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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but since virtually all of us are in quarantine, I thought this might be an opportune time to ask for recommendations on family-friendly (think 3 generations...) board games to play while stuck at home. I really don't want to play Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk, Game of Life or Clue... but have no idea if I should go with Jaws: The Game, Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride

EDIT: Thank you all for the great responses!

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Settlers of Catan and Ticket To Ride are both good intros to so-called European style board games, that tend to lack player-elimination and track win progress abstractly in terms Victory Points rather than money or army strength.

Play time of either of the two is 60-90 minutes, Catan seats 4 and TTR seats 5.

Of the two, I prefer TTR, and if you can find it I recommend Ticket To Ride: Europe over the original American one as it has nicer full size cards, adds a nice friendly track-sharing "station" rule that can get you out of a jam, and has a random-chance "tunnel" rule that can add a bit of excitement to your turn if you succeed or fail to dig a tunnel.

I also suggest watching play-throughs or reviews on YouTube. Geek and Sundry has Tabletop playthroughs with Will Wheaton, and Shut Up And Sit Down has reviews done by a British group.

Settlers of Catan also have a 1vs1 card game spin-off that I like very much. The game was ported online https://catanuniverse.com/en/rivals-for-catan/

Depending on the age groups, my family has had fun with the following various games:

    Settlers of Catan  
    Carcassonne  
    Clash of the Cards  
    Codebreakers (Mastermind)  
    Codenames  
    Cards against humanity  
    Chess  
    Gin Rummy  
    Dice games (10k, etc)  
    Dominoes and variations

codenames (especially the pictures variant) is _always_ popular, with almost everyone. period. they're quick 10-15 minute games, and you can usually go about 3-4 games in a session before people's interest starts to wane. the rules can fit into about three sentences. lots of team collaboration.

not a lot of game theory or strategy or tactics involved, it's all wordplay. which is nice for multi-generational family game night. i've even played with people who don't speak a lot of english (with a bit of translating back and forth) and we all had a blast.

best with 5-7 people, though; 3 minimum but it's not very fun unless you have at least 5.

I've had great success introducing my family to Sagrada. We have a high variance of skill levels and it still keeps everyone well entertained.

For a party style game, I'd recommend "A Fake Artist Goes to New York"

Shut Up and Sit Down is a good resource for this sort of thing. https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/15-great-games-to-fi...

If you'd like far more information than you need to know, https://boardgamegeek.com/ is the definitive online board game community.

A couple recentish, quick games I quite like:

Just One: word game kind of like Taboo, but it's cooperative and there's no time pressure.

Kingdomino: quick tile placement strategy game with a fantasy theme.

... Also Euchre: A card game like bridge, but way simpler, that's popular in the Midwest and Canada (Ontario anyway). My sister and I learned to play with my grandparents when we were in kindergarten.

Evolution is a really good game that stays true to its name and creates really fun situations at the table

It’s also reasonably confrontational but not curt-throat, so you won’t be ruining relationships over it, but won’t be playing multiplayer solitaire either

Hanabi is another good one (there's online versions and a bunch of fun theory)

For the age range that appreciates strategic games, March of the Ants is a pretty fun 4X-like board game where several ant colonies compete to colonize a meadow. A deck system with random draws of ant species customizations and randomized events give a ton of replayability.

I’ve found that quick games are way more popular with my kids - easy to set up and take down. Games like Coup, Love Letter, and Exploding Kittens only take a moment to get ready so you can get in a few rounds before dinner.

Modern Art is a lot of fun, and it helps kids learn about value being a product of the situation around it in some ways.

King of Tokyo by Richard Garfield is an easy to learn family game.

You just reminded me that I was actually gifted this game (with the additional Cthulhu piece!) and it's buried in this house somewhere. I have to go find it!

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