Games to Play with the Kids

Ice Cool – This is a dexterity one and I’m going to lean in that direction. A lot of kids games aren’t that fun for kids because they are very simple. But Ice Cool is a great dexterity game that works with kids of a lot of different ages. Who doesn’t want to make a cool shot as you try and get a penguin around a high school? Probably some people, but they’re wrong, and this one because that’s mainly what the game is, is really simple to play.

Beat the 8-Ball – Another one that works well with kids. Beat the 8-Ball is a simple game as well, most games for kids should be. But it’s also one that’s fun for adults. The game is basically a big game of chicken. There is an 8-Ball coming down a funnel, you want to be ahead of the 8-Ball but not the first person ahead of it. So how long can you wait? If you’re the first person ahead of it, no points, but if you’re after it, negative points.

Games with the Whole Group

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong – The young kids are in bed and now you want a big group game. But a lot of the big party games are not that fun, like your classic Taboo or Catch Phrase. If you want something with a bit more on it and a lot of fun, try Deception: Murder in Hong Kong.

This is a game of figuring out who the killer is. But one person is helping the murder to throw suspicion in other directions. Another knows who did it but not how but they don’t want to get caught. And someone is sending up reports to try and help point everyone in the right direction. It’s really a bit social deduction game, but with more going on because you always have a stream of real information.

Wits & Wagers – If you want a more classic party game, Wits & Wagers is a great choice. This one plays a pretty high number and is a trivia game. Now, normally I don’t recommend trivia games. But this one works. Two things that make it work are that it’s a numbers based game. So every answer is a number which everyone is guessing. So that automatically helps set a range. Then you bid on whose number you think is right. If you’re right, you win money and you want to win the most money. So even if you know nothing about, let’s say baseball, if your uncle does, you can bid on their answer.

Games with Family

Sagrada – Again, the young kids are in bed. You want to play a game, but you don’t have enough for want to break out a party game. That’s the type of game I’m looking at here. Sagrada is a good choice because it’s pretty but also it has some choices to it. You are drafting dice to make a stained glass window. But you can’t have the same number or same color next to each other, except diagonally. So can you make the best stained glass window?

The Crew – A lot of the older generation, so into their 60’s and 70’s now, or older, grew up with some of the more common games being trick-taking. Well, The Crew is going to give some trick-taking without them having that much of an advantage at it because it’s cooperative. Each round objectives are given or drawn depending on the version you have. You need to complete those, and generally a specific person needs to complete them.

So using trick taking knowledge you now need to figure out how to empty out hands the right way so that all the cards are played out. But I might need to not take a trick with pink in it. You might need to take the first trick, how can that all be set-up?

Happy Holidays from Nerdologists

With those suggestions, I just want to say a big Happy Holidays to everyone. Thank you all for reading and joining with me. There are more articles queued up and ready to go next week as I start to look ahead to 2024.

Do you find you have any family traditions that are nerdy that you love? For my family, it is board games, we generally play an evening or two around Christmas and New Years. But let me know yours.

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10 – Second Chance
The first of several roll (flip) and write games on the list. They just work really well for packing a punch in a small box. In Second Chance, you’re trying to fill in as much of a grid as you possibly can with a bunch of Tetris like shapes. The trick is that the next shape you add, from two cards flipped, must touch one of your previous shapes somewhere. Now, smaller shapes would generally be ideal because you can fill it in more solidly, but there are a limited number of one or two square cards in the deck, so you have to hope that they come up at a time that you can use it. If you eventually can’t use either of the two shapes flipped, you then get a second chance, a card that only you can use, however, if you can’t use that, you’re out of the game and you count up the empty squares and that’s your points, the person with the fewest empty squares wins. It works really well because you don’t have down time since everyone is using the same cards, just with a different starting card.

9 – Criss Cross
Smallest game on the list, it’s barely larger than a deck of cards, but it offers a whole ton of fun. In this game, you are rolling dice and placing those dice on a 5×5 grid, trying to get like symbols next to each other to score points in both the rows and columns. The tricky bit is that you need to put those two dice faces for a round next to each other, orthogonally, or like a domino would fit into a grid. Adding to that, the fact that it’s scoring both rows and columns means that you need to think hard about getting points both ways, because while more like symbols in a row gives you more points, being able to score in more directions might be better. Plus, you can put the dice faces anywhere, so you have to worry about not giving yourself two single spaces not next to each other, because that means you can fill in the last roll. A lot of fun and plays fast with no downtime.

