Our family loves to play board games. When it’s time for family game night at the Geek On A Dime household, there are a few games we find ourselves returning to repeatedly. Whether we’re in the mood for thrilling competitiveness, sneaky strategy, or adventurous mystery, these six family board games will give your family endless nights of fun and laughter.
Each section below highlights a board game’s features briefly explains the rules and gives our family’s impressions. Even games we love have cons along with pros, and we here at Geek On A Dime try our best to provide a fair assessment of the products we review.
Ticket to Ride
My son absolutely loves trains. He has multiple Lego trains, a detailed train poster, and several train t-shirts with cheesy train puns (Who Tooted is my favorite). Thus, when we saw this game at a local toy store, we knew we had to own it.
The object of this family board game is to have the most points at the end of the game(obviously). To do this, you connect cities on the board using train tokens, complete objectives on destination cards and have the longest train route by the end of the game. You can perform three actions on your turn: draw two train cards, claim a train route, or draw destination cards. Routes are color-coded to match the different train cards, and you must have the correct number of cards to claim a route.
Ticket to Ride requires a bit of forethought, as having a good idea of which routes you want to claim early on can lead to developing a strategy for victory. Because of this, our youngest had a difficult time understanding how to win points. We recommend patiently guiding their choices if playing with children under six or waiting until they are older.
Ticket to Ride is a fun and strategic board game for family game night. We highly recommend it to anyone who likes to think two steps ahead or is obsessed with everything to do with trains.
Shadows in the Forest
The name might sound ominous, but unless you are afraid of the dark, there is nothing scary about this charming, adorable family board game.
In Shadows in the Forest, you are a curious explorer known as the Seeker on a quest to find the elusive darkness-dwelling creatures called Shadowlings. This board game can only be played in, you guessed it, the dark. One player is chosen as the Seeker, while two to four players take the role of the Shadowlings.
Setting up involves assembling several cardboard trees placed randomly on the board and attaching white masks to the Shadowling figures. The trees act as hiding places for the Shadowlings and the masks indicate whether a Shadowling can move. An LED lantern represents the Seeker. The lantern is placed on the red starting stone, and then the lights go out. The Seeker leaves the room, and the Shadowling players work together to put each Shadowling in a separate tree hiding spot. The Seeker turns on the lantern, rolls a glow-in-the-dark six-sided die, and moves the lantern that many spaces across the stone path. If the light from the lantern falls on a Shadowling, it is frozen in place, loses its white mask, and cannot move until one or more Shadowlings touches it and restores its mask.
The Shadowlings must be careful, however. If one of them touches the light while moving, it also becomes frozen. The goal is to bring all the Shadowlings together into one hiding spot without being touched by the light. If they manage to do this, the Shadowling players will win. If the Seeker manages to freeze all the Shadowlings before they can gather, the Seeker player wins.
Shadows in the Forest is a straightforward game, perfect for younger and older players. The sense of suspense and adventure makes this game stand out, and the kids often ask us grown-ups to play it with them. The only drawback to this sneaky strategy game is also its most interesting feature: finding a time and place dark enough to play it. If you can, it will make for a fantastic family game night.
Blokus XL
I received Blokus for my birthday, and it was one of the first family board games in our collection. The Geek On A Dime littles were fairly young, but they immediately caught on to this game’s simple rules and strategy. It brought out a level of competitiveness we didn’t know existed in the wee ones until that day. “Blocked you!” became a family catchphrase, even when we weren’t playing this popular board game.
As I said before, Blokus is simple to learn. Each player receives a different colored set of shapes made up of squares arranged in Tetris-like configurations. On their turn, each player places one of their pieces on the board, requiring it to touch at least one corner of their other pieces. The goal is to get as many of your pieces on the board before space runs out. Once you cannot place any of your pieces, you are out of the game until it’s time to tally points. You can block another player’s future moves by placing one of your pieces in their way, thus blocking them. The score is tallied once the last player cannot put more of their pieces. The maximum score is 15; for each piece not placed, that player must subtract one from their total—the player with the highest total wins.
We have much fun developing strategies, placing pieces, and countering each other’s moves. When the kids were younger, Being blocked was somewhat frustrating for them. Now that they are older, however, they have become brutal tacticians, frequently countering our moves and using sneaky tactics to secure victory. Yay?
