10 – Letter Jam
I honestly expect this to move up my list as I play it more because Letter Jam is a very clever and fun word game. Each player is given cards for a 4-6 letter word (might be up to 7 letters) and then each player flips one of their letters up into a stand, facing away from them. All the players then search for the best word clue that they can give to help people guess their letters. You do that by putting numbers in front of the letters to spell out the word, so if you were to use my letter, I would know where it falls into the word but not what letter it is. It’s a thinky game where you have to try and narrow down the letter choice you have quickly so you can get to figuring out your next letters, while also giving good clues to other players. A lot of fun, and a cooperative word game which is interesting. Definitely one that I’d highly recommend and that is a lot of fun, I think just lack of total plays is keeping it further down my list.

9 – Say Bye to the Villains
If you every wanted to be part of a montage of Samurai getting ready to take on some villains, this is it. Though, the game does play a little bit slower than a good montage should. In this game each player is a Samurai who is preparing to fight a villain. These villains have cards that can change up how strong, fast, or how much health they have. But all of those cards are face down, so players are trying to find out information on villains, trade cards to set-up everyone so they can defeat their villain and then battle. However, there is a time constraint of how many actions you can take, a lot of actions and cards take 1-2 days, and you only have 10 days to prepare. This game encourages some discussion around the table, which can cause it to run longer, but if you want a very hard cooperative game for the group, this one is definitely it.

8 – Just One
The highest party game on the list, and it’s fairly low, however, I really do like this game. It plays up to 7, but technically you could easily play more if you wanted to. I can see some issues with that, though, so I’d keep it close to 7. In this game one person is “it” each round, and they pick a word, that they can’t see, from a card. Everyone else writes a one word clue and then the people writing the clues compare. If any of the clues match, those aren’t shown and finally with the remaining clues the guesser looks at those and tries to guess what their word was. The game is a lot of fun, and the cooperative nature works really well for a party game. It keeps people engaged and not just being silly while the game itself is simple so you can still converse and take your time while playing.

7 – Sushi Go Party!
This is another one of those games that is meant for a high player count because everyone is doing things at the same time. You are all drafting cards to make your best meal. You’re picking one card from the hand, laying it down in front of you, flipping it when everyone is ready, passing your hand and repeating. But what works well with this is the variety of scoring that you can have. The game plays pretty fast, and the speed of the game is mainly dependent upon the players as the player count won’t change it up at all. So we’ve played with players who are comfortable with the game, a game in less than half an hour and then set-up and played again. The art and theme also help the game get to the table more often.

6 – Point Salad
On Board Game Geek they actually recommend it at lower counts, but I think it works well at the higher end, or at least well enough, as you see so many more cards. It’s an interesting game where you are making your salad and drafting scoring cards so that your salad scores well. The theme is pretty silly but the game is simple to teach and play. You are either taking two veggies to add to your salad or you are taking one scoring card to score your salad. This game will have more downtime at the higher player counts, but as long as you aren’t playing with players who have analysis paralysis it should work quite well, and the game still plays quite fast at higher counts.

5 – Welcome To…
The only one that is advertised to go up to 100, because there are 100 sheets in the book, it would actually work at 100 without people really repeating scoring, which is amazing. In this game you’re trying to build your ideal Stepford town (or something like that), and you do that by putting up white picket fences, number houses, building parks and pools and increasing your advertising to make certain neighborhoods more desirable. This is done by people using one of three pairs of cards each turn, and everyone can pick at the same time. So maybe everyone picks the same set of cards to use, but where they place the house number and how they use the action could vary wildly making this a game that is great at high player counts.

4 – Sagrada
It maxes out at 6 players, and I think that it plays well at basically all player counts. Things change when you get to 5-6 players and you need an expansion for that. No longer as you drafting as many dice from the common pool, you have some set aside for yourself that can you pick from. This weeks the game moving well which is the issue with a lot of games at higher player counts, you might be waiting a while between turns, and while there’ll still be some downtime, it’s going to be considerably less. Plus this game just works well, it was on my introductory list, and it works with basically any group. There are a few trickier bits add to raise the complexity for scoring in the 5-6 player expansion, but not much and it’s still very worth checking out.

3 – Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
I’m hit or miss when it comes to social deduction games, but Deception is a massive hit for me. In this game you have someone who is playing as a forensic scientist giving you clues based off of what the murder picked as their murder weapon and clue left at the scene. Everyone is playing as a police officer and trying to use those reports from the forensic scientist to guess the correct combo, but they only get one official guess. This game is great for chatting around the table and it gives you something from the first moment on to accuse and create the story of what is happening as compared to some social deduction games where you never feel like you can really make that much of an educated guess. It’s also easier to teach than a lot because while you can add harder roles, most of them are just going to be an investigator with the murderer, accomplice, and witness all being simple extra roles you can add in.

2 – ICECOOL/ICECOOL 2
Kind of a cheat here, out of the base game, you can only play up to four, but with both versions, you can combine them together and play up to 8, and it’s very much worth it. In fact, getting 2 games of it is about as much as getting one normal board game. But in this game one (or two) people are hall monitors who are trying to catch penguins who are skipping classes while those penguins are running around trying to get fish. It’s a simple flicking game that works well for all ages. We’ve had a lot of fun with it just with adults as well. While it isn’t going to be a brain burning game, it’s something that anyone can pull out at any time and play and have fun, which makes it a good game, even if you aren’t that great at flicking.

