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17 Fun Board Games for Family Game Night that Adults will Also Enjoy
It’s family game night and you want to have fun with the kiddos but you’re afraid that another game of Candyland or Chutes and Ladders will have your brain slowly melting away.
Don’t underestimate your kids though. Kids even as young as 6 or 7 can have great tactical skills and enjoy a game that requires a little more from them.
You can enjoy family game night again with these amazing games. I list a myriad of fun strategy games, trivia games, card games, and more. And for good measure, I added a couple of fantastic games from overseas that you poor Americans have been missing all your life.
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Family Game Night Strategy Games
Ticket to Ride
Number of Players: 2-5 | Recommended age: 8+ | Game time: 60 minutes
In Ticket to Ride the goal is to build the longest railway course. Players choose destination tickets and try to build a railway connecting those cities while attempting to block the routes that their opponents appear to be creating. If you’re just not up for another loud, wild game this is a good choice. Bottlenecks on the board teach players that not prioritizing can really have consequences. It’s also a fantastic way to teach your kids geography. Ticket to Ride offers the full blown game for Europe and the US and offers “map extensions”, the board and appropriate destination tickets, for Africa, the UK, Asia, France, Germany, and the Nordic countries.
Code Name
Number of Players: 2-8+ | Recommended age: 14+ (Kids much younger can play this game) | Game time: 30 minutes
Code Name is a very enjoyable game that requires communication and the ability to make some unusual connections. You get a one word clue from your partner and you have to try to figure out which card, or which several cards, that clue is supposed to describe. A great game of reasoning and lateral thinking.
Splendor
Number of Players: 2-4 | Recommended age: 10+ (My 8-year-old niece is really good at this game) | Game time: 30 Minutes
Splendor‘s set up is easy enough, collect gems and buy enough cards to get 15 points to win the game. But this is one of those situations where simple and easy are NOT the same. You’re working with two currencies simultaneously and your opponent can pretty easily guess what you’re trying to do. A true game of strategy where it can really pay off to sabotage each other.
We were just recently introduced to this game and one afternoon my husband and daughter played until they literally ran out of pieces.
Clue
Number of Players: 3-6 | Recommended age: 8+ | Game time: 45-60 Minutes
Become a detective with Clue and travel from room to be the first one to uncover the murder mystery. I’m a sucker for the classic game but you can choose from a myriad of themes like Harry Potter or Star Wars.
My husband had never played this until recently and was surprised how much fun it was.
Family Game Night Trivia games
Beat the Parents
Number of Players: 2+ | Recommended age: 6+ | Game time: 30-60 Minutes
Kids love Beat the Parents because they get the opportunity to dominate their parents at trivia. It’s in the name! Kids answer questions that parents should know, and parents answer questions kids should know. Like: “What is the special skill of the light blue bird in the angry birds game?” Yeah, I don’t know, but my kids sure do. This game teaches kids and parents all kinds of new and random facts and every time we’ve played it’s been a nail biter of a finish.
Wits and Wagers
Number of Players: 3+ | Recommended age: 6+ | Game time: 25 Minutes
Wits and Wagers is one of my kids all time favorite games. Mostly because you don’t really need to know the answers to the questions to win at the game. Most questions have answers that no one will know. It’s your best bet that counts. Also a great game for large families when played with teams.
The Scrambled States of America
Number of Players: 2-4 | Recommended age: 8+ | Game time: 20 Minutes
A geography game at first glance may seem dull, but the Scrambled States of America makes it really entertaining. This game has both kids and adults struggling both to get the answer out and more importantly, to get it right. We always have a blast playing it. And Americans have a reputation for being clueless when it comes to geography. With this game you can have fun and learn a little something at the same time.
Family Game Night Card Games
Dutch Blitz
Number of Players:2-4 (Up to 8 with the expansion pack) | Recommended age: 8+ | Game time: 10 Minutes
Dutch Blitz is a long time classic that somehow I had never know about until last year. Now we can’t stop playing it. It and Uno are the two “must bring” games for any family vacation. Easy to understand, fast-paced and fun. The goal is to get rid of all your cards first but you gotta do it fast!!
UNO
Number of Players: 2-10 | Recommended age: 7+ (great for younger kids too) | Game time: 10-20 Minutes
Uno is a great classic game for kids and adults alike. Our family gets really competitive over it. The goal is to get rid of all your cards, but when you think you may have won, you somehow- and I’m really not sure how – end up with 43 extra cards. UNO is relatively simple, which makes it fun to come up with your own unique family rules.
