Top 10 Family Board Games – 2024

0:00 my name is Ben this is board game dad and today I'm going to give you my 10 best recommendations for new family board games in 2024 not only that but I also have a free giveaway for you so for details on how you can win one of the games on this list keep watching most of the games on this list are very new published in 2024 or 23 and a few of the games are games that I only recently discovered and I'm just excited to share with you however all of the games satisfy the same three criteria of all of my countdown family lists which is first of all they are accessible for all ages meaning none of the games on the list have very complex rules you can teach these games in less than 10 minutes and play it with anybody number two these are also engaging for all ages which means these aren't just children's games these are games that you could just as well play with a group of adults yet kids are going to find something that is interesting and compelling for them as well and then finally all of the games are enriching by that I mean they all have some strategic depth to them which is going to encourage problem solving or some ways mathematical thinking as you share these games with your kids you can rest assured that they're also going to be enriching for them the first game I'm going to show you is technically not part of the top 10 this game is special because often in

1:31 the comments I hear from people who want advice on how to expose their younger kids to new board games this year I found a new game that I really want to tell you about especially if you think you could use it as a Gateway into some of the other games on this list the game is actually called Gateway Island and this little box actually contains the components for 21 little mini games so it's very generic you're talking about like little colored cubes and some dice and some markers but the idea this is the rule book it's big because it's got 21 games in it the idea is to introduce these mechanics in a very simple uh mini game I thought this was just an excellent tool for hobbyists who want to expose their kids to some of that um some of those conventions so that game is called Gateway Island and you can find out how to purchase it using links in the description at number 10 is a game that at first glance I didn't get very excited about because it kind of just looked like an ordinary tile placing game uh albeit with a gimmick that maybe people would fall for I was pretty sure the kids were going to like it but I just didn't think it was the kind of game I would feature on the top 10 list well I played the game and I changed my mind the game is swordcrafters now sword Crafters is a game where you are drafting tiles to construct a three-dimensional sword but the thing that really makes it stand out

3:03 is whereas most tile Drafting and tile placement games are about tile adjacencies as you lay them on a Surface uh sword and Crafters you're constructing a three-dimensional sword with four faces the end of the game swords are rated on their length and on their quality as well as the sword magic sword magic is just some objectives that are dealt at the beginning of the game but the thing that really makes this game enriching is the games I cut you choose mechanic now if you're not familiar with that here's how it works each player is going to take a turn dividing a group of tiles into two parts so initially you'll have one group of tiles and it'll be cut into two and then from those two groups of tiles you'll cut it into three and then you'll keep doing that until you have one more group than the number of players and then every player is going to pick one group to uh craft onto their sword this is a brilliant mechanic not not only because of the eye cut I choose but because it's a game about making swords and so in the game you're cutting cuz cuz you have swords it my kids were using their swords to actually slice the groups which I thought was adorable um but between the The Cutting mechanic the drafting mechanic and the three-dimensional building mechanic there's just so much going on here that I haven't seen before what a refreshing and exciting new game and it plays up to five players which is great for families who wouldn't want to play that a brilliant game from Adams Apple games sword Crafters the next game is light on

4:34 rules but heavy on strategy which is why it's featured on this list uh it's also got a valuable lesson to it and it's the game foundations of metropolis from Arcane wonders now this is a game where players are Building B buildings in a city grid and before they can build they have to buy the right to a plot of land so there's a market of cards that come out and each card corresponds to one of the plots and so players can use their turn to buy a plot or they can take one of the polyomino buildings from their player board and add it to the city Grid in the place of one or more of their plots of land now if a player doesn't want to buy a plot of land and they don't want to build a building the last thing they can do is they can take coins and that's it there's only three things you can do buy a plot build a building or take income it's a simple rule set but what players have to strategize is everything about this game now the only problem with this game is that I think with kids that are younger than 10 uh that level of strategy is is a little bit more difficult I think it takes practice to work your way up to a game like this with older kids I think it's wonderful um but I I had to include it because it's the the lesson of course is that when it comes to real estate it's all about location location location and it's really going to come across as you play foundations of metropolis I think it's a just a very very clever game um

6:05 similar to Waterfall park or Chinatown if you're familiar with those games but whereas in waterfall Park you are buying from one another in this game you're strictly buying from the market so there is no trade among players which is a a noteworthy feature in a in a game like this foundations of metropolis number eight is a game that I discovered during my research for the video top five games that are better than Ticket to Ride Now if you're familiar with Ticket to Ride you may recognize some of the mechanics about this game it's actually a retheming of the game ethnos if you're familiar with that the game is called archaos Society by Space Cowboys and it's for two to six players now in our KO Society you are archaeologists so the objective of the game is to advance on tracks for victory points now in order to advance on tracks you need to play cards so on your turn you can take one or two cards and what you're trying to do is complete sets of the same color now as you're building your hand in order to get a set of cards to advance on the corresponding track the thing to consider is that when you play your cards every card that you don't play is going to be discarded and available for other people to draw from that's one thing to consider the other thing that I really like about it that you don't see in Ticket to Ride is that when you play a set of cards each type of card has its