8 – Say Bye to the Villains
A really tough game for the list, one that you’ll lose way more often than you win. In Say Bye to the Villains, you are Samurai who are going to be taking on various villains and you have ten days to prepare. That can be done by increasing your stats or by figuring out a villains cards and how tough a villain will be or by giving someone else a card. However, all of these things cost time, and the better ones might cost multiple days, and you only have ten days to prepare. So while the game is cooperative, you always feel like you haven’t prepared your stats well enough or that you haven’t figured out enough for a villain so you just need to try at the the end and hope it works. Thus far in around ten plays, I have yet to win the game, but in the vast majority of them, we’ve been really close, so one of these days it’ll happen. The game can overstay it’s welcome just a tiny bit if someone spends their time really fast they then have to sit around, and in a higher player count, that could be a little bit.

7 – Just One
This party game works perfectly on this list because it packs a punch for a small package. First, it’s a fully cooperative party game, which is pretty rare, but it’s also clever, borrowing some from Scattergories and Taboo and other older party games that maybe don’t hold up as well. One person is “it” and they flip over a card and show it to everyone else and pick a number from 1 to 5, that corresponds with a word, then the other players write down a one word clue for that word. However, then the players have to compare their words, and any duplicate clues aren’t shown to the person who is it. The clues are then revealed and that person needs to guess what word it was, if they get it, you get a point. If not, you lose a card, limiting how many points you can get. Now, it is a party game, so scoring is optional, in my opinion, but the game itself is a really fun time.

6 – The Lost Expedition
This one has shown up on the adventure list, but it’s a small box game that’s a lot of fun. In this game you’re trying to navigate from the start of the trail all the way to the Lost City of Z. However, there are creatures, native tribes, rivers, and more that need to be traversed to be able to get there. So as a group you’re playing down cards that will allow you travel further down the trail, but they’re going to cost resources and you have a limited supply of those, so you have to balance wanting to push ahead as fast as possible with gathering more resources as well. The game does a nice thing as it’s a cooperative game, it helps alleviate a situation where there is an alpha player who wants to tell everyone what to do because when playing down cards for the morning or evening walk, you can’t discuss the cards in your hand, so the biggest decision can’t be alpha gamed.

5 – Sushi Go Party!
I really like this game because of the variability to it. In regular Sushi Go, you have a fixed pool of cards, but in the Party version, you can swap out your appetizers, desserts, and specials, and more so that it is a different combo most of the times. You can make it as challenging or as easy as you want to score points. And the game is just a really good drafting game that doesn’t give you down time. You’re mainly just trying to draft sets, but some of them offer a lot more points if you get a large number of them, whereas, others you can split into smaller sets, or others will give you negative points if you have to many of them. The artwork is very cute in the game as well, which helps it hit the table with a wider variety of players.

4 – Point Salad
So there’s a joke about games where they can be a point salad, meaning that they give you a million different ways to score in the game, like you can put a million toppings onto a salad. In Point Salad, it gives you a million ways to score, but you have to decide which ones you want to take, and which veggies you take to build up your salad. The game is great because it plays fast, it offers interesting decisions and its tongue in cheek naming. Overall, it’s a pretty simple game, but offers good replayability and you can’t have the same strategy every game because the scoring cards you can draft will vary based off of what cards are actually being used and what pile those cards might be in. A fun and fast game.

3 – Welcome To…
The highest roll (flip) and write game on the list, as it’s my favorite that I’ve played thus far. In the game you’re building your perfect Stepford neighborhood, with it’s white picket fences, parks, and pools. Will you be the best at developing your neighborhood. The great thing about this one is that you can play basically an infinite number of people because everyone is using the same three pairs of cards each round, well, picking one of them to use. It’s a challenging game as you’re trying to complete specific neighborhood layouts but also focusing more on one of the things, parks or pools, can net you more points, but you’ll also be missing out on points as well. The game plays fast and everyone is involved in the whole game, so a lot of fun, and one that if people have access to a printer to print the sheet or has the game, works really well online.

2 – Hanamikoji
A great small box card game where you are trying to win the favor of various Geisha. To do that, you need to give them gifts, one might want a comb, while another might want a flute, it depends on the Geisha. To get them those gifts, you and your opponent, it’s only a 2 player game, are going to take turns doing one of four actions. Each person can do each action once per round. It might be that you discard a card face down that won’t be a gift for any of the Geisha. Or you play two face down that you’ll use as gifts later, or there is a play three face up, your opponent picks one and you get the other two, or two groups of two face up, your opponent picks one and you get the other. It offers a lot of strategy, but there’s enough hidden information to keep the game challenging every time you play it.

