10 Best Board Games for Kids – Destructoid

Playing board games with kids can be more than just a fun family time. Board games can be a way for your kids to develop critical thinking, cooperative skills, and determination. I’ve put together this list of games that are good old-fashioned fun, games that get their creativity flowing, and games that get them thinking hard and working with others to solve problems.

Here are some of the best board games for your kids.

Give your child’s imagination and creativity free rein with What now?a game so exceptionally innovative and unique that I want to play it as an adult.

In What now? You each choose one of three adventures to go on. Each of these adventures is heavily influenced by the player’s actions and decisions, which makes for a great deal of replayability. The best thing about What Next? is the tangible resolution to make your actions succeed or fail.

Every decision you make requires you to complete a challenge, from picking to throwing and catching, to building shapes and more. These little real mini-games provide a constant stream of fun and engaging challenges as you get lost in an endlessly creative and enjoyable story.

In Zombie Teenz Evolution, Your kids will work together to avert a zombie apocalypse. It’s easy to learn and you can join in on the fun. And don’t worry, the game isn’t particularly violent or gory, making it great for kids.

Zombie Teenz Evolution is a particularly interesting board game because it is a legacy game, meaning your kids can permanently upgrade skills by placing stickers as they complete special missions in the game. There are also 14 exciting envelopes that can only be opened at certain points, providing a tangible mystery for them to aim for.

Although Zombie Kidz Evolution may seem more appropriate, this sequel game is not much more complicated and you may find it more fun. However, if your little ones are particularly young, then Zombie Kidz Evolution might be a wiser decision.

I played a lot of games of Labyrinth against my grandparents as a child, and only sometimes break the rules. In a simple but highly tactical game, you try to move your tokens to collect the treasure that only you know you want. After a player’s turn, however, they may move a lane of the labyrinth to obstruct paths and block escapes.

Labyrinth is an exciting game every time, for the players’ objectives and the board changes at the start of each game. The tactile nature of moving the board is satisfying, and having to piece together what treasure your opponents want calls for a cunning calculation that I have only experienced with this game.

Where every change of management is petty and personal, Labyrinth is a fantastic choice for all ages. In fact, I think I might want to play a game now…

For a cooperative card game with outrageous tasks and hilarious sentences, That escalated quickly is ready to be played.

That escalated quickly Players must answer prompts according to how tame or extreme they want them to be. Of course, there will be crazy answers to prompts, and it is up to the reader to determine the scaling order of the absurd answers.

Because players have different perspectives, stupid discussions and stupid conversations arise. They disagree about how gross a pug would be as an ingredient for cookies.

A classic and a fixture of childhood, Mousetrap is an exciting game with tactile traps and fun devices. This is one of the few games where setting it up is as much fun as playing it, and getting caught in the trap itself is still a fun activity.

Mousetrap fills the creativity and innovation of a child’s mind, and seeing the litany of exciting traps is part of the fun. The game itself plays out as Snakes and ladderswhich is already a simple and fun game. So adding interactive and flashy traps to it makes it even more exciting.

Entertaining the children before, during and after the match, Mousetrap is a good choice.

I hear more and more about parents who regularly Ticket to drive games with their children. However, for most younger children, this can be too complicated or take too long. For those families, it is Ticket to Ride First Journey is an excellent backup.

With a shorter game with fewer cards and complexity, Ticket to Ride First Journey offers a lighter experience that still hits all the fun marks of the original. Building a railway is super satisfying and the decision-making is retained despite the condensation of components.

For a more involved competitive game with decision making that takes no longer than an hour to play, Ticket to Ride First Journey is a fantastic choice.

The game of life introduces your kids to the existential problem of “How do I make enough money before I get old and die?” But for some reason, it’s super fun.

Use the spinner instead of dice when moving The game of life is very satisfying and novel, something I always enjoyed experimenting with as a youngster. Being able to go through the board and make real life decisions such as education, career, property and marriage allows them to inflate their hopes and dreams before they are crushed later in life by the modern economic state of the world.

For a tactile game where the player’s decisions affect the game, The game of life provides a fun experience that is different every time.

Herd mentality is an engaging party game made by those who play it. It’s all about announcing a question and predicting what your friends and family will think.

In a game where it’s best to win if you know each other, you’ll also discover some fun truths and get into funny discussions about shocking answers. Herd mentality has low stakes, is engaging and provides real interaction.

As your family gets to know each other in a fun way, you will notice Herd mentality to be the easy and lightweight card game you need.

For a game of deceit and family betrayal, The Chameleon is fun, as long as your kids have a poker face.

In The ChameleonEveryone knows the correct word except one player, and they must join in and play along as if they know the word. While you have to be very careful with your word choice, both as a chameleon and not, this game requires critical thinking in a fun, engaging, and collective environment.

You may need to make sure your children fully understand the words and references, but this shouldn’t be too difficult to check.

Battleship is a classic, sure, but not typically associated with children. I played this game a lot as a kid and loved it. While it is ultimately a guessing game, figuring out the best places to strike and how to sink the ships you hit is exciting and exercises your critical thinking skills.

Being able to place the ships and their corresponding pegs on the board is tactile enough to keep people engaged, and the tension of anticipating a “hit!” is there with every turn. Battleship is simple but very involving, and it’s always entertaining to watch a game when you have an odd number of people wanting to play.

Just make sure they don’t get their “G” and “J” mixed up, that will save a lot of arguments…

Now that you have a nice selection of board games that the whole family will enjoy, all that’s left to do is pick one to play.