7:38 own special action and the box is actually loaded with a variety of cards that all provide different actions so for an example one action might be that when you play a set of cards you then get to immediately play a second set of cards or if you play a set of cards of size X like let's say four cards you then get to draw the same number of cards four cards different things like this so you can mix up the game playay and then you're advancing on these tracks and you're getting bonuses for advancing on the tracks as well the thing I really like about it is that uh as a card essentially a card game uh the game has a really nice flow you're only doing one of two things either you're drawing one or two cards or you're playing a set of cards and you're condu conducting the action associated with it but it's just got a nice Pace to it plays up to six players and it has a really nice problem solving space where it's like do I keep drawing or do I play and that is the game Aro Society number seven is a Cooperative game that I also found in my research this time it was for my educational board games and this one was just a huge hit my kids love playing it it plays one to five players from Gap closer games it's called illiterati so in illiterati this is kind of like speed Scrabble or Bananagrams if you've played that before uh the idea is everybody has their letters and they're trying to build words with their letters now they're not building a crossword like in Scrabble they're just building words and in this game people are

9:10 working together so if you want you can give letters that you're not using to somebody else and then or you can ask for letters from somebody else but the objective is to make sure that all of the letters get used otherwise the illiterati which are the bad guys are going to come and make bad things happen so it's one of those games where you're fighting against uh time and you're fighting against uh events that will make things harder for you now the cool thing is it's not enough to just make words you have to make words that satisfy criteria so it could be words that are associated with animals or words that are associated with sports or words that are associated with fast food restaurants or something so uh players have to achieve an objective card at the same time they have to build other words so that no letters get wasted it is a fabulous ously enriching game that I love playing with my kids it plays in about 30 minutes there are different ways to scaffold play so you can play it without a timer with a timer you have uh varying levels of difficult objectives in the game so I really like that no matter how old your kids are if they can spell they can play this game and then the Cooperative element of the game the fact that you can give letters or take difficult letters from one of your fellow players is excellent uh just thoroughly an awesome design the game Literati number six I have the big box for this game it's called The Pursuit of Happiness and this is actually the

10:42 giveaway um so let me tell you about the game what I like about it and then I'll tell you about how you can get a free copy so H uh the pursuit of happiness is a game that I was looking for when I wanted to find an alternative to The Game of Life of course the game of life has been around for a few Generations now it's a popular classic among families but it's a silly little game driven mostly by luck the pursuit of happiness is the same type of fun where the purpose of the game is to live a life and pursue goals that are satisfying to you at the end of the game it's the person with the most happiness that wins I mean it's like the game of life right it's all about using your time your your workers this is a worker placement game where the workers you're placing are time so you only have a certain amount of time to spend on projects that will give you happiness like how cool is that so you are spending your time in order to complete different projects or to pursue life goals and these life goals will give you happiness and then you keep doing this until you run out of time and then when you run out of time your life is over and you your your final score gets counted even though I think this game is a clever worker placement game that isn't even the best reason I have for loving this game I love this game because of the funny things that you'll say when you play it like you'll say things like I'm so glad that I decided to raise a family with Sonia cuz it's giving me two happiness every round but it's just so time consuming and I want to be able to run a marathon but I'm

12:12 acting in a play and I really don't have time for it right now you also have some really fun objectives in this game like live fast Die Young which is be the first to die living it up be the first to have three short-term happiness like just these are hilarious I really really like how much of life is drawn into the pursuit of happiness and I have a base copy of the game to give away to you so if you are interested in getting a copy of the pursuit of happiness uh here's what I've got for you if you check out my web app the perfect board game.com where you can find all of the family board games that I recommend with ratings and with with recommendations for Rel games there's a lot of good stuff on there and I want you to discover this resource but here's what you do if you log in you log in using a Google email address and you write a review for any board game on the entire site you just give it some stars or write down why you like the game uh what I will do is anybody who writes a review between when this video gets published up to one week afterwards I'll select somebody at random and I will send you a code where you can get uh The Pursuit of Happiness the base game for free so uh to find out how to review games on the perfect board game you can check out the link in the description and I hope you do because even if you don't win the

