5-year old is always willing to play what her sister wants to play, we tell her what to do since she can’t read yet; she puts her best effort into it, but of course she feels crushed when she loses all her money from landing on a property that has a “big bone” (Dog-opoly version of a hotel). Somewhere I read about a rule variant that allows the players to form teams, the players in a team combine their properties so that they can develop color groups together, and share the money from the rents. I’m going to try that out, if I make a team with my 5-year old then I think she will able to handle losing a lot more easily. I hope so anyway.

I’ve always disliked Trivial Pursuit. The reason is that one person’s common knowledge is another person’s esoterica, since people’s interests vary so widely. I could never find other players with whom I would be evenly matched.

 

[pensmama87]

I’ve always disliked Trivial Pursuit. The reason is that one person’s common knowledge is another person’s esoterica, since people’s interests vary so widely. I could never find other players with whom I would be evenly matched.

My family plays Trivial Pursuit quite often, and we almost always play it in teams for that reason.