/ LISTS / Board Games / Family Board Games
Here are our favourite family board games to play together. These offer a chance for players of all ages to gather round a table to talk, laugh, eat and compete. We will be adding to this list over the coming weeks.
This list includes 97 games from the last 87 years, with 270 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to play board games together.
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2014, updated in 2019
Genres: Fighting, Sequencing and Traversal
Pieces: Cards, Figures and Tokens
Developer: Asmodee (@Asmodee)
Players: You can play with 2 to 6 players in the same room
Colt Express is a traversal game where you move a bandit along an express train in the Old West to collect the most loot. Each player pre-selects moves, attacks and pick-ups that then play out together. Unusually, play becomes about planning, predicting...
Skill Rating: 6-15 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2017
Genres: Collecting, Sequencing and Strategy
Pieces: Placeables, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Calliope Games (@CalliopeGames)
Ancestree is a collecting and sequencing game where you compete to build the strongest family tree. You select and link tiles, building your family person by person, scoring points for marriages, wealth and continuous generations. It is a strategic game...
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Release Date: 13/03/2020
Genres: Strategy
Pieces: Cards, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Thames and Kosmos (@ThamesAndKosmos)
Players: You can play with 3 to 5 players in the same room
The Crew is a cooperative trick-making card game. You play a set of astronauts completing missions in a space adventure. Unlike competitive trick-making games like Bridge, Euchre or Hearts, here you work together to ensure specific players get certain...
Skill Rating: 10-16 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2019
Genres: Brain Game and Communication
Pieces: Cards and Tokens
Developer: Wolfgang Warsch (@WolfgangWarsch)
Players: You can play with 4 to 12 players in the same room
Wavelength is a communication guessing game where you try and read your teammates minds. Unlike other guessing games the answers aren't right or wrong but on a sliding scale that changes each round. There's a clever wheel that secretly deals with the...
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Release Date: 27/06/2007
Genres: Creative, Strategy and World Building
Pieces: Bag, Figures, Placeables and Tokens
Developer: Z Man Games (@ZManGames_)
Players: You can play with 2 to 5 players in the same room
Carcassonne is a strategy game where you lay tiles to create a medieval landscape of farms, rivers and cities. Each new tile must match the roads, rivers, farms and cities of those around it. As you place it you can claim one of these elements that...
Skill Rating: 3-8 year-olds
Release Date: 10/03/2011, updated in 2019
Genres: Communication, Dexterity and Race
Accessibility: 31 features
Pieces: Cards
Dobble (also called Spot It!) is a card game where you race other players to claim cards by spotting symbols. Each of the colourful cards has eight symbols, one of which always matches a symbol of another card. You race to spot the match, call it out...
Release Date: 01/01/2014
Genres: Push-Your-Luck, Strategy and Traversal
Pieces: Dice and Placeables
Developer: Oinkgms (@Oinkgms)
Deep Sea Adventure is a pocket-sized strategy game where you dive into the sea to bring back treasure. It’s unusual because although you compete with other players for treasure you share the same limited air supply.
Release Date: 01/01/2003, updated in 2020
Genres: Puzzle, Strategy, Traversal and World Building
Pieces: Board, Cards and Placeables
Developer: Spin Master (@SpinMaster)
Players: You can play with 2 to 3 players in the same room
Santorini is a strategy game where you place buildings on a Greek island in an effort to get your character to the top. This creates a chess-like three-dimensional competitive puzzle that changes as each player adds pieces to the village. It's unusual...
Release Date: 01/01/1995, updated in 2013
Price: 34% off
Genres: Collecting, Communication, Strategy and World Building
Pieces: Bag, Cards, Dice, Figures, Placeables, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Asmodee USA (@Asmodee_USA)
Players: You can play with 3 to 4 players in the same room
Catan is a strategy game set on an uninhabited island where you accumulate, spend and trade resources to build the biggest kingdom. Players must compete for space, resources and ultimately for ten victory points to be crowned the winner. What starts as...
Skill Rating: 9-14 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2009, updated in 2019
Genres: Collecting and Strategy
Players: You can play with 2 players in the same room
Jaipur is a two-player collecting and trading card game where you compete to become the wealthiest merchant at an Indian market. You collect and swap cards to build combinations, so that you can trade them for valuable commodities. It is about trading...
Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/03/2017
Price: 15% off
Genres: Collecting, Sequencing and World Building
Pieces: Figures and Placeables
Developer: Blue Orange Games (@BlueOrangeGames)
Players: You can play with 2 to 4 players in the same room
Kingdomino is a kingdom-building game where you place domino tiles to match terrain types and score points. As you play, you build a territory in a grid that requires careful consideration of where dominos are placed to maximise points. What makes this...
Skill Rating: 4-10 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2021
Genres: Dexterity and Push-Your-Luck
The Fuzzies is a dexterity game where you remove and replace small fuzzy balls from a furry tower. Like Jenga, it's a challenge of not only deft movement but also carefully planning which ball to move. The twist here is how the forfeits introduce all...
