This is the third of a guest post mini-series on our family’s favorite games by Amy’s husband, Evan Hays–middle school social studies teacher and board game enthusiast. (Click here for part one and two.)
Another amazing thing about board games is that they are accessible to people across ages and abilities. Our six year old daughter Lily is now a beginning reader but all 5 of these games are ones that a child could play before being able to read yet are also engaging for adults to play. Basic knowledge of numbers and colors is not necessarily required for all of these games, but it would certainly make them easier.
Our kids were also pretty good at holding cards from a young age, but if that is a challenge for your child, there are excellent card holder or trays for kids that are cheap and easy to get. So, before I dive into Lily’s top 5 games, I’ll just add that a good way to think of these games is a bit like those few picture books that your toddler demanded you read to them over and over and over, yet you really didn’t mind because they were just that good. These are the games Lily loves and we love to play with her.
Lily’s Top 5 Board Games
1. 
Sleeping Queens (number-based card game). This was a favorite of both kids even from when they were only 4 or so. Originally, a family made this just for themselves, but after some encouragement, they got it published, to all of our benefit.
Essentially, you are using king cards to collect queen cards, which are laid out like a memory game in front of you. There are also number cards, which help kids learn basic addition and subtraction. But what adds the fun into the game are joker cards (unpredictability) as well as potion and knight cards (a little “take that”, but with wand and dragon cards for defense). This is a perfect gateway game for a younger child and is a game that any time my kids ask to play, I am always up for it.
2. 
Love Letter (deduction card game). This is far and away Lily’s favorite game. We have taught it to people everywhere we have gone this summer, and we have visited over 50 people, so we are doing our bit to spread the love of Love Letter around this country of ours.
This is a simple little card game that also manages to command the respect of the board gaming community because many credit this game with kicking off (around 12 years ago) a new trend in board gaming—a game composed of nothing more than a small deck of cards but that punches far above its weight class. As evidenced by how we have brought this game all around the country with us this summer, I would also call this the perfect travel game.
Essentially, you have two cards to pick from on your turn. The card that you pick to play will either help you get another player out of the round by using deduction to figure out what they have, or will help you stay in the round longer by preventing other players from guessing what you have. The theme is princess-based, which I think helps Lily some, but it’s really more about just the fun game play. It’s also really good for teaching kids critical thinking because you have to pay attention to what everyone else is doing to narrow down which player might be which character (meaning just whichever card that player is holding at that time).
3. 
Deduckto (deduction card game). This is a newer, more-thinky card-based deduction game. An engineer friend of mine said this would be a good game to get kids thinking like programmers, and while I don’t know much about that, I do know that this game makes burning your brain a little bit a lot of fun. Now, you might be thinking, that sounds too tough for my children, but it’s really not.
This game comes with 49 cards, each card with an animal character with a different disguise in a different location. The art is really fun, which I think helps a lot with this game. Basically, you have 5 cards in your hand that you can look at, as well as one card in your hand turned facing away from you. That extra card is the one you are trying to guess. The way you do that is by playing one of the 5 cards you can see on your turn, and the other players will answer you with a simple “yes” or “no”. If they answer yes, you put that card into your yes pile, meaning you have a clue that the card you played matches 1 of the 3 characteristics on your guess card. If they answer no, then you can rule out the 3 characteristics on that card for your guess card. Slowly but surely, you can narrow down your choices and, hopefully, arrive at the correct conclusion. There are few more rules than that which make the game a really fun challenge, but trust me when I say your family will enjoy this one.
4. 
Silver & Gold (flip-and-write/polyomino game). This is a game by Australian board game designer and Anglican priest Phil Walker-Harding. He is probably our family’s favorite board game designer, and we easily could have put Sushi Go Party or Super Mega Lucky Box on this list as well. He just has a way of designing simple yet engaging games that offer fun combos to get you hooked.
In this game, which comes with dry erase markers to write and erase right on the cards, you are trying to fill in different polyomino (think tetris) shapes on your personal scoring cards. In addition to the fun of flipping shapes around in your brain to work out the geometry puzzle, there are also 3 different kinds of bonuses on the cards: coins, Xs, and palm trees. Every time you finish filling out a card, you earn that card’s points and can pick up a new card to try to complete before the 4 rounds are over. I haven’t taught this to anyone yet who didn’t say, “let’s play that again” right after we finished.
5. 
Point Salad (set collection/point salad game). There is a pun in the name of this game that suits our vegetable-eating family very well. People in the board game hobby have talked about “point salad” style games for decades now. They mean games in which there are lots of options for how to score points, and each player can decide how much to focus on each option. This game takes that and runs with it. Every card has a type of vegetable on one side and a scoring condition on the other. There are 3 piles of points cards in the middle as well as 6 vegetable cards.
On your turn, you can either take 2 vegetables or 1 scoring card. Your scoring card might say something like, “2 points for every carrot and tomato card”, “five points for every combo of pepper, tomato, and onion card” or “2 points for every pepper and carrot card but -1 for every tomato card.” What makes this game tricky is that every time someone takes a vegetable card, the new cards to take its place come from the stacks of scoring cards, meaning you might have your heart set on a certain scoring card, but by the time it gets back around to your turn, that card is no longer available. You really have to think on your feet in this quick little game, and any chance to get your kids interested in veggies is a good thing, right?
All 5 of these games are winners that take 20 minutes or less. And even though they are simple, they haven’t yet gotten old for us, despite many plays. These are games to bring over to your friends’ houses for play-dates as well as games to bring to family get-togethers with people from several generations.
(Bonus Game #6: No Thanks. Obviously Lily loves this one)
They are also all very affordable and easy to get a hold of. In fact, the only problem you are likely to have with these games is wearing them out quickly because of lots of use! But, like a worn-out Bible, that’s a really good sign. Happy family gaming!
What games does your family take on trips? Have you had any memorable experiences sharing a beloved game with your friends and family?
Great choices! These games are either family favorites of ours or on our want to play list. I think we need to get our hands on Deduckto next.
Thanks for sharing!
Deduckto is so fun!
Yay!! I loved playing all of these games with Lily and Jackson this summer! Thanks for introducing me to so many new ones!
We had so much fun playing with you this summer!