210 – Party Games for Family Gatherings – The Family Gamers Podcast

It’s Labor Day weekend in the US. If you’re getting together with family, what games will you play? We recommend party games that are good at 4-8 players and across generations.

Fact: Class 210 patents are about purifying or treating water (or other liquids).

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What We’ve Been Playing

Animix (Blue Orange Games) – This game feels familiar, but we can’t figure out why. Lay out a central tableau; on your turn, play a card from your hand – either face down into your own space, or swapping it with a card from the central tableau. Once all cards are played out, each animal scores for the player who has the most of that animal.

Color It! (HABA) – Exactly what we want a “my first roll and write” to be.

Filler (Green Couch Games) – Claire wants to play more food-themed games. What’s your favorite?

Pan Am (Funko Games) – We found out this week that it’s not as good at 3 players; the early game is very frustrating with that many workers on the board. We have theories on how to make this better.

Ancestree (Calliope Games) – one of Eric Lang’s lesser known titles, since he doesn’t do many family games. One of our favorites!

Dice Throne (Roxley Games) – We like it best “king of the hill” style with 3+ players. You’re always motivated to bring down the leader.

Kingdomino (Blue Orange) – Math practice at the end of a fun game. Even our youngest got practice “counting by 2s” and other mutlipliers.

Tajuto (Super Meeple / Luma Imports) – we released our review today. It starts disappointingly slowly, but otherwise it’s great.

Rock Paper Switch (Mindware) – As we said in our review, it’s hardest at more than two players. Watch out for the wild color(s)!

Harry Potter: House Cup Competition (The Op) – Perfectly themed worker placement game.

Quick plug for Anitra’s blog post to encourage parents to stick with the hard work of parenting.

SNAP Review: Smoosh & Seek Treehouse

Corey and his daughter tell us about this darling, cheerful cooperative game.

This game is intended for very young children, using “smoosh dough” to add a tactile component to a simple memory game. Read the summary and see more pictures on our SNAP review page.

Backtalk

In episode 208, we recommended games under $20. Lots of people gave us their recommendations too!

See our Facebook community post. Our personal favorites from the suggestions are The Crew (for 3+), Similo (also great for families), along with No Thanks and For Sale.

Calli from Unfiltered Gamer shared with us the video she just made on this topic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If4N9VTWGiY&list=PLmIIYFy7QwO7S5-OWU9P5k31d22p-v2m4&index=2

Dawn Pleet recommends Silver & Gold, Point Salad (Andrew can’t get into Point Salad). We want to try Silver & Gold – maybe for our upcoming anniversary!

Party Games for the Family

We’re defining “party games” as ones that work well at more than four players.

Anomia Kids (Anomia Press) is a great example of a “kids” game that is great for adults. It takes the Anomia trivia game style and removes the need for domain knowledge (or even reading!)

Throw Throw Burrito – just plain silly. Who wouldn’t like to throw a foam burrito at your friends? Best at 4+ players.

Deep Sea Adventure (Oink Games) – This game accomodates 2-6 players. It feels very different at the various player counts, but always good as a press-your-luck game.

Castle Panic (Fireside Games) – Get your family to cooperate! Not a whole lot of reading, accommodates up to 6 players without expansions.

Concept Kids (Repos) – or Concept if you’re less worried about domain knowledge. We love the rotating team idea – everyone stays engaged for the whole game, and teams can’t be “unfair” because they don’t stay the same for the whole game.

Just One (Repos) – Up to 7 players for this word-guessing and cluing game. We have figured out how to play this while including non-readers.

Telestrations (The Op) – Up to 8 players and requires some reading. But there is an option in the Telestrations family to accomodate non-readers! Play Telestrations:Upside Drawn, a team game that involves drawing.

Bananagrams – Up to 8 players for this word-building game that isn’t about huge vocabulary or area-control (I’m looking at you, Scrabble). There are a “bunch” of variations in the official rules that allow you to make it more or less cut-throat as needed.

That’s it for this week! See episode 96 (Mothers Day) or episode 90 (multi-generational games) for more suggestions.

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