Looking for a new board game that will work for both my wife and myself and our 7yo. Anyone play the Ravensburger Labyrinth game? We have mostly been playing Sleeping Queens and Ticket to Ride recently.
The new Minecraft board game is pretty fun. It is called Builders & Biomes and involves moving around a modular board to collect resources, find weapons, and fight mobs. The scoring rounds each have different ways to score so you do need to think ahead a little. Iām pleasantly surprised (and my 7 year old legitimately beat me the first time we played).
2 Likes
Since the kids arenāt in school, they played Santorini with their mom. My five-year-old set u my wife up with the character card picks and creamed her in a few moves. Iām impressed he remembered Pan as a strong but subtle pick and planned ahead to beat her easily.
I recently picked up Forbidden Desert as a co-op. First game went poorly and my 9yo did not like suddenly losing the game by me running out of water. We played again tonight and did better, so that softened the blow when we ran out of sand tiles and lost. I think it helped he could see the sand pile was getting low.
I picked up Zooloretto this past week and we just played a couple game, the wife, the 7yo and me. Itās a good game for my daughter to start thinking about other peopleās turns, what they are doing, and what they might want to do next. This one took a little longer for them to get into, but by the end of our 2nd game I think they were enjoying it.
It is a good game, but definitely feels like a game from a decade ago, if that makes sense. My kids (7/5) do enjoy it.
1 Like
Planet by Blue Orange Games. This one mostly works. The kids ask to play it quite a bit, however my 5yo hasnāt grasped the need for planning each turn in order to win points to be the overall winner. He getās focused on maximizing his assigned climate type and trying to get his favorite animals.
The game rewards looking ahead and spatial reasoning with the dodecahedron. While possible, it lacks much of a ātake thatā mechanic where you specifically draft something that another player would want. Unless it works well with your own goals, thereās little reward from do so.
I also picked up My Little Scythe. This is well-designed game in a nice package, but itās the heaviest kids game I now own. The kids barely had the attention span to sit through the instructions. We will need to try it with more players since 2-player really hinders earning friendship through the seek action. Since the friendship track is harder to move it makes certain mechanics, like fights not viable without much luck. Verdict will be TBD.
1 Like
I played my little scythe with my tiny army for a while, they love it.
Except pie fights. We explained pie fights, but never used them. Until my wife was playing with them and knocked out the eldest with a pie fight to claim the win.
Holy crap it was table flipping level anger. She literally tried to knock the board off the table and continued in a screaming match for 30mins.
4 Likes
I thought this was a cool read, and worth sharing. 
Feature: 6 Things My Three-Year-Old Taught Me About Video Games, Via Animal Crossing
2 Likes
Iām always looking for games that can help my kids build skills. Saaz on iOS is a great rhythm game for kids. It is a traditional falling notes-style game, but it is minimalist, fairly easily, and all the music is classical. Iām playing through it right now just to prove to my kids that yes, indeed, you can 3-star any song; it isnāt something Iād necessarily want for myself but it seems great for my young kids who canāt handle games like Cytus or Deemo.
1 Like
My new all-time favorite moment as a parent-gamer is when my 8yo last night, playing day 1 of Animal Crossing, had just finished paying off the 5000 bell āmove feeā only to discover in horror that she now needed a 98k bell mortgage for a new house!
My wife actually questioned the value of getting her this game, until this moment, and then decided that this was one of the best learning tools about life and reality.
6 Likes
Thatās awesome.
I had my own proud moment yesterday. There was no lesson learned but my two young kids managed to beat the Kirby game. I think it is the first game they actually played to completion. They were very excited when they beat the final boss and the credits rolled.
4 Likes
Anyone have a good deduction game to play with kids? I was going to try and teach my son Mr. Jack today but that got supplanted by Zooloretto. The problem with Mr. Jack is that it is a 2-player game and we are a family of 4. I was considering buying Scotland Yard, which Iāve never played, or Cryptid, which just looks neat, but I am undecided. Recommendations would be appreciated.
1 Like
As a 10 year old kid, I loved Scotland Yard. At the time I really only had Risk/Monopoly for comparison though. One of the bigger issues is that if you donāt have 6, people have to play multiple detectives, and manage the tickets of each detective separately, which is fine, but not ideal. I still have my copy to this day, but the closest Iāve come to playing in decades is my 3 year old playing with the piecesā¦
Cryptid I would think might be a little too advanced. Iāve played with adults that struggle with the deduction and strategy.
2 Likes
no advice for your question, but we also played a few games of Zooloretto today. Itās become a big hit here.
1 Like
Oh, I donāt like when a game has a required number and if you are below it someone has to play multiple roles. Thanks for that headās up.
Clue is a good one with kids. Easy to learn, you just have to stop them guessing too early.
1 Like
I got the old version of Zendo years ago, and it was a surprising hit (though you need to keep the rules theyāre guessing as simple as possible). The second edition looks just as good, though you donāt get normal Icehouse pieces. But, honestly, I donāt even need them. You could homebrew a set using pieces from other games, or coins, or whatever.
1 Like
Any new or recommended kids iPad games please?
Kids are outgrowing them at an amazing rate at the moment.
They love Tokaido
Not new, but not often spoken of: Santorini, Tsuro, Roll for It
New: Sagrada
Broken: Takenoko (typical Asmodee production has created a pile of garbage out of a promising mobile game. I suppose there may be an update someday).
Not board games: Attack the Light (RPG), Scribblenauts (Puzzle/Spelling), ELOH (Puzzle)
Edit: Dragon Castle might work, too. In general, many abstract games work for kids as they usually involve broader concepts without godly rules.
2 Likes
My 7yo is obsessed with Roblox. In order to get her off that, for the first time ever, I had to go into the parental controls and limit use of an app, which I set to 1 hr a day.
Now this might sound odd, but the other way I got her off Roblox, which was getting obsessive about collecting in-game currency to buy cosmetics, was to buy Animal Crossing for our Switch, which is a more healthy way of collecting and optimizing digital stuff I think.
1 Like