game night

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Ah, the joys of family game night. Bonding with your loved ones over the rush of competitive adrenaline. Friendly (hopefully) rivalries and vendettas as you try to vow to vindicate yourself after a crushing defeat. Kids and adults alike learning the subtle art of trash talk—but in the end, also learning to be good winners and losers.

The benefits of playing games together as a family are wide and deep, as games develop both mental skills and shared family memories. And when those games don't involve screens, they can provide a nice tactile respite from the virtual world.

However, finding board games that are simple enough for young kids but don't turn into "bored games" for adults can be a challenge. Most games that adults enjoy are too complex for the kindergarten kiddos and most little kid games are mind-numbing for grown-ups.

But some games strike just the right balance between simple-to-learn and challenging-enough-to-be-interesting, making them fun for nearly all ages. (By the way, even when a game has an age recommendation, that doesn't mean a younger kid can't play it. Just make sure they're past the choking hazard age of putting game pieces in their mouths.)

Here are 10 games that people say their whole family enjoys, from age 4 or 5 all the way up to the grandparents.

Sequence 

SequenceAmazon

Sequence is kind of a mix between a card game and a board game, and it's a great introduction to standard card decks for very young children since they don't need to know the values of them.

On your turn, you place a colored chip on a card on the board that matches one of the cards in your hand, which you then discard and replace with a new card from the draw pile. The goal is to get five of your colored chips in a row on the board. One-eyed jacks let you remove another player's piece and two-eyed jacks are wild. Simple, fun, largely based on the luck of the draw but you can also utilize some strategy to increase your chances of winning.

Find Sequence here. 

Blokus 

BlokusAmazon

Blokus is a great game for increasing geometric awareness, and it's also fun for everyone. On your turn, you simply lay one of your pieces on the board, touching any of your other same-color pieces but only at the corner. It starts off easy, but becomes more challenging as the board fills up. The goal is to fit the most pieces on the board. When no more pieces will fit, the player with the fewest remaining pieces wins.

Find Blokus here.

Labyrinth (Junior and Original Editions)

m.media-amazon.com

Labyrinth and Labyrinth Junior are both great for a huge range of ages, but if you've got very young ones (like 4 or 5) you might want to start with the Junior edition. Don't worry, it's still fun for adults, but the regular edition is just a bit more of a challenge.

The goal of the game is to collect treasures along the maze, but on each turn a player moves part of the path, changing the way the paths interconnect. The game play is simple, and it's a great one for helping kids understand strategy without directly having to teach them.

Find Labyrinth Junior here and Labyrinth (original) here.

The Uzzle 

The UzzleAmazon

The Uzzle is an arranging game, and if you've ever played something like this with kid, you know they can legitimately beat adults at it. There are two main ways to play The Uzzle. Each player gets five cubes with different colored shapes on each size. Then you either have each player draw a card with a pattern on it and whoever arranges their cubes to match their card first wins, or you draw one card that everyone uses and races to complete before anyone else. The cards have four difficulty levels so play can be adjusted to meet the level of players.

Find The Uzzle here. 

Dragomino 

Dragonimo Amazon

Dragomino is a younger player version of Kingdomino, which is a fan favorite people also say is good for a wide range of ages. Game play is a little challenging to explain without having the pieces in front of you, but here's how it's described:

"Dragomino is a Card Drafting and Tile Placement game using a Pattern Building mechanic. It’s like playing dominoes with a twist! On your turn, Pick a domino to add to your kingdom. Try to match it to the dominoes already in play. Each matching dominoes scores one egg. which is either empty or has a baby dragon inside! Who will find the most baby dragons?" And the reviews are stellar for both Dragomino and Kingdomino (which has a similar game play, just not quite as simple and without the dragon theme).

Find Dragomino here and Kingdomino here.

Qwirkle 

QwirkleAmazon

Qwirkle is Mindware's best-selling board game, providing fun for families since 2006. It's a tile-laying game, similar to Dominos, but with its own twist. Here's a video that explains how to play in two minutes. Basically, you make rows based on either color or shape, playing your tiles and drawing more so that you always have six tiles to work with on each turn. You earn points based on the tiles you play and the player with the most points wins.

Find Qwirkle here.

Yahtzee

YahtzeeAmazon

Yahtzee is a classic for a reason. Though it says ages 8+, younger kids can play with the help of an adult to keep score. Since the play itself only involves rolling the dice from a cup, any age kid can play, and it's actually a great game for teaching adding as they learn to keep score themselves. Super simple and based almost entirely on luck of the roll, it's exciting no matter how many times you play it.

Find Yahtzee here.

Spot It! 

Spot It!Amazon

Super simple in play and a test of everyone's powers of observation, Spot It! is more fun than it sounds. Everyone has a stack of cards with the goal to be the first one to get rid of them by matching an item that's on their card with an item that's on the card on top of the discard pile. The items on each card are different sizes, so it's not quite as easy as it sounds. But it's simple enough that the youngest kids can play.

Find Spot It! here.

Buildzi

BuildziAmazon

If you've ever played the dice game Tenzi, Buildzi is from the same creator with a similar premise, only instead of rolling dice, you're racing to stack shapes. Stacking games are a good challenge for all ages, and kids even sometimes have an advantage due to their small hands. Grown-ups may have more developed fine motor skills, though, making for a delightfully even match up. To play, each player gets a card with an arrangement of blocks they have to stack to match without the stack falling over. Kind of a Jenga meets Tetris meets Tenzi game.

Find Buildzi here.

Pengoloo 

PengolooAmazon

It may look like a game just for little kids, but any adult who enjoys memory games will enjoy Pengoloo. Super simple play instructions from the game maker:

"On each turn, players roll the color dice and look underneath two penguins for eggs of the same color. If you guess right, the penguin hops on your iceberg. But watch out, other players may remember what egg it hides and steal your penguin on their turn! The first to collect six penguins on their iceberg wins."

Find Pengoloo here.

Happy gaming, everyone!