Top 7 family board games
Poppin Hoppies
The idea behind Poppin Hoppies is quite straight forward although, like most good board games, it’s not as easy as it looks.
The Hoppies themselves are small plastic faces with a suction cup on a spring. There are seven of these in assorted colours. The idea is to catch as many of the hoppies as you can as they pop up. Once all of the hoppies have been caught you then exchange each one for a piece of ‘man’ in the same colour. The aim of the game is to complete your plastic man before anyone else.
I played the game with my two children aged five and six. They loved just playing with the hoppies but when we finally got around to playing the game they really enjoyed it, although I found it a bit frustrating. All of the hoppies have to be set before play commences. This is no easy task as no sooner have you set one than another goes off! Also, if a hoppie is not caught during the game it needs to be reset on the board. OK if you are very dextrous or have children who can set them but as the only person playing who seemed to be capable of this function, or indeed catch them, I seemed to spend most of the time setting the hoppies! The children did take a little while to understand the rules too but did get the hang of it after a few rounds.
Overall, the game is appealing to look at, with its bright colours and smiley faces and as it only takes 10-15 minutes to complete a round (possibly less if played without children), it’s an entertaining game to play for those who don’t have a long attention span (eg, my children!). And once the game is over, those hoppies will be played with for a lot longer!
cl-pinkmelly
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Smart Ass
The game looked really fun and I quite liked the name too! I played it with a few friends, all of whom are board game lovers like me.
In short this game is about answering questions fast. There are three categories – ‘What Am I?’, ‘ Where Am I?’ and ‘Who Am I?’. Depending on the colour you land on, you get a different category. Each question card lists 10 clues. The player whose turn is to read the question, begins reading the clues and the other players can yell out the answer whenever they want. Whoever guesses the answer first, moves forward. However each player gets only one guess so being fast is not always a good strategy if you are not too sure about the answer.
There are other tricky elements of the game – the Dumb Ass space (landing there means you are silenced from answering the next question), the Hard Ass space (you get to answer a question from an extra hard category) and the Kick Ass space (you move three spaces back, this one is very dangerous!).
We had great fun playing this game and shouting out the wrong answers turned out to be very entertaining. I have to say, some of the questions that required history and geography knowledge were a bit difficult but on the plus side, I learned a few facts. In my opinion the What Am I? category is the most amusing one especially when after 10 clues you can’t guess the word ‘pocket’, some of the clues are very misleading!
Although this game might not be very suitable for young children, I would definitely recommend it for a gathering with friends.
Community_Stef
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LOGO The Best of TV & Movies
This is the first game I have played by 'Logo' and I have to say that I am very impressed and will definitely lookout for them in the future and when my children are a little older I will definitely purchase more.
I played this game with family in two small teams of three people and we ranged from 21 and 62 years old. I was concerned that my old Mum and Dad might struggle but I need not have worried. The questions are fab and covered such a broad range that everyone was involved and was trying and in a lot of cases me and my brother being the 'youngsters' meant that we didn't know some of the answers.
The board and pieces are good quality and sturdy and I think they will last a long time.
I loved the fact that it covered so many different shows and movies and I can see that this could easily be played over and over again without ever getting boring.
It's nice to actually have a fun 'real board' game without worrying about all the super interactive stuff or trying to find batteries.
We all had great fun and my family have booked the game for Boxing Day with more people. I think I might struggle to get it back.
giraffebaby
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LOGO What Am I?
Myself, my husband and our three children aged 7,10 and 12 played Logo What am I?
The game is easy to understand and a lot of fun - describing, drawing and asking questions about brand names and products. We were surprised that the game didn’t include identifying or drawing the actual logos, it was more about people guessing the product name, so for Kleeneze you could draw a clean floor.
I felt that the adults are at an advantage with this game as a lot of the product names are not ones children would necessarily know, and because the person who guessed the answer correctly also gets to move forward, if an adult answers a lot of questions correctly they move forward very quickly.
This is a quick game to play and we finished it within half an hour, although this felt a bit short it is great for a quick after dinner game that dosn’t go on and on like some others we have.
I think all in all it's a fun game which would be best played as teams of adults and children, or all adults or all children.
sara73041
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Trivial Pursuit Family Edition
Being a family who enjoy playing board games on rainy weekends we were quite excited to be able to try out the new family edition of Trivial Pursuit. I have never played Trivial Pursuit before so the whole game was new to me, although my partner has in the past.
Me, my partner, my eldest daughter aged 9 and youngest daughter aged 8 played the game with my youngest son aged 5 helping daddy as he was a little too young to join in properly. The instructions were very easy to follow and it was quick to set up and get going.
I loved the way that there was a specific set of questions for children and a separate set for adults as it made playing with the whole family possible. I also found that it was quite educational for the children too, teaching them facts they didn’t know and making them think hard about the ones they did. Both girls got most of their questions right and so the age guide of being 8+ is just right in my opinion. We found both of the question sets for adults and children quite fun to answer too.
The game concept of moving around the board, answering questions and winning wedges for those categories you get right is very easy to grasp, all in all we found this a very enjoyable game that the children are already asking to play again.
Trivial Pursuit Family Edition is a definite must have in the games collection of any family who enjoy playing board games and I’ll certainly be recommending it to people I know. Needless to say though my partner the Trivial Pursuit expert won, but I’m keen to change that on the next game we play!
flufumps
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Pointless
I was really excited to try this board game as Pointless is one of my husband's favourite game shows. We played the game when friends came around for the evening and they were all impressed with the game.
It really is suitable for both adults and older children with questions covering such an enormous range of subjects that there is very little chance of the questions getting old and stale. And because of this range it spans the generations extremely well. And not the children would be keen on knowing this, but all the adults thought the questions were also extremely educational for many topics. We also liked the fact that it can be played in teams as well as individuals.
The inside of the box showed everything laid out nicely, looked inviting and there were even pencils included for the score cards as well as the all important Pointless Trophy! Rules were explained both in a long format and also with the 'quick start' leaflet which is the method we used to get started. It was easy to follow and we had several very enjoyable games. This is definitely a board game that won't gather dust in a cupboard as we are already planning to play every week when we all get together.
Overall we all felt that playing Pointless was far from being pointless and would really recommend this as being an ideal board game for families, couples and anyone else you can lure in. Brilliant game.
nigelsmum
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Sort It Out
On getting the game out of its box, and reading the rules, we were a bit confused by the backwards and forwards spaces, and the complexity of the topics to sort. However once sitting down to play it soon became clear – wing it!
Originally, we hadn’t realised the game was for age 12+ - and our intention had been to let our 'OCD at putting things in order' five-year-old play this - but have soon realised that in teams of Husband & five y/o Vs. myself & 13 y/o – we have a lot of fun
The board itself is a nice size – nothing worse than needing a massive area on which to play – so that was a good start. And the Tile Holders are also very cool; our five-year-old spent a lot of time putting the tiles in the slots before we even started playing!
As I said – winging it was my aim when playing – who on earth knows which order the significant events occurred in Bill Gates life?! Or how many babies in a common opossum litter (or even what one of those is?!). So it became more about guessing and laughing at how wrong we were rather than being knowledgeable, which made it lots more fun for the younger players.
It was lots of fun and I can’t wait to sit with guests over Christmas and play with more people, I’m sure it will be even better!
tastybaker
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