1 – Betrayal at House on the Hill
Not the first game you’d think of for this list, again, the list itself skews a little bit towards the lighter end, but I really enjoy Betrayal at House on the Hill at all player counts. In this game you are exploring a haunted house and eventually someone will become the traitor and the game will change and you’ll need to stop whatever the traitors schemes are. It’s a very thematic game for a haunted house style feel. You get all the horror movie tropes and while all the scenarios are not perfectly balanced, basically every time I’ve played it, it’s been enjoyable. And I really like it at the full 6 as you get to uncover more the house and it feels better balanced for the higher counts.

There are other games that would work well as well. I like Tsuro for an easy higher player count game to start off board game nights while waiting for people. We’ve done Criss Cross and Second Chance both at higher counts as well. Games like Wits & Wagers and Scattergories are purely party games and they are easy to get to the table. So you have a lot of good and interesting choices out there even if you feel like I cheated a bit with ICECOOL/ICECOOL2 and Sagrada.

What are some of your favorite games that play 6 or more? Are there any I should checkout or that you want to try from my list?

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Locke & Key follows a family who is moving back into the families home after tragedy has struck them. Rendell, their father, has passed away so Nina picks up and takes the kids from Seattle to Mattheson, Massachusetts. None of the kids, except the youngest, Bode, are excited to be there. But when Bode hears a voice in the well house talking back to him when he makes his voice echo, it’s clear that this isn’t a normal house. Soon Tyler and Kinsey are drawn into the crazy world that the house holds with many magical keys and Echo, the voice from the well who has gotten out. What does Echo want and why can’t their mother, Nina, remember anything about the keys?

Let me quickly give my thoughts on the show and then I’ll go into more depth. There might be some spoilers later on, but I’m going to try and keep them to a minimum. I really liked this show, even though it isn’t as dark and horrific as the first trade paperback, there’s definitely a very interesting and creepy story behind it. And that was enough for me, plus Joe Hill did the work on it to keep it in the spirit of the books, but not have to go fully dark. However, because of that it has much more of a YA feel to it, so if you’re a huge fan of the comics, know that before you jump in. There are a few things that stand out to me for the show.

The first thing is the acting. Most of the time, you have a cast that is mainly teen age (though teen in acting can be early 20’s) or kid actors, the acting will end up being suspect. However, in Locke & Key they do an amazing job. The actor who plays Bode, Jackson Robert Scott, does a great job. Bode is supposed to be a wide eyed 8-10 year old in the show, and you can really see that in the acting. He does a very good job of portraying an innocence and sincerity to his acting. And I won’t go into it a ton with the other actors, but the actors portraying Kinsey and Tyler, Emilia Jones and Connor Jessup respectively, do really good work as well. There are shifts in their acting as you get to see more of their character and as their characters change that are really well done. Even the adult acting is well done and it doesn’t just feel like so many YA stories where there’s a group of teens and no adults believe them and then the adults are wrong.

Another thing is that while this leans into horror tropes and supernatural elements that could seem cliche, it does a good job of keeping them different. When we were watching through it, it felt to Kristen and myself like several things we’ve seen or played before, Haven, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, and more, but it still felt unique. The element of the keys and how they work is really well done. And you can see where Joe Hill is borrowing form the work that his father has done before, but in a very respectful and well done way. I got numerous callbacks to IT in the show, and I appreciated that. It’s really that none of the tropes it used felt out of place or felt like they were forced in there because it’s horror or anything like that, it just flowed naturally.

Let’s talk a bit more about the story before I wrap up here. Like I said, the story is not going to be as heavily horror focused, which I’m fine with. While I love some good horror, there’s something whimsical about the keys that lends itself not just to horror but to this more fantastical element as well, and the show leans into that some more. As things unfold, there is definitely more horror and violence, but there’s also a sense of fantasy or magic to the story. Like I said previously as well, it doesn’t fall into the storytelling tropes of YA where the kids are smart and the adults are dumb and don’t believe the kids. It avoids some of that by a nifty plot device that they explain but also by just having the kids do their own thing. They use the grief of Rendell’s death and Nina’s reaction to it to drive some of why Kinsey and Tyler don’t bring as much to her as well, which I think is well done. And Bode is just too Bode to think about that.

So, I’ve said that I like the show, but would I recommend it to everyone? I’d lean towards no. It still has horror elements, so some people aren’t going to love that as much. Kristen actually stopped watching part ways through episode one because of some of the creepy stuff that was going on. But in the middle of the season, it hit more of that fantasy and whimsy, so I stopped and we rewatched it because I knew that she’d like it. So there’s definitely a piece where if people aren’t horror fans they’ll enjoy it as well, and like myself, Kristen and I are waiting for, hoping for, a second season to come out. Definitely an interesting show and if the trailer seems interesting, they do a good job and it’s worth checking out.

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