We've played surprisingly few family games considering we've definitely always been a gaming family. Here's a picture of our family room. It's from 2016 but it still looks just like this (only my son is much bigger!). You can see we purposely set up our family room for gaming, with a hutch and credenza full of games and a big table. This is our gathering place for talking and gaming. Occasionally some of us eat at the table too!
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Mostly, since the shut down, the main games in our house have been Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. My kids and their friends have been running a weekly Pathfinder campaign, led by my husband, for years, and that's continuing now by video chat. One friend is also running a D&D game another day of the week. And we have a family D&D game we started just a couple months ago, led by my oldest, that we're playing irregularly. My oldest is depressed and everyone is stressed and it seems to have interfered with our usual gaming. I'm the only one still suggesting games lately! We did play Carcassonne last week. And there was one evening my oldest and I had a few rounds of one of her favorite card games, Speed. If you like fast, exciting card games, try that one! I'd hate it if I weren't so good at not caring about the outcome of games. I play it because my daughter loves it.
I have 2 siblings and we did play games when we were growing up, but sometimes I played alone too! My favorite to play alone was a game called Careers. It was well suited to solitary play because you're really playing to reach a goal you set for yourself (happiness points, fame points, and an amount of money) and you don't need to race another player. I own a new copy of the game I bought about a decade ago but my kids never were very interested in it.
Board games that have been the biggest hit in my family over the years include Clue, Splendor, Takenoko, Love Letter, and Telestrations. I could have listed more, but my memory is poor. My kids hate Uno (though we play it occasionally) and Monopoly. My lifetime favorites are Scattergories and Scrabble, but my kids don't like them much so I only get to play them occasionally. When my husband and I play alone it's usually Scrabble.
Christa, do you know the Words With Friends app? It's Scrabble we can play with friends. I've played it since I got my first smartphone in 2013 so I don't remember if you have to log in with Facebook like I do; I think I didn't connect it to Facebook at first. Anyway, I'd be happy to play with you! I'm Michele Kendzie on Facebook if that's how we connect. If that doesn't work, PM me and we'll figure it out.
Here's a screenshot of one of my Words With Friends games from a few years ago. It works just like the official Scrabble game, same rules. I think the special squares are just a bit rearranged.
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Speaking of word games and digital games, my all time favorite is Word Wow Around The World. There are other versions of Word Wow, but Around The World is the best. It's the most visually pleasing, most interesting, and just seems to run best. I've been playing it several times a week for several years. It gives me the same satisfaction of Scrabble. I love word games. Often I will play this while listening to a podcast if I'm not up and moving around because I can't concentrate on audio input if I'm not also doing something visual, but it needs to be an easy visual thing, which making words IS, for me. Oh yeah! I made a scrapbook page about it a while ago!
Ok, I'll stop now because I've strayed off topic.
