10 Best Family Board Games for All Ages

10 Best Family Board Games for All Ages

Board gaming are an amazing family activity, but if you have a wide age range of kids in your house hold, finding games everyone in the family can play together is a real challenge.  Games that allow your youngest gamers to participate are often too simple to keep older kids engaged, while the games older kids want to play are to complex for the young kids.  The following games can be played and enjoyed from preschool age all the way up to adults.  Keep reading to see our best family board games for all ages!

[Stephanie’s note: If the voice sounds different it’s because this post was written by Tyler, my husband, and originally published on Kidsloveboardgames.com which is now defunct!]

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Pin this round-up of family board games with this photo or link!

10 Best Family Board Games for All Ages

When you’re shopping for games, consider looking on Facebook marketplace for secondhand, buying from your local, small board game shop/toy shop, searching on Ebay, or checking Kidizen for used games. These are linked to Amazon for convenience but we’d much prefer you shop secondhand and/or small when you’re able!

Animal Upon Animal by Haba

In Animal Upon Animal players take turn stacking animal shaped pieces with the goal of getting all their pieces on the stack first.  The odd piece shapes keep the tower very unstable and makes it so every player, no matter the age can win.  This is a great game for players preschool aged to adult and one everyone in the family can enjoy together!

• Number of players: 2-4
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 4+
• What we like best: Unique piece shapes encourage creativity, quality wood game pieces
• Prerequisite skills: Coordination to pick up and stack animals
• Kids will learn: Coordination, fine motor skills, creativity

Sleeping Queens by GameWright

This was the first game I can say our kids were officially OBSESSED with.  Sleeping Queens is a turn based card game where players try to wake queens to score the most points.  There are lots of ways to interfere with your opponents strategy (stealing queens or putting them back to sleep) which adds a fun twist to this game that your kids will love.  The recommended age from the manufacturer is 8+, but this game is easy to pick up for younger gamers as well.  Our kids started with this game around age 4, and still love it when we play as a family years later!

• Number of players: 2-5
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 8+
• What we like best: Quick turns, card art is fun, very competitive regardless of skill, good with only two players
• Prerequisite skills: Ability to remember the powers of multiple cards and recognize and order numbered cards
• Kids will learn: Counting, number recognition, addition, card game strategy

Camp by Education Outdoors

Camp is a ‘traditional’ style of board game where players roll a die to advance their animal around the board and back to the campsite.  As players advance around the board they have the opportunity to answer nature based trivia to extend their turns.  Camp is very quick to learn, and there are 4 different difficulty levels on the trivia cards so the whole family can play together and everyone will learn something new! There is also entertaining animal fact cards that come into play as you work your way around the board.

• Number of players: 2-4
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 4+
• What we like best: Easy to learn, countless trivia questions, wide age range of kids can play together
• Prerequisite skills: Ability to comprehend and answer age appropriate questions
• Kids will learn: Nature trivia, younger gamers will also learn counting, and reading when they are ready

Ticket to Ride – First Journey or Ticket to Ride by Days of Wonder

Ticket to Ride – First Journey is a simplified version of the full game Ticket to Ride. There are a few different versions of this game, check out the Ticket to Ride Versions: Comprehensive Guide for more options!  Players build tracks between cities to complete route cards to win the game.  Both game challenges players to find the route and determine the most efficient way to complete it with the cards they have.  These games have a similar feel, first Journey doesn’t require the ability to read, and plays more quickly with less strategic decision making.  Both games play well combining a large age range of kids, choose the one that is right for your family!

• Number of players: 2-4
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 6+
• What we like best: Pictures by each city allow kids who can’t read yet to play, challenging/fun for older kids as well
• Prerequisite skills: Ability to plan and execute a strategy over multiple turns (collecting the right cards and building a route)
• Kids will learn: Geography, strategic thinking, creativity, identifying multiple solutions to the same problem

KaBoom by Blue Orange

Kaboom is a great family game for up to 5 players.  Players create towers to earn points while their opponents try to knock the towers down!  Kids as young as four can understand the rules and compete at this game, but older kids and adults will also have a blast launching cubes at each other’s towers! Also check out the full Kaboom game review.

