25 Board Games That The Whole Family Will Love

Age: 14+ Players: 2-8 Playing time: 15 min.

Two rival spymasters use clever word-association clues to tip off their teammates as to which cards conceal their agents and keep them away from the assassin card. Easy to learn, quick to play, and tons of fun involving deduction, teamwork, and wordplay.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 15 min.

Expand your kingdom using domino-like tiles containing different types of terrain to add to your growing lands. Fast and fun city-building strategy that the family will want to play over and over.

Age: 7+ Players: 2-5 Playing time: 15 min.

Think Russian Roulette with absurd kitten-themed cards, and you’ll get a pretty good sense of this funny, silly, and fast-paced card-based game that builds in intensity as everyone waits to see who will end up with an exploding kitten.

Age: 7+ Players: 2-8 Playing time: 15 min.

Also known as “Dobble,” this pattern-recognition game rewards keen observers and quick minds as you rush through a 55-card deck looking for common symbols.

Age: 12+ Players: 3-6 Playing time: 60 min.

In this tile-based game, players build a haunted house to explore as different characters. But there’s a traitor in their midst! Will the innocent characters root out the traitor from among their number before it’s too late? This game is suspenseful, strategic, and kind of spooky!

Age: 13+ Players: 4-10 Playing time: 30 min.

The Tunesmith says a word from a list and players compete to see who will be the first to sing a song containing that word. Loud and raucous fun for any family that loves to sing, and a great way to bring music from different generations into the conversation.

Age: 12+ Players: 4-8 Playing time: 30 min.

An utterly captivating game of drawing telephone in which players sketch concepts from a card and pass their drawings around the group for more rounds of drawing and guessing until everyone can enjoy the hilariously garbled results. No drawing talent required for this one — just a sense of humor and imagination.

Age: 10+ Players: 2-6 Playing time: 50 min.

It’s always more fun playing the villains and in this game, everyone gets to be one. Each player chooses a Disney villain to move around the board as they manage the cards in their hand to foil the wicked plots of their foes and enact their own evil objective.

Age: 7+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 10 min.

Work together with your team of safe crackers, lookouts, and other thieves to pull off the ultimate heist in this cooperative game for the whole family.

Age: 14+ Players: 2-8 Playing time: 40 min.

Use cards to build an unstoppable unicorn army and crush anyone who gets in your way in this hilarious, silly, and gloriously absurd card-based strategy game.

Age: 8+ Players: 1-4 Playing time: 5 min.

A hand-eye-coordination game that involves stacking and balancing rods to build a structure and keep it from tumbling down. Challenging, exciting, and different every time!

Age: 10+ Players: 3-6 Playing time: 30 min.

Can you name five famous Michaels in five seconds? You’d be surprised how flustered you get and how funny your answers can be under time pressure. This simple but engrossing game will keep the whole family laughing and blurting out nonsense until a winner is finally declared.

Age: 6+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 45 min.

Match blocks together to create lines and patterns in this tile-based strategy game that’s best described as a combination of Dominos and Scrabble.

Age: 6+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 30 min.

A cooperative game that involves getting all the right ingredients into your cauldron before the evil wizard can stop you! Work as a team in this fun, lively game that kids will love and parents won’t get bored of.

Age: 7+ Players: 2-12 Playing time: 20 min.

Compete to create rows of tokens on the cards you’ve laid down. A classic, strategy-based pattern-creation game with tons of replay value.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 20 min.

Race around a constantly changing labyrinth to collect treasures before your opponents. This classic game is fun for all ages and can be played at varying levels of strategy.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-8 Playing time: 30 min.

Bet and bluff your way through an exciting camel race across the desert as five racing camels make their way (sometimes predictably, sometimes not) around the board. Fast-paced fun with strategic betting elements.

Age: 7+ Players: 2-5 Playing time: 45 min.

Build your tile-based medieval city while blocking your opponents in this beloved territory-building strategy game.

Age: 10+ Players: 2-6 Playing time: 30 min.

You’re not the only bandit robbing this train, so you’ll need to scheme and steal your way from one car to the next while the other players try to get the better of you and the train’s passengers. Each player has a different special skill so there are plenty of different ways to play.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-5 Playing time: 45 min.

Incredibly easy to learn but somehow still full of tension, action, and excitement, “Ticket To Ride” is a beautiful board game based around building railroads throughout North America.

Age: 10+ Players: 3-7 Playing time: 25 min.

The fun of this trivia game is that you probably won’t know any of the answers! Instead, players make an educated guess while other players bet on whose guess is best. Lots of opportunities for silliness and shouting, as well as strategic betting and bluffing.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 30 min.

Explore the jungle on a daring search for hidden temples in this tile-laying race game that will test your wits and strategic thinking.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 40 min.

Decorate your palace with beautiful tiles and score points based on the patterns you create in this absorbing and attractive tile-placement strategy game.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-4 Playing time: 20 min.

In this board game with a theme from Greek mythology, you build towers and move your pawns up them as your opponents try to block you. Very simple rules with an astonishing amount of depth and strategy as you improve.

Age: 8+ Players: 2-6 Playing time: 30 min.

Take it in turns to captain an airship and use your cards to face challenges like pirates and lightning bolts as your crew (the other players) decide whether or not they want to stay along for the ride or abandon ship.