By request, I’m sharing all of our favorite games. This post is always fun because we can all share our favorites in the comments, which gives us good Christmas gift ideas.
You’ll definitely see that we are a game-playing family! We don’t have as much time as we used to have to make a game night happen. But when we can, we love to play games for hours!
The top four in this list are games we got new last year, thanks to your recommendations! If we had to pick a favorite, it would be Settlers of Catan with a variety of expansions.
- 5-Second Rule
- Spot It!
- The Game of Things
- Rummikub
- Settlers of Catan (With extentions, which you’ll need if you have more than 4 players.)
- Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights (This is an expansion of Settlers of Catan. This is our favorite add on to regular Setters.)
- Seafarers of Catan (Also an expansion of Settlers.)
- Ticket to Ride
- Carcossonne
- Bohnanza (This one is unique. Great for older kids and adults. We love this one!)
- Life
- Risk
- Manhattan
- Guestures
- Taboo
- Blink (Malachi and I play this quick card game a lot while the older brothers are at basketball practice.)
- Headbandz
- Acquire
- Sequence
- Clue
- Apples to Apple Junior (This is probably our favorite group game. We don’t recommend the regular version of this game because the cards are less familiar to the kids.)
- Scattergories
- Pictionary
- Cranium
- Boggle (This game totally counts as school work, but no one knows they’re learning.)
- Monopoly
- Sorry
- Quelf (I’ve actually decided that I very much dislike this one. The kids like it though.)
- Racko
- Balderdash
- Yahtzee
- Farkle
- Pass the Pigs
- Huskerdu (great for younger kids – still fun for adults)
- Mastermind
- Skipbo
I love that many of these are inexpensive and some are even small enough for a stocking!
Now it’s your turn. Share your favorite games! What do we not have that you recommend? What games do you plan to get for your family this Christmas?
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I noticed you don’t have Phase 10 on your list. It’s one of my favorite card games. :)
Ha, you certainly covered a bunch of good ones! We also love to play Dutch Blitz (got it decades ago in Lancaster County PA, but now I see it at Barnes & Noble etc.). Oh, and we always buy up any old Scrabble games at garage sales etc., and use the tiles for variant games like speed Scrabble/Take Two (played like Bananagrams but cheaper to make your own set!).
We love Dutch Blitz too! A fast-paced super fun card game :)
We love playing Pandemic. A bit obsessed really, it is always the first choice when we get a chance to play games. I think I love that it is cooperative rather than competitive. By the end of the game, either we all have a sense of victory or a urge to play again to try and beat the game.
One of our favorites is Bubble Talk, it’s similar to Appples to Apples but there is a picture card and you have “captions” to play with the picture. Many fits of giggles and laughter have come from this came.
Our family really enjoys playing a game called Lancaster. It is a bit pricey, but was a good gift for my husband’s birthday last year.
Great list! I would add Qwirkle and Blokus :)
We love Quirkle. My husband and I play all the time. Bananagrams is a favorite too.
We love games. We usually alternate between some variation of Seafarers, Knights or combo of Settlers of Catan. In fact, we actually bought the portable case and keep it setup on the dining table for a full or partial game during a meal and a quick pick up when someone visits.
Our newest exploration is 7 Wonders. Picked it up at the Texas Home School Coalition convention, and it usually stays at the other end of the table. It’s another strategy game.
Bananagrams is my favorite, but it’s banned from playing here at home, so I only get my “fix” when playing with girlfriends. :0)
Dutch Blitz!!!
We made a minor adjustment so that we could have more than four people play, because come’on, four is half the household and that’s not counting the random invasions from my friends. Mark the backs of one whole box (we used an ‘M’ because that was the initial of the brother who owns that deck) with a sharpie, and play as normal – when it comes to counting up, each initialed card counts as its own color – yellow and yellow ‘M’, for example – and proceed as normal. So much fun! (Also lots of potential for hand slapping because there’s so many people at the table, so beware when playing with hyper small children…)
They make an expansion pack so you can play with up to 8.
We’ve recently started playing King of Tokyo and my boys love it! We’ve also just introduced my 8 year old to Ticket to Ride and he’s really picking it up well.
Our other favorites: Dominion, Munchkin (lots of variants and really like Munchkin Treasure Hunt), Five Crowns, Mille Bornes, and Labyrinth which is not the wooden maze of your youth but a constantly changing maze with moving objectives.
We got the kids a programming game this year called Robot Turtles, we’ll see how they like that, plus Laser Maze and Conveyor Belt, who knows what will be their favorite!
Dutch Blitz is a blast! We have even bought the extender pack so you can have more than 4 players. And we love Bananagrams (excellent in a stocking).
Uno is our favorite game to play as a family. We also like Monopoly Empire, Catch Phrase, Would You Rather, and the kiddos love a game called Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch.
Scattergories is a favorite around here!
Last year we got Hoot Owl Hoot for our girls and they LOVE it. It’s by Peaceable Kingdom which is a fabulous company. They make a lot of cooperative games, which has made our family game time a lot more fun and much less crying. :) They also replace missing game pieces for FREE! One email to the company and they sent me replacement pieces, neat glow-in-the-dark bug stickers, and a hand-written note thanking us for being a part of the Peaceable Kingdom family.
We also got them Spot It Junior and they like that one a lot too.
Great list! Mitch has recently gotten into video games too. We currently love Sushi Go and Pandemic a lot. Castle Panic is also really good. :)
Rush Hour is a solitary game where you move cars around a grid to free the ice cream truck from traffic. Easy to expert difficulty levels so kids and adults can play and still be challenged.
I do enjoy “Bezzer Wizzer” with a small group (it is kinda like an easy & more fun version of any trivia games I’ve ever played :-)…) , “Cribbage” with 1-3 players, “Phase 10” is a good card game, and my nieces and nephews enjoy “Mancala”. We also just purchased “Ticket to Ride”, which I saw you already have on your list! Have a fun & Merry Christmas!
We really like Rat a tat cat, Sleeping queens, and Fruit ninja. They are all card games that children ages 4+ can play and they are fun to play as adults. I struggle playing candyland over and over again and I am no good at memory anymore. So, I enjoy playing these games with my younger ones.