Best Family Games for 2024 [CNET]
With all of the board games out there, family game night can be more than the ancient Monopoly board stored in the back of a closet. If you’re looking to ditch phone scrolling for a night — and get your kids to do the same — we’ve tested some of the best family board games out there. Pick up one of these out-of-the-box options for your next night in.
What’s the best family board game?
When you want to involve the most family members of different ages, a game like King of Tokyo is the best place to start. It feels like a simple game for kids ages 8 and up, and it is, but it also has plenty of layers to make it a fun game for adults to be a part of. King of Tokyo has a lot of expansions as well, making it replayable, even if you play it every week.
What makes the best family board game?
The perfect family game needs to be:
- Accessible to a large age group
- Appealing to people with a wide range of interests
- Quick to set up
- Potentially easy to drop midway through
If you have younger kids or older adults intent on never learning new tricks, finding that balance of complexity for the invested and simplicity for the rest can seem impossible.
No single game does all of that, but these are the best games to accomplish each of those. I’ve played every one of these games, and I’ve played most of them dozens of times. After years of informal research playing board games, here are the best family games you can pick up right now.
Read more: Best Strategy Board Games
Best family board games
Like
- Kaiju battles are fun for everyone
- Good amount of luck to offset lack of skill
- Colorful
Don’t like
- Can feel simple for older families
King of Tokyo has been a longtime favorite family board game in our house, because it’s easy to pick up (even for younger players), quick to play and still strategically satisfying. Each player takes control of a monster — think Godzilla or King Kong — and attempts to control Tokyo on the central game board. What ensues is a fun and often hilarious game of dice-rolling (imagine Yahtzee, but using dice with claws, energy bolts and points on them), aggressive play and chaotic attempts to wrest control of Tokyo from your competitors. The game ends when only one monster remains alive or when someone reaches 20 points. It’s simple but endlessly fun, even in a mixed crowd.
Like
- Fantastic drinking game
- Great for adults
- Waterproof pieces
Don’t like
- Adults only
Heroes of Barcadia isn’t a normal family game; it’s an adult family game. The game is a cocktail of dungeon-crawling board-builder and a literal drinking game. You build your dungeon as you play and battle against your family, but because it is a drinking game, you use your glass to measure your hit points and drink when you take damage. It doesn’t have to be alcohol, but it’s a lot of fun when it is!
The best thing about the game is that it’s fully waterproof. Everything from the cards to the manual is made of a thin, flexible plastic that acts like paper but won’t be destroyed the first time you drunkenly spill your “health potion” all over it.
Like
- Easy to learn
- Beautiful pieces and artwork
- Fast-paced
Don’t like
- Only accommodates four players
My family and I recently started playing Fire Tower, and it has quickly become one of our favorites. My 5-year-old has a little trouble playing with the cards but loves the fire gems; we all do, really. To play, you have to defend your fire tower from the raging forest fire around you while pushing the fire to destroy the other players’ towers. There is a really fun luck component to the game, where the wind direction can be changed by the dice. This means a fire could sweep across the board in entirely new ways. It’s exciting and quick to play so makes a great lunchtime game.