Light (esp. video) games for family game night

August 15, 2023 3:35 PM

My family has a game night once a week. Since we have a mix of ages (9, 12, forties, occasionally twenties) it can be a little hard to find something that works for everyone. We'd love to have more suggestions!

Our game nights can be board or video games, as long as everyone can participate simultaneously. Sometimes we play a word-focused board game like Bananagrams or The Last Word, but most often recently we've been hopping onto our computers, starting a Zoom, and going to skribble.io (a Pictionary-like multiplayer game). The kids have played Settlers like once but are otherwise uninitiated into the world of European/modern American games.

Skribble.io has a strong advantage: if our adult daughter wants to join our game night from afar, she can just join the Zoom and we can give her a link to the Skribble game. HOWEVER, it has some disadvantages: the older of my kids is getting a little bored with it, and younger is frustrated with it because their processing speed isn't super fast and that means earning fewer points (which they take seriously).

While we'd love to hear board game suggestions that work for us (any cooperative board games that a deliberative 9yo could feel good playing?), it would be especially interesting to hear of other (free?) multiplayer online games in which we could create our own private rooms/game instances. Ideally without the things that make it hard for our youngest to enjoy themselves: timed tasks, and trying to win against everyone older than them. Bonus points if it involves a unique strength of my youngest: visually correlating patterns or small picture elements across different pictures or over time.

posted by a snickering nuthatch to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (13 answers total)

Response by poster: (We also have a Wii with four controllers, so we would be interested to hear if there are any excellent cooperative Wii games with four player support; we have a Switch and two JoyCon pairs, but we could justify getting a couple more JoyCons if the perfect Switch game existed for us.)
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 3:40 PM on August 15, 2023

Have you tried the Jackbox games? Some of them have family settings (some of them are less family friendly). We have a card game called Mantis that the ten year old regularly kicks our butts at.
posted by dpx.mfx at 3:52 PM on August 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

Have you tried Overcooked on Switch? It’s a super fun game where you try to get out kitchen orders as soon as possible. It can be a little stressful with the wrong crowd, but I actually think it’s a great way to model and practice team communication. You can just go for it, but I also think it might be fun to put your youngest one in charge, and have them assign roles and responsibilities. They’ll probably learn alot about the challenges of leadership. If you want to check it out before buying, there are a lot of YouTube demos.
posted by tinymegalo at 4:01 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: along with Overcooked there's Catastonauts.

more word games: So Clover!, Just One, Letter Jam.
more picture/pattern matching: Codenames Pictures, Spot It!, Circus Flohcati.
posted by ApathyGirl at 5:04 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

For my family's boardgame night, we've found that games where the players take simultaneous turns work the best. There's less frustration and distraction when there's less time between turns. Games with short, easy turns also work well for these reasons. We've gotten a lot of mileage out of CamelUp, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, and Azul.
posted by skwm at 6:13 PM on August 15, 2023

Best answer: Something along the lines of skribbl.io is Gartic Phone, if you're familiar with Whisper down the lane or telephone, but it's drawing-centric and there's different variations too. You can remove or extend time limits.

I believe the Mario Party series on Wii, the board game is cooperative-esk, as you are progressing together in the same vehicle, the minigames are varying levels of cooperation.
posted by QueenHawkeye at 6:43 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Among Us had its heyday during the early days of COVID. There aren't any points per se but it requires that people be voted out by their fellow players to weed out the Imposter(s). Unsure if that will cause family strife, if people will feel ganged up on, but it's worth a look?

Available on multiple platforms, too.
posted by tinydancer at 8:48 PM on August 15, 2023

We do a weekly zoom with family and mainly focus on dice games. Farkle and Yahtzee are the mainstays and just require six dice at each location. Quix and our new find: Chicken! rely on each location having a copy of the game.
posted by icaicaer at 4:54 AM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not video and a little expensive, but Mysterium is a cooperative game that’s a lot of fun and works for the full age range (though you’ll want an adult to be the Ghost, at least for the first few times).
posted by Mchelly at 5:19 AM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Boomerang Fu isn't deep but it's something my son is psyched to play with us every now and then.
posted by HeroZero at 4:49 PM on August 16, 2023

I definitely recommend the Jackbox games. Even if family can't participate in the room, they can join the audience wherever they are are and still have fun.

Humble Games has a collection of them right now for $20 (or more, if you decide to pay more) here. All it takes is one computer or TV and everyone plays on their phone or tablet. I've played with family of all ages - like a group of 20+ people - and as long as I turned on family-friendly content, it went well.
posted by tacodave at 5:48 PM on August 16, 2023

Best answer: Forbidden Island is a great co-op game for all ages. My daughter was super into it starting at age 7 and I still play it with adult gaming friends.
posted by Threeve at 5:11 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: GarticPhone went over great with the family! I've played Forbidden Island before and I think it will also be an excellent choice. Thank you everyone for your answers!
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 2:00 PM on August 27, 2023