Hi everyone, Sarah here, and I wanted to share a few more board games that are family friendly and would be great games to give and play over the upcoming holiday season. These games are a little pricier than many of the games I’ve shared here in the past few months, but I hopefully they will make the perfect family gift to put under the tree or play with the entire family after Thanksgiving dinner.
The first game I want to talk about is Camel Up (or Camel Cup depending who you ask). The idea behind this game is that you are all spectators at a camel race and trying to predict which camel is going to come first in each leg of the race as well as which camels will come first and last over the course of the entire race. The earlier you make the correct prediction the more points you will get, but if you make an incorrect prediction you’ll lose points. This is a great game to play with a crowd (it plays up to 8) plus the 3D pyramid doubles as the most awesome dice rolling mechanism I’ve ever seen in a game.
Concept is a great party game for people who like Pictionary style games but don’t like to draw. In this game instead of drawing clues you use plastic tokens to mark icons on a huge playing board to get the other players to guess the answer. This is a game that we prefer to play without points and just make it a fun family activity instead, and if you use two clue givers each round when one gets stuck it’s amazing the connections the second clue giver might see that the first one missed.
This next game is a drawing game but you don’t have to be able to draw well. In Doodle Quest you are given a clear acrylic sheet and a dry erase marker and there is a center board with a puzzle. These puzzles vary from drawing a line from one area of the board to another without running into obstacles or drawing fish (with a provided stencil) in the clear areas of the board. Once everyone finishes their drawing the acrylic is placed over the puzzle board and you score points based on the instructions of each puzzle.
Small World is a civilization game where different groups of fantasy creatures take over different areas of the board. As new races are introduced they vie for different areas of the board in an attempt to cause other civilizations to go into decline. When your civilization goes into decline you are able to introduce a new civilization into play. Each civilization is made up of a different race as well as a special power that is determined randomly. This makes the game immensely replayable since with each new game the special powers will be paired up with different races making the game play of each civilization different every time you play.
7 Wonders is another civilization game but in this one each player is building one of the 7 Wonders. You do this by drafting cards ( play the card you like the most from your hand and then pass the rest of the cards to the next player for them to choose from, and so on) and building up your military, science, landmarks and eventually guilds in the final round. These items all give you points based on what the players next to you have chosen for their own tableau. This is a really fun and quick game that doesn’t take much longer to play seven players than it does three players making it another great game for a large group.
The final game I have to share with you today is Splendor. In this game you are collecting gems to buy mines which then attract rich nobles to buy your wares. This game moves relatively fast and there are only three different actions you can chose from each turn (either collecting gems, buying a mine or reserving a mine purchase later). This makes the game really quick to pick up and understand even for younger players and the set collection aspect of the game is a familiar one to many players of classic games.
Thanks so much for all of your wonderful comments about my board game posts and I hope that you are able to gather around the table with family or friends and a board game this holiday season!
Kristina Lee says
Doodle quest and concept look awesomefor our family! Thanks again Sarah!
Cammy says
Ooooh….all of these look great! Adding them to my wish list :)