Help us choose a funny, clean, adult board game please.

March 10, 2021 2:12 AM

We need a board game for adults that puts the fun in funny but without anything dirty. Also, it needs to be fairly easy, since one is in the early stage of dementia.

We're meeting our husband's parents at a half-way point in a small town. We know everything is still on lockdown but the idea is to spend quality time together. I thought one of the things we could do would be to play a fun game. We could use several if they're cheap enough. Any ideas?

posted by magnoliasouth to Society & Culture (27 answers total)

Apples to Apples is similar to Cards Against Humanity but simpler (each card is a word rather than a phrase) and it's not offensive at all. It definitely has the capacity to be pretty funny.
posted by cilantro at 2:34 AM on March 10, 2021 [17 favorites]

The best game for people of different ages and cognitive abilities playing together is Qwirkle. It's pretty too, a lot of fun,enough of a challenge to keep it interesting for everyone but intuitive and easy to understand. You have to match shapes on blocks.

Azul is also fun, but might be a bit difficult for the some of your players.

Takenoko is beautiful and pleasant to play, might be a bit complex for very young children and dementia. You can team up players though.

Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Island are both excellent cooperative games, also good for a group of mixed abilities as everyone teams up and helps one another.
posted by Zumbador at 2:55 AM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

Mr. Toast is very silly and very simple.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:19 AM on March 10, 2021

I'll put in a word for "Castle Panic", a very simple co-operative game that generates a lot of laughs when we play.
posted by Ipsifendus at 4:19 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Dixit is a nice game focused on giving clues for silly & fantastical images. Gameplay is relatively simple.
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:43 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure if this fits your criteria exactly but my family loves the dice game of Left Right Center. We play for money and it gets pretty cut throat when everyone puts in $3 per round. It's a game of chance, very fast and a lot of fun.
posted by IndigoOnTheGo at 4:50 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

See if there's one of the custom monopoly games for a city that the person with memory issues is from/familiar.
posted by sammyo at 5:27 AM on March 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

I would recommend Telestrations ! It's like that old game of telephone (where you start with a phrase and whisper between a network of people who usually garble it by the end), except with words and drawing pads. Everyone picks a card, writes it down, then passes their booklet on to the next person. They look at the word, flip to the next page, draw their best representation of said word, then pass the booklet on. You then try to guess the word based on the drawing, write it down, and pass it on
... repeat until "your" booklet (everyone starts with a booklet of a diff colour) has gone around to everyone and come home to you. Then much hilarity ensures as you show everyone the word you started with, flip through the drawings/guesses, and see what word you ended up with. It is very fun and a good family game for people of different ages/abilities; we could play it when our younger kiddo was not yet a fluent reader.
posted by DTMFA at 5:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [8 favorites]

I was also going to say telestrations. You may also want to check out danger noodle.
posted by dpx.mfx at 5:52 AM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

Fluxx, or any of its variants (personally partial to the Monty Python version), is a fun game that's remarkably simple, since all the rules are on the cards on the table.
posted by General Malaise at 6:05 AM on March 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

I vote for Dixit. Easy for all ages.

I would not vote for telestrations. It's one of those games where (at least in my family) you are constantly looking at the rule book and saying, "Which page are we on?" "How do we score this?" YMMV.
posted by eleslie at 6:15 AM on March 10, 2021

Qwirkle is fun, a sort of mash-up of simplified checkers and scrabble, albeit with colored shapes printed on wooden tiles rather than letters. You match either colors or shapes, and build strategically depending on the tiles you have drawn. Last weekend it entertained one 75 year old, two 65 year olds, one 5 year old, 6 year old and 7 year old. And the 7 year old won.

I bought it at Barnes and Noble from their smallish game selection.
posted by citygirl at 6:16 AM on March 10, 2021

I don't know much about dementia, but these are games that I would bring to play with a not-all-the-way-there family.

I've focused on games below that require communication or teamwork, as I see that players interacting with each other is the point of board gaming, otherwise, you could all play solitaire separately.

Outburst Outburst is the best team game in existence, because each teammate only can help, not hurt. I've played with 4 people on a road trip, or 150 people at a summer camp, and both were just as amazing. It's competitive until the end.

Telestrations - Super fun, requires 5 people, and requires ability to draw

Liars Dice All you need is dice and cups. Great bluffing game, tons of replayability! It's the game shown in pirates of the carribean. Also called perudo with slightly different rules.

Wavelength Is a new game that is super easy to set up - you play right in the box. One person tries to communicate a concept to the other team.

Monikers (also called Times Up) a game where you start like taboo, but with the same cards you move to charades. Requires people that are good at speaking quickly/guessing quickly.

Sushi Go Party Excellent for all ages, this game is a fun game where you pass your hand of cards around the table, keeping one each time, trying to score the most points. Because the Party version includes so many varieties, it has a lot of longevity. I've played from 5 year olds to 90 year olds at the same table.

Werewords Like 20 questions with a twist. It uses an app to help, but it's pretty fun! The word bank is huge with different difficulties, so it scales well to different ages.

But honestly?

All of these games are amazing, but none beats some classic card games that you can play forever. My favorite of these is Oh Hell! It's a trick taking card game where each player guesses how many tricks they can take each round. You get points based on your accuracy. We play with two teams of two, and that way there's tons of partner dynamics based on who your partner is, and adjusting your strategy to match their bid, etc.
posted by bbqturtle at 6:36 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

Seconding Monikers - it's a ton of fun.
posted by jquinby at 6:43 AM on March 10, 2021

I agree with cilantro. My mother-in-law's boyfriend was a sweet, gentle man, but he'd been dropped on his head as a child, and never developed the capacity to enjoy many of the games we would play as a family. We all found Apples To Apples to be fun and engaging. It's also pretty widely available.
posted by blob at 6:47 AM on March 10, 2021

Left-Center-Right is fun, easy, and clearly should be played for money. BUT, fair warning, the nicest octogenarian you know will turn into a mob kingpin if the dice rolls go against her just a few times in a row. People who don't believe in luck or deities of any description will be cursing all of the above. If that's part of the fun for you, you'll love it. We play for change instead of dollars, unless we're actively trying to get money into my nephew's hands.

