Family Games

Do you define "family board game" as "a board game that is especialyy well suited for playing with the family"? Does this sound obvious? You'll be surprised about how many different definitions there are of "family board game"...

Anyway, if that is your definition of "family board game", then my favorites are: Scotland Yard, Carcasonne, Royal Turf and TransAmerica.

In my opinion a good family game:
- has rules that are easy to understand and can be taught in ten minutes or less
- has a quick set-up time
- has an average playing time of around 75 minutes or less
- has a good mix of luck, tactics and strategy
- keeps everyone in the game until the end
- has turns that go by quickly, so that there isn't lots of downtime between a player's turn
- has interaction between players, where a co-operative kind of interaction is preferred over a destructive kind interaction, although being able to do a "nasty" move every now and then would be OK
- preferably plays with 2 to 6 players and at least with 3 to 5
- has good, durable components and is nice to look at

Good luck with your assignment.

- René Wiersma

I don't have children of my own but we do at times have our nephew over. He likes all sorts of games from light strategy to party games. Some of the ones we have had the best time playing are Kahuna, Basarri, Fluxx (whoops that’s a card game) and classics like Othello, Chess and Backgammon.

I consider 95% of my board game collection to be family oriented. It contains no Drug or Alcohol themed games, nothing sexy and the violence in most of them is not graphic.

What I would and would not put in a game if my target audience was the average American family.

1. Large helpings of humor both in the text and graphics.
2. Theme that is not gender oriented (No beauty contests unless it is spoofed)
3. Small down time (Quick turns) so that you don’t get board waiting to play.
4. A little luck to even out the intelligence levels.
5. Short easy to learn rules and a play time of an hour or less

That’s all I can come up with off the cuff. Good luck, hecks forget that luck is for dice games. Start working from what you know a go from there, I think the question is not what our favorite games are but what your favorite family game is.