List of our favorite family board games and go-to card games for family game night. These are great ideas for group games, game ideas for teens, younger kids and adults to play together, and even games for 2 players that are fun! Great for Friday family night ideas, Sunday family activities, family evening activities, things to do as a family at home, kid ideas activities, and family fun ideas at home.
List of Best Family Board Games
If you’re a gaming family, you probably have a few of your go-to games when you can’t decide on what you want to play. (Or, if you’re too tired, but want to get a few quick game rounds in.)
This is our list of favorite games that we are playing over and over right now. Some of them are new games (to us) and some of them are trusty, old-school games we seem to always gravitate back to.
I hope you enjoy playing them with your family or for game school, too!
BEST GAME STORAGE TIP!
Before I get to the games, I wanted to tell you about something my friend turned me onto!
If you’re like us, you’re always searching for ways to store all your board games and/or card game storage.
My friend told me about these cool game storage bags and card cases (that fit into a carrying case).
They have been life-changing for organizing and storing our board games and card games.
Plus, they’re easy to throw in the car if you’re traveling with your games or taking them to a game party.
I love that the card game storage case has individual cases (within the bigger carrying case). That way I can just take one or two games and throw them in my bag and they stay protected.
HERE IS THE BOARD GAME STORAGE CASE (I also got some of these cubes, too.)
We have a glass tabletop kitchen table, so we recently picked up this game cover and it has really helped! (It’s hard to aggressively roll dice on a glass table without them sliding off. IYKYK)
I hope those things help your game nights, too!
Our Top 1o Games For Game Night
5 Alive
This is our #1 go-to family card game right now (and has replaced our old go-to game, which I’ll discuss below).
The goal of the game is to keep your 5 lives “alive” by staying under the score 21.
As you play through hands, each player adds a number (or an action card) and tries to keep the score under 21.
Go over 21 and you lose one of your lives.
It’s a quick play game where you have to be paying attention, so you don’t have time to get bored.
Definitely our new favorite game!
Abducktion
If my husband could only play one board game on game night, it would be this cute duck game.
You get cards that tell you how and where ducks should be placed, then, taking turns, you try to get your ducks placed to match the cards first.
Believe it or not, moving these cute little ducks around is a really strategic board game.
Whatever you do, get the pack that comes with the UFO to shake your ducks up in. It’s really part of the fun! (Trust me on this!)
Corvids
This is another new to us game that we’ve played marathon rounds of since getting it. (I think my daughter and I played this game for 14 days straight when we first got it.)
Drop the playing cards and feather pieces across the cloth game board. Then, work your best to keep your Corvid covered (without other players knowing which one it is) while you try to uncover their Corvid and steal their cards for points.
If that doesn’t sound fun enough, you have to use tweezers to manipulate and flip the cards on the board, which adds another level of difficulty (and crazy game play, if you’re like us!).
Skip-Bo
Before 5 Alive toppled this crown, this was our #1 go-to card game for anytime.
We have playing Skip-Bo down to a science and game play flows easily (almost mindlessly), so it’s a good one for when we don’t have a lot of energy, but still want to play games.
In case you haven’t played Skip-Bo for a while, it’s still an EXCELLENT card game. (And, it comes in fun colors now, too!)
Taco Takeover
If you want a high-energy, laugh-out-loud funny game for different ages, try Taco Takeover.
You get an “Order Ticket” and on GO! everyone, at the same time, tries to turn over cards fast enough to fulfill the taco order on the their ticket.
You have little taco shells that you have to place your ingredient cards into, which actually makes it more challenging.
There are action cards that make you put all your ingredients back or you can sabotage other players orders.
My teen daughter and I LOVE this game and we laugh hysterically the whole time. (My husband magically finds something else he needs to do whenever we play this game.)
Deer In Headlights
We aways seem to gravitate toward the Deer In The Headlights game whenever we have a friend game night.
This is a dice game and a card game where you try to get the lowest score (aka: get rid of your cards first).
You do this by rolling the dice and following the dice rules to either take cards, pass cards, or discard.
The only complaint I have about this card game is that the dice rules are hard to remember. Just keep the game rules cheatsheet out and you’ll be fine. (Eventually, after you’ve played a few times, you just start remembering the different rolls.)
This is a great group party game or a fun 2-player game.
Sequence
The Sequence board game will always be my top pick on game night and is probably one of my all-time favorite games.
Sequence is a weird cross between a board game, a card game, a some weird version of a like a tic-tac-toe game.
The Sequence board is made up of pictures of cards. You match a card in your hand to a card on the board and place a chip on it to lock the board with that space (unless places get a card to remove your chip).
Players take turns and try to get a sequence (certain number in a row) to win.
I love this game because it holds the attention of a variety of ages. My daughter has been playing this game since she was four years old. If your kids can recognize shapes and numbers, they can play this game!
(That’s her face after beating me like five times in a row…)
Kazink!
I think of Kazink! as a sister game of Sequence.
It’s from the same company and has a similar play. However, instead of only spreading your chips across the whole board (like in Sequence), you can also stack chips on top of each other in hopes of gaining spaces in a row.
My teen daughter prefers this one to Sequence.
GET KAZINK! – *I tried to find Kazink! for sale, but could only find used versions. That’s sad because this is an excellent game. Keep your eye out at game swaps, library sales, thrift stores, or garage sales for this one!
Trouble
You may be surprised to find the Trouble board game on this list, but my daughter and I will go on Troubles marathons sometimes where we play rapid, cut-throat Trouble games like 10 times in a row and best out of 10 wins the tournament.
It’s another one of those games that’s good for when we’re too mentally spent to think about strategy games, but still want to play something.
If you haven’t played your Trouble game again, drag it out or check out the new Trouble versions with different fun themes (like Bluey Trouble).
*Piggy Piggy
Piggy Piggy is a new game for us where you have to “hog” all the food cards and steal everyone else’s piggies to win the game.
(It comes with the cutest little pigs!)
You collect food snack cards of different colors. When you get a set of colors, you get to steal that color of pig.
First to score 8 points, wins. (But, we played to 10 because it’s a really fast game.)
This is one of those easy games for kids and great to practice colors, too.
We all loved Piggy Piggy, but my teen daughter preferred Rainbow Bunny Bop (which was way more challenging than I thought it was going to be!).
BONUS: Comes in a cute, protective hard case.
GET MORE FAMILY GAME AND GAMESCHOOLING IDEAS
I’d love to hear about your favorite family board games. Leave them in the comments so we can try them during family game night!
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