1 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
When I was thinking of this list, I kind of forgot that this would apply, but it’s probably my favorite “small box” game. I put it in quotes, because the more expansions that you get, the larger a box you’ll need, but if you just get the base game, and that’s all you’d need for a while, it comes in a small box. And it gives you a bigger gaming experience than some as you’re playing through scenarios in a greater story just using cards and a few tokens. The downside to that scenario based story is that once you’ve played it once or twice, you’ll know the story, then you’ll want to get the cheap expansion packs, and eventually it’s not that small a game anymore. Still, you can get a lot from that small box.

I have a lot more small box games that pack a lot of punch that just missed the list. Things like Hats, Letter Jam, Homebrewers, Century: Golem Edition, Not Alone, Onirim and more just missed the list, and I think when boar dame night in person starts up again, some of them will go higher up the list, because a lot of smaller box games play faster and are easier to pick up on.

What are some of your favorite games that come in a small box?

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So, early on I did a post on different types of board games, and I’ve been wanting to come back to that topic, but I’ve been distracted by other posts, time constraints, and forgetting about it from time to time. Now is the time, though, where I’m going to be running a more in-depth look at board games and the different types of board games.

The first category that I want to touch on, keeping with the theme of Board Game Nights, is party games. Party games don’t have to go along with a specific board game night, but can be worked into a lot of different get-togethers.

What Makes Games Fall Into This Category?

Party games are generally games that can be played quickly, can be easily incorporated into the social side of a party, and are easy to pick up. You don’t want to stop the interactions to get the game rolling, but when there is a lull in talking, or as people wind down, you can pull out these games and add some energy back into the room.

What Are Some Examples?

I would say that some of the most common and classic examples are games like Scattergories, Catchphrase, and Apples to Apples. These games are the ones that my parents had, along with games like Taboo and Guesstures. These games are aimed at getting you to speak with other people and laugh as you try to get other people to guess a word, and are generally for keeping people entertained.

There are some games that have continued in that line which have come out recently. Games like Stipulations, which was just kickstarted in 2015, and Wits and Wagers have built upon the concepts of previous party games, and games like Cards Against Humanity have taken them to a darker place.

But these aren’t the only types of games that would fall into the category of party games. There is a card game series (each a stand-alone game) that is themed many different ways — the game Fluxx. This game, and its various versions, is a fun simple game where the rules are always changing, so you can’t plan ahead and make any strategy. And another example, Zombie Dice, is a game where you try and collect the most brains and avoid being shot, just by rolling dice. There’s also Tsuro, which Kristen wrote an  article on recently; it is another fun game that goes fast and is always changing. And finally, We Didn’t Playtest This At All is a game that can last as little as five minutes, and you can play it over and over and over again. These are all great examples of games that you can play instead of games that fall into the more classic party game category.

Finally, there are games like Telephone Pictionary that you need nothing more than paper and pencil to play. And any game that makes you act out something or do something silly works well for a party. Cranium is the combination of Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, and charades; most people have heard of this one, but a similar game, Dicecapades, is a fun dice-based twist on that. These games keep you active and involved more than other games.

Do They Get Old?

This is an important question that you probably won’t think of all that much, but if you play these games often, especially the ones from higher on my list, they do get old. Catchphrase, while a fun game, has a limited number of options, and eventually, it seems like the same thing over and over again. Even Cards Against Humanity can get old. With a limited set of cards, you end up playing the same cards over and over again, and the variety eventually runs out. Thankfully, they are putting out expansions, but even those don’t change up the game greatly. But a lot of the games further down on my list have higher replay value. Fluxx changes every time, as the name would suggest, and Tsuro has some different strategies while going by quickly. We Didn’t Playtest This At All runs into the same issues as some of the other games on mylist, but they offer you some twists to the usual format. I think the most important thing is knowing your group. If you have creative types playing, games like Scattergories and Stipulations are going to get a much longer run for you.

If You Were to Recommend a Couple of Them, Which Would They Be?

The top three that I would recommend are Fluxx, Tsuro, and Zombie Dice. These games offer you a variety of playing styles, and are luck-based games. And most other people have some of the “thinking” party games like Scattergories. The nice thing about Fluxx and Tsuro is that they are easy to transport, so if you want to take them along to someone else’s place, you can do that.

What party board games do you like?

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