• Number of players: 2-5
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 6+
• What we like best: Great for burning energy on a rainy day, high quality wood pieces, unique concept
• Prerequisite skills: Fine motor skills to launch dice and build small pieces into towers
• Kids will learn: Fine motor skills, dealing with frustration (when your tower gets destroyed!)

Blokus by Mattel Games

If your family is into puzzles, Blokus is the perfect game for you.  Players compete fitting odd-shaped pieces onto a grid and trying to fit more pieces on the grid than their opponents.  Kids around four or five can understand the rules and play this game competitively, but older family members will also be challenged playing this game!

• Number of players: 2-4
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 5+
• What we like best: Unique rules for piece placement really challenge the brain, quality plastic pieces, easy to play cooperatively with new players as they learn the game
• Prerequisite skills: Piece placement is unique and confusing, kids will need the ability/patience to figure it out
• What does the game teach? Spatial thinking, strategy, fine motor skills

Robot Turtles by ThinkFun

This is a really unique game that will provide hours of entertainment.  Players ‘program’ their turtle to find a diamond by playing cards that tell the turtle to turn left or right, or go forward.  The game has a lot of built in mechanisms to keep increasing the difficulty as your kids learn and grow, and different players can play different versions of the game at the same time so your older and younger kids can play the version that’s right for them together!

• Number of players: 2-5
• Manufacturer age recommendation: 3+
• What we like best: Different age kids can play the different versions at the same time so everyone stays engaged, unique concept,  game grows with your kids and stays challenging
• Prerequisite skills: Ability to break down a goal into smaller steps
• Kids will learn: Planning, left/right, spatial thinking, communication

Enchanted Forest by Ravensburger

Enchanted Forest is an interesting blend of a memory game and board game, players search under trees for various items and then travel to a castle and try to remember where the items are.  The game involves lots of racing to the castle and remembering not only where you’ve looked but also where other players have looked to determine where items are located.  Ignore the age recommendation of 8+ on this one kids from four or older will love this game!

• Number of Players: 2-6
• Manufacturer Age Recommendation: 8+
• What we like best:  Lots of playing interaction and reading other players, ability to move both directions on the board in one turn for unique strategic play
• Prerequisite skills:  Counting, basic dice concepts
• Kids will learn:  Memory, addition, reading people

Rory’s Story Cubes by GameWright

For creative game play, Rory’s Story Cubes is the perfect fit for families with a large age range.  While the concept is really simple (roll the dice and create a story using all the pictures) the possibilities are endless and its great to see the creativity that comes out as kids are creating stories.  Younger gamers may not understand some of the pictures, but this game is cooperative so it’s very easy to play this game with kids as young as three!

• Number of Players: 1+
• Manufacturer Age Recommendation: 8+
• What we like best:  Endless possibilities, there are a ridiculous amount of dice combinations possible and when combined with player’s creativity every game is unique and entertaining
• Prerequisite skills: Ability to put a concept into a sentence
• Kids will learn:  Creativity and communication

Ghost Fighting Treasure Hunters by Mattel

Ghost Fighting Treasure Hunters is another cooperative game when families work together to remove treasure from a haunted house before being overrun with ghosts and ghouls.  This game is simple enough for younger gamers to understand and the cooperative nature of this game sets up a great way to include them while older kids and adults help guide them through some of the strategy.

• Number of Players: 2-4
• Manufacturer Age Recommendation: 8+
• What we like best:  How quick the game turns from feeling like you are in control, to wondering if you can make it out with the treasure in time!
• Prerequisite skills: Understanding of dice, and ability to work toward an end strategy.
• Kids will learn:  Communication, evaluating multiple options and making a strategic decision

Get Your Family Board Game On!

I hope you can use these games to get the family to the board game table together!  What games do you love to play that work great as family board games for all ages?  Comment below!