Family Games
Perhaps the most important thing we have learned since entering the tabletop gaming hobby is how much it can bring a family together. Especially when everyone enjoys the game being played. Whether you love the competition of proving you can beat Mom and Dad, or you enjoy working together to build your flying ship and escape the desert, these games give everyone an equal chance to win and just make gaming more fun. Below I will be listing out a few games that I think are great for families along with a little description of why they make amazing games.
Ticket to Ride
Maybe the most popular game in this category and for good reason. For anyone unaware, Ticket to Ride is a competitive game that puts each player against each other to complete the most routes and score the most points. In this game players will collect colored train cards to eventually build train pieces in the spaces matching those colors on the board. However, the goal is to build train pieces that will fulfill your secret ticket cards. These cards show a route between two cities on the board and completing them will give you quite a boost in points at the end of the game. Where Ticket to Ride really shines is the tension created between the other players and the routes you need to complete. They don’t know you need to get from New York to San Francisco, but they may need to get from New York to another city and start taking up spaces on the board you need to complete your route. The game can easily be taught to younger children and give them a fair chance at winning. Highly recommended.
Already enjoy Ticket to Ride and looking for something similar? Try out Ethnos. It borrows from Ticket to Ride in some ways, but adds a bit more complexity that you might be looking for.
Sagrada
I remember telling Kristina that I had bought a game about creating stained glass windows and the eye roll she game me was one of her best. Creating stained glass windows? How could that be a theme for a board game let alone a good one? Well I am happy to say that Sagrada is now one of Kristina’s favorites and one of the best family games out there. The game involves rolling a set number of multi-colored dice to complete patterns on your window board. Each turn players will draft dice from the pool of dice rolled and place them in their window, however, their window will require those dice have certain colors or values on them to be placed. There are also general restrictions for placing dice, such as, dice of the same number or color cannot touch another dice of that same number or color. This, along with the public and secret scoring objectives, makes the drafting of the dice so important. It is always satisfying to be able to draft exactly the right die you need at the last moment to complete your window. Highly recommended.
Forbidden Desert
Are you telling me that we can play a board game where we all win or lose together? Yep! Cooperative board games make excellent games for the family. They are very easy to teach to younger or inexperienced gamers because everyone is working together. Players don’t need to ask questions in a way that would not give away what they intend to do. They can just say what it is they intend to do and allow the group to help them out. In Forbidden Desert the players have crash landed in a desert and must find all the pieces of their ship to assemble it and fly away to safety. Most cooperative board games have two phases. The player phase where the players take their turns trying to escape the desert and the board phase where the game does its “bad” stuff and makes the game more difficult. The players in Forbidden Desert must use their action points to dig through sand to uncover tiles that may or may not contain clues to the pieces of their ship all while trying to stay hydrated and not run out of water due to the sun beating down on them. Although cooperative games may seem more difficult because losing is more often the case than winning that is somewhat the point. Who wants to play a game they win every time? Highly recommended.
Other cooperative games to try: Horrified, Pandemic, Forbidden Island
Point Salad
Sometimes you don’t have 45 - 90 minutes to play a game. Sometimes you want to get started with a simpler, quicker game before playing something more substantial like the games above. That is where Point Salad comes in. The game can be quickly played with up to 6 players. In Point Salad players will either select a point scoring card or two vegetable cards. The point of the game is to select vegetable cards that will help you fulfill the scoring cards you have selected. There are multiple types of scoring cards. Some will give you points for each vegetable of a certain type you collect. Others might give you points if you have the most or least of a vegetable or for having a set of each vegetable. The player who is able to score the most points when all the cards are gone will be the winner. A game of Point Salad can be played in 15 minutes making it perfect for even the busiest family. Highly recommended.
