My board game recommendations for family holidays

[mouser]

I thought I would make some recommendations for board games for family gatherings over the holidays.

Note: You can read some of my general board game mini-reviews in this thread: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=23854.

These recommendations will specifically be games that I think are well suited for families with kids and adults of mixed ages.


Codenames or Codenames Pictures
A really wonderful game that can be played in teams with any number of players (best with 4-6), where a team leader tries to get their team to guess cards based on ambiguous clues.
This is a crowd favorite which is easy to learn and can be enjoyed by people of varying skill levels, and it appeals to women as well as men.  Great fun.
Note: While super easy to learn, this is a *thinky* game, and young kids may not appreciate it.
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[mouser]

Continuing on, another great game for families of ALL ages, is Telestrations
Telestrations is more of an activity than a game.  Players pass around drawing pads and have to alternatively draw and then guess what other people are drawing.
It's frequently hillarious, and the worse people are at drawing the funner it is.

I'm hard pressed to think of a funner game for a family with wide ranging ages and interests.

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[tomos]

Continuing on, another great game for families of ALL ages, is Telestrations
Telestrations is more of an activity than a game.  Players pass around drawing pads and have to alternatively draw and then guess what other people are drawing.
It's frequently hillarious, and the worse people are at drawing the funner it is.

Deozann describes the version he knew of this game:

Just get some pieces of paper, enough so that each person has as many as there are people playing (so if 26 people are playing, each player needs 26 sheets of paper). Then you just start by writing a word or sentence, then pass the paper to the left. Everyone plays simultaneously. When you get a drawing, you try to write the sentence that the drawing was of (on a blank paper) then you pass it to the left. When you get a sentence, you try to illustrate it with a drawing (on a blank paper) then you pass it to the left.

When everyone is out of blank paper, they pass their entire stack to the right. The person to the right takes the paper from the bottom of the pile (assuming oldest drawings/sentences are on bottom) and passes the remaining stack to the right. This process is repeated until all the stacks are gone. Now everybody should have all the papers for their original sentence, in order (or reverse order, depending on which way the stack was facing). Then you go around one at a time, reading the original sentence, then showing the drawing, then reading the sentence of the drawing, then showing the drawing of the sentence of the drawing, etc. until everybody has had a chance to be the center of attention and laugh at all the silly drawings and twists of the original sentence/word.

If you use pads of paper, it simplifies the process of getting the story back in order, since you can just flip back toward the front of the pad. But other than that there's not much difference and no need to limit the number of players or the possible "secret words" since you're limited only by the number of people who want to play and their imagination. Even people who use the same starting word/sentence could result in very different stories by the end of it.

We've played this a fair bit, it's especially popular with my 11 year old niece.
Can be great fun, but always interesting what comes out at the end

has been christened here (translated) the drawing-writing-drawing game

[Deozaan]

Ack! ~2.5 year old typo!

Thanks for reminding me of this game ("Telestrations"). Maybe I'll try to get a group to play it in the coming days.

[Deozaan]

I just randomly came across a "Telestrations" site by accident that allows you to play online with others:

https://drawception.com/

[mouser]

Nice!

[wraith808]

Several boardgames have sites like that, and they're cool... and addictive.

http://www.slothninja.com/
http://www.yucata.de/en/
http://www.mabiweb.com/index.php
http://www.amarriner.com/rb/

The first three have several games... the last one is only Roads and Boats.

Maybe we can get together a group that likes to play at a leisurely pace to play some of these.

[Shades]

Maybe we can get together a group that likes to play at a leisurely pace to play some of these.

If such a group would happen here, count me in.