Release Date: 09/06/2019
Genres:
Developer: Brain Games Int (@BrainGames_Int)
Players: You can play with 3 to 6 players in the same room
Team 3 is a cooperative puzzle game where three players work to build structures from Tetris-style pieces. The target build is on a card that only the Architect player can see, and this player can't speak. The Builder player can touch the pieces by...
Release Date: 01/01/2004, updated in 2020
Price: 8% off
Pieces: Board, Cards and Figures
Developer: Days Of Wonder (@Days_Of_Wonder)
Ticket to Ride is a railway-themed strategy board game where players compete to earn the most points by collecting cards, placing trains and completing journeys. It is an easy to learn game that can be gently competitive and has become a popular classic.
Release Date: 01/01/2020
Genres: Collecting, Race and Traversal
Accessibility: 22 features
Pieces: Bag, Board, Cards and Tokens
Developer: Peaceable K (@Peaceable_K)
Yarrr Har Hunt is a traversal game where you are a band of pirates working together to follow the clues and find buried treasure. You move from clue to clue, but must work together and share movement to be efficient and find the treasure before the...
Release Date: 01/01/2002, updated in 2017
Genres: Collecting, Communication, Push-Your-Luck and Role-Play
Players: You can play with 4 to 7 players in the same room
Bang is a card game set in the wild west where you take on different missions with a range of characters. You try and keep your target secret while building your weapon and defence cards. It's a game of bluffing where it's easier to shoot your neighbour...
Release Date: 30/05/2016
Genres: Dexterity, Push-Your-Luck and Traversal
Ice Cool, and the follow-up Ice Cool 2, is an action game where you flick plastic Penguins around cardboard school rooms to collect points and avoid the Catcher. Like a cross between Subbuteo and Cluedo, you slide, jump and barrel your penguin through...
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2013
Genres: Action and Dexterity
Pieces: Board, Figures and Tokens
Developer: Klask Game (@KlaskGame)
Klask is an action board game that combines aspects of table football and air hockey. Your aim is to use your under-the-table-magnet-controlled player to push the ball into the opponent's goal. The twist is that you lose points if you inadvertently push...
Skill Rating: 8-16 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2004
Genres: Puzzle and Strategy
Players: This is a single-player game
Saboteur is a path-laying strategy game where the cards are your resource in a team effort to get the dwarves to their gold. However, one player is a secret traitor who must try and foil the dwarves without them realising it.
Release Date: 01/01/2011
Genres: Communication and Push-Your-Luck
Developer: Zatu Games (@ZatuGames)
Skull is a push-your-luck card game where you try and guess how many other players just laid skulls rather than flowers. The clever bit is that you progressively bid on how many cards you think you can guess right. If you win, you then have to flip over...
Genres: Race and Strategy
Developer: spacecowboys 1 (@spacecowboys1)
Splendor is a trading-up strategy game where you play a global trader during the European Renaissance. Nobles once content with large castles and fur robes, now seek dark sapphires and glittering diamonds. You must balance accruing currency or investing...
Release Date: 01/09/2014
Genres: Collecting
Developer: Gamewright (@Gamewright)
Sushi Go! is a sushi-themed card game where you collect combinations of cards to complete sushi dishes and score points. The different dishes require a varying number of cards and related score based on complexity of the recipe. But there's a twist:...
Release Date: 01/01/2018
Genres: Communication, Push-Your-Luck and Puzzle
The Mind is a cooperative sequence card game with a telepathic twist. Each card has a single number on it. Your task is to play them in order, lowest first. However, you are not allowed to communicate physically or verbally to co-ordinate who plays...
Skill Rating: 7-16 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2012
Genres: Communication, Push-Your-Luck and Sequencing
Cockroach Poker Royal is a bluffing, push-your-luck card game where you try and avoid ending up with a set of four matching animal cards. You pass cards to other players and tell them what it is, they guess if you are telling the truth and have to keep...
Release Date: 01/01/2012, updated in 2020
Pieces: Cards, Dice, Figures and Tokens
Developer: Queen Games US (@QueenGamesUS)
Players: You can play with 1 to 5 players in the same room
Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a cooperative traversal game where teams try and escape an ancient temple before it collapses. You repeatedly roll dice to move from room to room, adding new tiles to the catacombs as you go. Play is against the...
Release Date: 01/01/1989, updated in 1992
Genres: Brain Game, Communication and Push-Your-Luck
Pieces: Dice
Developer: Perudo HQ (@PerudoHQ)
Perudo (Liars Dice) is a dice game of pushing-your-luck and communication. Each player roles five dice under a cup but can only see their own before making a bid on how many dice of a certain number there are in total. It's clever because you can't...
Release Date: 01/01/1983, updated in 2010
Genres: Collecting, Fighting, Race, Role-Play and Traversal
Talisman is a classic adventure fantasy board game. Playing as heroes, wizards, villains, thieves and monsters you explore the world to gain equipment, weapons, ancient relics, and companions. It's a Dungeons and Dragons feeling adventure, but played...
