Best Family Board Games
(Updated for 2021)
Here’s a list of (maybe) new-to-you games that your family will love. Something for every age and personality! Some of these have limited availability (which is noted), but should at least give you some ideas so you can keep your eye out at other retailers.
1. Blokus — Fun strategy game for the whole family! Easy to learn.
2. HedBanz Game
3. Telestrations
4. Taboo — Such a fun classic game that can be played as a family OR for game night with friends. Adaptable for all ages and fast-paced!
5. Word On The Street – The Hilarious Tug Of Words
6. Qwirkle Game — Great for kids and adults alike! Such a fun one and comes highly rated.
7. Catan (formerly The Settlers of Catan)
8. Sequence and Sequence for Kids — A mix of a board game and a card game. The original is one of our all-time favorites.
9. Beat The Parents Board Game
10. Bananagrams
11. Apples to Apples
12. Ticket To Ride
13. Exploding Kittens — AMAZING reviews and well-loved by Frugal Living NW and their families! For 2-5 players. You can also grab the first expansion pack Imploding Kittens or the second Streaking Kittens.
14. Quiddler — Recommended for ages 8+ and up to 8 players! Gets FANTASTIC reviews. Skipbo and Phase 10 are also super fun family card games!
15. Catch Phrase — Another super fun word-guessing game for families or parties. Fast-paced and you work as teams so all ages can play together.
16. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza — You guys. This is seriously one of the silliest, dumbest games we’ve ever played but it’s HILARIOUS. It’s fast-paced and fun, requires very little critical thinking and honestly, you just can’t be in a bad mood after playing.
17. Goat Lords Card Game — This was recommended to us from a reader last year and gets AMAZING reviews. Rated for ages 7+.
Family board game suggestions from FLNW readers:
- Sushi Go! (not currently available on Amazon, but you can grab Sushi Go! Party) — Fast paced, quick card game that has been recommended to us over and over!
- Anomia — Card game that benefits having lots of random facts in your head! Says “tons of replay” value, which is so useful with games like this.
- Munchkin — Dungeon adventure card game that gets GREAT reviews, listed as “fast paced and silly”
- Timeline — Card game that has you sort out when historical events happened and in what order. Gets really good reviews and we will absolutely call it educational. Comes in Timeline Classic and Timeline Inventions
- Kingdomino — This is a Blue Orange game (these are consistently awesome) and rated for ages 8+.
Looking for more board games for different ages?
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I would also recommend the the game Quelf. We actually found ours at goodwill, but I just saw it in Walmart. Husband & I have played with friends, our teen boys, as well as at family gathering with younger cousins. Acting, trivia, silly rules and just so much fun!
We love board games. We recently discovered Cloud Cap Games just a block from the Sellwood library that has games for rent ($5/3 days). We’ve rented several games over that past two months trying to find new games for our now-11-year-old son. We’ve been surprised at how much he loves some of them. The owners/staff are very knowledgeable and Cloud Cap Games will credit the rental price of a game towards the purchase price (up to 50%). We recently purchased one of my son’s favorite game rentals for him as a gift.
Telestrations is THE MOST fun game ever!!!! Picture a Mashup of pictionary and the telephone game. You will get an ab workout when you play this game from laughing soooo hard. 😉
We love games in our family and our favorite is Quiddler. It is sort of like Scrabble with cards. Sounds ho-hum but it is seriously addictive! If you love word games you will not be sorry to buy this. We have played it for years and it is still a favorite.
Oh, thanks. What is the youngest age you would recommend?
My kids are big readers so they started playing competitively around age 8. You get bonus points for “most words” and “biggest word” each hand so spelling 2 and 3 letter words can actually give you a better score. Also you could play in teams and/or help each other out. Don’t hesitate to buy this, everyone who has played at our house has gone out and bought their own game!
Yes! Quiddler is such an awesome game. Don’t hesitate to buy, it’s been solidly played at our house for over a decade.
We love Bohnanza. It is a super fun card game. We refer to it as the “bean” game. We also love Carcassonne and Blurt. We play Carcassonne as a family in teams, so my 4 and 7 year olds can play, too. They are both GREAT games. We also love sequence for kids, the new Frozen Trouble game, the new Planes Uno game and all the Spot it games.
Thanks for the list! We are definitely stocking up on games this year. My kids love them!
Board games are a big thing with our family and friends, they can get spendy. If you are looking for more insight into some less known titles check out the Geek and Sundry youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/geekandsundry
there is a show called “table top” where Wil Wheaton (Actor “stand by me” Star Trek NG etc) plays the games with friends and explains all the rules. (it can get a bit raunchy) By watching the play through you really get a feel for the game before you buy it.
Ticket to ride is fun, though man it can be surprisingly frustrating when some one claims a route you need.
One that’s a family favorite is Betrayal At House On The Hill, its like exploring a haunted house. We have been really liking “Shadows over Waterdeep” and we finally broke out “Mystery of the Abby” Which is like a mix of Guess who and Clue.
Its more a card game but Munchkin has a type for everyone.
Table top is a great show! We already have Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride on our must-try list because of Wil Wheaton.
Ticket to Ride is on our list this year too.
The game of Life, too!
For kids, I highly recommend Sleeping Queens, an adorable card game. My 4 and 6 year old love it and adults enjoy it, too.
Oh, I’ll add that to our Preschool game list.
Glad to see Sequence—our favorite. Second in line is Catch Phrase…such a great, exhilarating, team work game-much family fun has been had with both of these games.
The best family game by far for the year, at least in my opinion, is Telestrations. It is a load of laughs and we have played with family from 9-60+. I was always tired of playing the old Trivial Pursuit and wanted to find something different; something everyone could enjoy. It combines telephone with pictionary to make a great family/party game. My family can’t get enough of it now!
We love Telestrations too! If you are not giving as a gift you really don’t need to buy the box, you can play it with what you have on hand at home. Just google the directions and have plenty of paper on hand. Highly recommended for loads of laughs.
My husband’s new favorite game is Sentinels of the Multiverse. It’s a cooperative game like pandemic. Each player picks a hero. You pick an environment and a villain and all the heroes work together to defeat the bad guy. Definitely not a little kid game, but my 10 and 12 year old niece and nephew also love playing it. Killer Bunnies is another favorite around here (besides boggle which the all time winner).