Spoons
Number of Players: 3+ | Recommended age: 6+ | Game time: 10-20 Minutes (depending on the number of players)
Spoons is a fast paced game played with a regular deck of cards and spoons. You lay out 1 less spoon in the middle of the table than you have players (so 4 spoons for 5 players). Each player starts with 4 random cards. The dealer picks a card from the top of the deck and decides to keep or discard the card by passing it to his or her right. Cards go around the table and the object is to find 4 of a kind. You may only keep 4 cards in your hand at a time. The first player to get 4 of a kind grabs a spoon. Once one person has grabbed a spoon the cards can be ignored and now everyone must grab a spoon as fast as they can. The player left without a spoon gets one letter in the word S.P.O.O.N.S. The first player to have all the letters loses.
Our family plays this at a speed that might be described as hyper-rocket-turbo with as much trash talking as can be manged while your keeping one eye on a blur of cards and the other on little collection of utensils.
It’s also fun to change up the position of the spoons (spoke style, fanned out, nested together, stacked like and asterisk) to make the collection of a single spoon a little tougher.
It’s a wild, loud, fun game that the kids love and the grandparents hate. And be sure to use a deck of cards you don’t care about. It’s going to be beat up.
Deer in the Headlights
Number of Players: 2+ | Recommended age: 8+ | Game time: 15 Minutes
Deer in the Headlights is always a hit and really entertaining. Players are dealt a hand of cards and roll the dice to determine which of their cards they can discard in a race to be the first to discard their entire hand. My kids quickly memorized what each combination of symbols on the dice meant. I could never quite keep it straight. A simple and fun game to play with tweens as well as younger kids.
Jungle Speed
Jungle speed is a true game of concentration and paying attention to detail. When 2 identical cards are on the table, the owners of the matching cards race to grab the wooden totem between them. But the designs on the cards are incredibly detailed and many look very similar. Pause too long and you may pay the price but make a mistake and grab the totem accidentally and you may pay an even higher price.
WARNING: Make sure everyone has their nails clipped before playing this game! It’s gonna get rowdy!
More Great Family Game Night Board Games
Sorry
Number of Players: 2-4 | Recommended age: 6+ | Game time: 30 Minutes
Sorry is one of those classics that’s still around for good reason. Mostly a game of chance where players race to get all their play pieces home. You get the rare opportunity to play favorites and sabotage your opponents. It is the game of sweet revenge after all.
Hedbanz
Number of Players: 2-6 | Recommended age: 8+ (can be played by much younger like 5) | Game time: 15-20 Minutes
Hedbanz makes you look a little silly but is a fantastic game for pre-readers. Players must guess the item on the card they have attached to their heads by asking yes or no questions of their opponents. None of the items are obscure or especially unusual but I can say from personal experience that your kids will giggle with delight watching their parents struggle to figure out clues that seem not to make any sense.
Apples to Apples
Number of Players: 4-8 | Recommended age: 9+ for junior edition 12+ for party edition | Game time: 20 Minutes
In Apples to Apples, players try to match nouns to an adjective chosen by a “Judge”. Whatever cards you have in your hand, you must choose one to match. You’ll laugh out loud from the crazy and hilarious combinations.
2 Great Family Games from Overseas
Mille Bornes
Number of Players: 2-4 | Recommended age: 6+ | Game time: 20 Minutes
MIlle Bornes is a game I used to play with my family in France when I was young. A classic French game of racing past the iconic French kilometer markers until you reach 1000km. You can sabotage your opponents by giving them flat tires or limiting their speed. This game has instructions in both English and French and the cards only have numbers on them. If you’re looking for something fun and unusual this is a great game. And you can’t claim that your poor French was the reason you lost!
Pickomino (Heckmeck)
Number of Players: 2-4 | Recommended age: 3+ | Game time: 15 Minutes
We have the French version called Pickomino but this German version has the English instructions in it. It’s a fun and simple game played with dice and tiles. You’re the chicken trying to get as many worms as you can. Roll the dice and pick the highest numbered worm tile you can. Great to for kids to learn to count and enjoyable for adults to play too.
I hope you find a great family game on this list.
I tried to go a little deeper than the classics and list games you may have never heard of but should.
My husband and I truly enjoy playing all of these games with our kids.
If you have a larger party check out my post on the best games for large parties of 10 or more.
Keep this list, pin it now!
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These are all such great games!!! I love planning game nights!!
All of these sound like so much fun! We used to do game night all the time when I was growing up – I’m hoping to start a new tradition with own kiddos 🙂
I love this list of ideas! We really love the game Dutch Blitz.. It’s been a while since we have played board games and I want to get back into it again!
You should, it’s always a fun time!