Skill Rating: 11-15 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/1986, updated in 2020
Pieces: Board, Cards, Dice, Figures, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Games Workshop 1 (@Games_Workshop1)
Blood Bowl is a sporting and fighting game American football game played with two teams of Tolkein-esque fantasy races. They compete to either get the ball to the end zone or kill all the opponent players. Despite the violent overtones, it's a finely...
Genres: Collecting, Dexterity and Push-Your-Luck
Pieces: Board, Figures, Placeables and Tokens
Developer: Haba USA (@Haba_USA)
Dragon's Breath is a collecting game where players compete to gather jewels from a steadily defrosting physical stash in the middle. Play involves removing a ring from the ice tower, which allows some jewels to fall and be collected or lost into the...
Skill Rating: 3-10 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2000, updated in 2003
Genres: Puzzle, Sequencing, Strategy and Traversal
Pieces: Board and Figures
Gobblet is a competitive brain puzzle game like noughts and crosses or tic-tac-toe. Your aim is to create a straight row of four pieces to form a line. However, you can place your pieces over the top of your opponents to drastically change the board and...
Skill Rating: 4-8 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2016
Genres: Action and Communication
Developer: Game Of Kittens (@GameOfKittens)
Players: You can play with 3 to 8 players in the same room
Happy Salmon is a communication game where players aim to complete funny actions with each other to get rid of their cards. You turn over a card and race to find another player with the same so you can complete an action together. It's chaotic and silly...
Skill Rating: 6-12 year-olds
Genres: Communication
Pieces: Cards, Placeables, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Big Potato Games (@BigPotatoGames)
Players: You can play with 4 to 20 players in the same room
Herd Mentality is a communication game where players aim to score points by sharing the same ideas as others. One person reads out a question, then everyone secretly writes an answer trying to match the most popular answer. It's unusual because winning...
Release Date: 01/01/2016, updated in 2019
Developer: Button Shy (@ButtonShy)
Players: You can play with 2 to 9 players in the same room
In Vino Morte is a party game where the aim is to survive a dinner party. Each turn you are dealt a face down drinks card and need to decide whether to the dealer-host is trying to kill you off or not. It's as much about playing the people as the cards,...
Genres: Creative, Dexterity and Push-Your-Luck
Pieces: Cards, Placeables and Tokens
Junk Art is a dexterity game where you create art from little pieces of junk. Each round has different rules for how to build the best tower, but they all combine to become an aesthetic and dexterity challenge. It's a game that takes Jenga-style...
Release Date: 01/01/2020, updated in 2021
Genres: Brain Game, Narrative, Puzzle and Sequencing
Pieces: Board and Cards
Developer: Spiel Wiese (@SpielWiese)
Players: You can play with 1 to 4 players in the same room
MicroMacro: Crime City is a puzzle brain game where you are solving crimes by discovering clues hidden in black and white pictures. You solve a series of cases that relate to different large pictures you lay out on the table between all the players. The...
Release Date: 01/01/2005, updated in 2019
Genres: Collecting, Push-Your-Luck and Strategy
Developer: AMIGO Games US (@AMIGO_GamesUS)
Players: You can play with 3 to 7 players in the same room
No Thanks! is a card game where you avoid points. You work through a deck of cards of different value, to avoid getting it you have to spend a chip. Eventually someone runs out of chips and has to take the card. It sounds simple but it's finely balanced...
Skill Rating: 12-16 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2018, updated in 2022
Genres: Collecting, Fighting, Narrative, Role-Play, Sequencing, Strategy, Traversal and World Building
Pieces: Board, Cards, Dice, Figures, Placeables and Tokens
Developer: Leder Games (@LederGames)
Players: You can play with 1 to 6 players in the same room
Root is a strategy adventure where different factions battle for control of a fantasy wilderness. You deploy your armies and heroes, fight and move in different ways because each faction plays uniquely. It's a game that takes time and effort to play,...
Skill Rating: 8-14 year-olds
Release Date: 01/06/2019
Genres: Collecting, Fighting, Puzzle and Sequencing
Antimony is a head-to-head collecting card game where you complete sets of relics. You play by placing cards that allow you to move your magical staff backwards and forwards through time and collect the cards you need. It's about using your cards...
Genres: Brain Game, Collecting, Sequencing and Strategy
Accessibility: 26 features
Azul is a tile laying collection and sequencing game where you help the king decorate their palace with Portuguese tiles. You aim to gain tiles on your game card that form patterns to score the most points. What makes it unique is it's balance between...
Release Date: 01/01/2014, updated in 2018
Genres: Push-Your-Luck and Race
Pieces: Board, Dice, Figures and Tokens
Developer: Pegasus Spiele (@PegasusSpiele)
Camel Up is a crazy push-your-luck game where you bet on and influence camel races. Each turn you can move the camels, bet on which will win or place tokens to slow or speed things up. It's clever because it rewards players who make bets early and it's...
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