Telestrations is wonderful. If you have a wide enough variety of player ages, you might need somebody to sit out of the gameplay and be the helper for players who might not know every expression/word on the cards. Takes a ton of stress out of it IME. Likewise, throw away the timer, unless you have people who t a k e . f o r e v e r. My youngest is allergic to time constraints of any description. (As are the parents, tbh.)
posted by adekllny at 7:06 AM on March 10, 2021

I've played Gloom with kids down to 10 I think. It's macabre funny but not dirty.
posted by foxfirefey at 7:28 AM on March 10, 2021

I'm late to the party, but I really really like Codenames - you can also play it online here.

Codenames is basically a game where you try to get people to guess words on the board through single word clues.

I like it a lot because it takes some real strategy, but the turns and the game are short-ish, so you don't get stuck in long lopsided games. You play with a partner, but the game is short enough, that you can switch partners every 15-20 minutes.
posted by mercredi at 7:42 AM on March 10, 2021

Wits and Wagers is decent for this since it doesn’t really require long term strategy, and it is also really fun to make guesses. We have a person in my family who gets stressed out about things involving math or numbers, but we pointed out that they could just guess “69” or “420” for everything (um, ymmv on what makes for good clean fun, lol) and they ended up having a good time too.
posted by capricorn at 8:05 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

Some of this is really going to depend on how much ability your family member has now, and how much they had to start with. Some of these might just be too complicated, especially for a meetup. I mean, I love Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, but you two would need to be familiar with the game prior to the meetup for that to go well. (They DO work just as well with two players as with 4.)

Wits and Wagers should work, there's multiple versions now, including a family one. We had the original, and it was quick and easy to learn. Also by North Star Games is one titled Say Anything, and it's similar yet different - it could work well, too.

Sushi Go and Sushi Go Party are fun and relatively quick to learn, but to teach the other family members, again, you'd want to be familiar with them beforehand. Fortunately, they do work well with 2 people. The price difference is minimal, so I recommend the Party version for increased replay value.

Somewhat similar in style is Go Nuts for Donuts. Again, works well for just 2, or more.

Another suggestion might be Uno, or one of it's variants. If everyone is well-familiar with Uno, you might go with Dos or Flip for variety. They're both really enjoyable, too.
posted by stormyteal at 10:16 AM on March 10, 2021

We’re still having lots of fun with Cranium, though make sure there is one Gen X+ person on each team.
posted by childofTethys at 11:21 AM on March 10, 2021

My mother had early onset dementia, and Fluxx was too much for her; the rules are on all the cards on the table, but the rules can start stacking up and strategizing for a win can get complicated and frustrating. I love Codenames but it might be too much too. It’s a great game, but getting people to think sideways about the word association can be tricky. On the other hand, if the person with dementia and the person they are partnered with know each other really well, it might work – it’s really hard to say.

However, she loved Uno. Phase 10 also worked well if she was having a good day. You might try Zombie Dice?
posted by joycehealy at 11:57 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

My dad had dementia and it was very frustrating for him to not be able to come up with words. I feel like anything speedy can really be frustrating.

So many of these games require you to remember a name for something. Not being able to come up with a word -- whether it's because of dementia or because you wouldn't have anyway - can make you think about your dementia.

I've played almost all of these - and my favorite for this instance would be wits and wagers.
posted by beccaj at 12:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

I saw a comment on reddit about someone's grandmother having dementia. They played Uno where she understood enough to play a card but not the rules. They just accepted her as a wild card which added some unpredictability to the game. When it was her turn, it could totally change how the game was going. I thought it was such a cool story about finding a fun way to include someone having trouble understanding the rules.
posted by stray thoughts at 12:46 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]

My husband and I have a deep and abiding addiction to the card game Fluxx. It's easy to learn and it's much more about luck than it is about strategy, which might be appealing to people who aren't usually into games because they might find them too cerebral or challenging. One thing to watch out for--it is somewhat unconventional in that there are cards that change the rules and object of the game, which can take a bit of adjustment.
posted by zeusianfog at 1:13 PM on March 10, 2021

There is a game by the people who made Cranium called Whoonu. It’s kind of like apples to apples, but instead of playing a card that matches another card, you play a card from your hand that you think is one of the other player’s favorites. Then that player ranks them (hmm I think I like ketchup more than the Fourth of July...) and everyone gets points based on where their card was ranked. Everyone gets the chance to be the Whoonu and get cards played for them. There’s an element of chance (what if you have five cards and the Whoonu hates them all?!?), and it’s not really skill based as much as based on knowing each other. It’s also a great way to chat with each other and find out weird things (you hate ketchup because an entire bottle spilled on you in third grade?!?)
posted by itsamermaid at 10:51 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

With dementia, find out if there's a game they were already familiar with in their youth, that you haven't played?

Monopoly, Sorry, Yahtzee, Clue, Game of Life?

It's an opportunity to try out a vintage game, or particularly a card game that you may not be familiar with.

Bridge, cribbage, rook? I've never played any of those!

Or ironically, Trivial Pursuits with questions from the 60s or earlier, so that younger players have a disadvantage and are less likely to get the cultural references.
posted by Elysum at 5:31 PM on March 17, 2021