Seriously, though, this is our household’s single most-played family board game. It’s fast, easy, and a blast. Get it for your family, but don’t be surprised if your kids start shouting, “Blocked you!”
Photosynthesis
In Photosynthesis, you take on the role of an arborist. Your goal is to control as much of the forest with your species of tree as you can, while denying space for other players’ trees. Within each round, a sun token is moved around the board, representing the sun’s rays on the forest. You spend light points to buy trees, and on your turn place them on the board. Trees come in small, medium, or large sizes. Board spaces are marked seed icons, showing how valuable they are. As the sun moves around the board, light points are gained by how many of each player’s trees receive sunlight. Depending on the position of the sun, some trees may be blocked from receiving sunlight by other trees.
The game ends after three complete rotations of the sun, at which point scores are tallied. The sizes of trees and their positions in the forest each contribute to the number of score tokens each player has. As usual, the player with the highest point total wins!
We like tree-based games, and this is the one we play the most. The gameplay strategy is surprisingly complex, but not so much that anyone but the youngest kids will be frustrated. The colorful design, unique game mechanics, and nature theme make Photosynthesis a great family game. Just plant yourself down and let it grow on you! (Yes, plant puns are not beneath me.)
Kingdomino
Kingdomino puts a clever spin on classic tile-laying games, blending simple mechanics with strategic depth. Each player selects one of four colored king tokens along with a matching castle, which serves as the center of their budding kingdom. The game’s domino-style tiles feature two terrain types per tile—fields, lakes, forests, mines, wheat fields, or swamps. These tiles are shuffled and arranged in a vertical column, face-up, with a second row of face-down tiles placed to the right.
The first player is chosen randomly. Players take turns placing their king token on a face-up tile of their choice, with the catch that the order for the next round is determined by the value of the tiles chosen—stronger tiles (those with crowns that boost scoring) come with the trade-off of a later pick in the following round. Players collect their chosen tile once all tiles have been claimed and add it to their personal 5×5 kingdom grid.
The first tile can be placed freely next to the castle, but every tile afterward must connect to at least one matching terrain type. For instance, a tile with a swamp and a mine must be placed touching an existing swamp or mine tile. The goal is to form large contiguous regions of the same terrain type while maximizing crowns within those regions, as final scoring multiplies the number of connected matching tiles by the number of crowns within that region.
Play continues until all tiles have been placed, at which point players tally their scores. The player with the highest total wins! Because of its quick playtime and ever-changing tile arrangements, we often find ourselves playing multiple rounds in one sitting—partly to refine our strategies but mostly because we can’t resist the charm of building our medieval kingdoms!
Marrakech
Welcome to the competitive world of carpet sales! Marrakech is one of our all time favorite family board games. It’s colorful, easy to learn, fast-paced, and competitive. It covers a lot of ground. Just like a carpet. Okay, that was a bad joke.
The goal of Marrakech is to dominate the market (game board) with your carpets while stifling the carpets of your competitors.Each player starts with a stack of their chosen color carpets, and 30 dirhams (coins). The Assam pawn (the market guide) is placed at the center of the board and the first player is chosen at random.
On a player’s turn, they may choose to rotate Assam 90 degrees left or right. The dice is rolled and the pawn is moved that many spaces. If the player stops on a square occupied by another player’s carpet, that player must pay the owner coins in the number of squares that carpet and any connected carpets occupy. After paying this carpet tax, the player may place one of their own carpets. Carpets take up two squares each and can only be placed adjacent to Assam. Carpets may overlap other players’ carpets, but at least one square per carpet piece must remain visible. Placing carpets strategically is key, as having a large network of uninterrupted carpets will result in a larger carpet tax payout (and lead to the taxed player exacting rug revenge on their next turn).
Once all of the carpets have been laid, the game ends and coins are counted. Whoever has the most coin profit wins the title of best carpet salesperson. Who knew laying carpet could be so fun?
We were not expecting this game to be such a hit with our family, but it has proven again and again to keep us entertained, even as the kids have gotten older. One warning, though: The board is a bit slippery. Place the carpets gently, as many an unsteady hand has messed up someone’s carefully constructed carpet conglomeration.
Thank you for reading this article about Geek On A Dime’s 6 Best Family Card Games! We hope you enjoyed our take on family game night. For more great articles, click on the links below. Until next time, keep on playing!