13:43 game by just once once you once you start using this site I think you'll see some of the value in it and it's been it's taking me several year years to build that so I I do think it is an awesome Resource number five is called Magic Maze Tower and if you're familiar with the game magic maze uh this is not an expansion it is a standalone game and it does have some differences what this box contains is in it is a series of Adventures every Adventure is a challenge with an actual solution and so the object of the game is for players to work together to solve each Quest each puzzle now game play is very similar to Magic maze because there are five characters instead of the original four uh that are common for all players so all players can control any of the characters in The Game and their objective is to help these characters get out of a of a labyrinth or a maze that is on a square grid but the big thing is each player can only move characters in One Direction so if it's a four-player game one character can only move them to the north another person can only move characters to the east the South and the west and they have to do this without talk talking at all the only communication that is allowed and this is one of the things I loved about the game is a stare so you can just kind of like will say though that for a game one to four players it says nine and up on

15:15 here and I would agree with that so if your kids are the right age I think this is a fantastic logic puzzle that you you can work on together magic Maze tower number four is also an older game it came out in 20 2018 and it's called wews now it's the only game on this list that can play up to 20 players so there's bit of a party element about this game although I wouldn't call it a party game I would call it a social deduction game uh and a word game at that so if you are familiar with social deduction or hidden rooll games this is a game where everybody has a hidden role mayor close your eyes see her wake up and view the magic word and kind of follows the pattern of 20 questions to figure out the magic word is bigger than the um is it is it about the size of a pig but the catch is some players are werewolves and they are trying to mislead the rest of the group by asking questions that will cast them astray of course they don't want to be too transparent about this or they'll just be ignored now to combat the werewolves there is a player who does know the word and is trying to guide players back to the correct path but if the werewolves can guess this player then then the werewolves will win anyway and then the the box is full of several other roles

16:46 that can all kind of modify how the game is played but what's great about this there's no turns in the game people can just shout out questions and uh and if they can guess the word they can win this one really makes social deduction um approachable for anyone where wordss number three is a new game from Aline games it's called guardling now guard Lings is a Press Your Luck tile placing Style game so if you're familiar with quacks of quinber it's kind of like that players are simultaneously all drawing tiles from their bag but in this game the tiles are dominoes and when they're placed ad adjacent to each other the players can earn gems so you want to earn gems gems is the point of the game at the end of every round you can use your gems to add another Domino to your bag and improve your potential for earning more gems so you you you want this you want to keep drawing great tiles to get gems but the problem is some of your tiles have gnomes on them and if you draw too many gnomes you bust and the Gnomes will steal some of your gems and create problem for you so what I like this about this game there's a few things one I I love that people can play this game all together it's simultaneous gameplay that that really helps with the flow of the game especially when you've got several people in your family of different ages maybe some attention span issues there this is a game where you're always on I really like that two there is no reason

18:17 why you can't buy two copies of this game and have it play up to eight players I mean you could probably make this game play up to 12 players if you had enough copies I've done this before I haven't done I'm going to do it with gings I only have one copy now but I've done it with kuuba I love just being able to keep adding people to the game I think that's awesome um and then the third thing I like about it is that whereas the game quacks of quinber has a lot more is a lot more driven by luck this one has the strategy of tile placing in it because you're trying to optimize how many gems you can take and you can kind of puzzle this out which I think really makes this game more engaging and enriching um but simple this is probably the simplest game on the entire list and very good for all ages in fact it says eight and up on the box I think you can play younger than eight I bet I could play six number two was a surprise for me because I never would have known about it had it not caught my eye as a recommended product on Amazon but I looked into it it's from a publisher I've never reviewed before and uh the publisher is Studio H and the game is Middle Ages now the thing I like about this game is that if few years ago I recommended a game called King Domino as a excellent family game this game has the same core mechanic of King Domino but just takes it to the next level so if you're not familiar with that uh here's how it kind of works it's a tile drafting game essentially and every tile

19:48 has different value so the best tiles have a higher value and some of the weakest tiles have a lower value and so these tiles come out and they're always put in numerical order and you can choose any tile but the tile that you choose also determines your turn order for the next round so if you take the the best tile the one with the highest value on it you can do that but then you're going to go last for the following rounde right this is a very basic mechanic that I think is just very very successful when playing games with families but what I like about the Middle Ages there's a few things that it does differently and very well one uh the next several rounds of play are loaded so while you're taking tiles for the current round you can also see tiles below you for the following Round And the round after that so you always know what's next I also like that every tile has um it has a scoring mechanic it has an ability it has an action that you can perform so there's extra stuff that you get to do now I will say it is still the case that if you have younger kids kingd Domino is a better game because of its Simplicity my kids are older now they they've aged since I reviewed King Domino and this is where we're at today also this game is beautifully beautifully done uh the stuff coming from Studio H is just so the production quality is really topnotch that's the game Middle Ages and it plays two to five players now in the very last

21:20 recommendation I have for you I have made an exception for this video because I never never recommend more than one game from the same production company and in part it's because I want to prioritize variety I want you to be exposed to a lot of different games however this year I cannot deny that two of the best family games that I've learned about in the last year they come from the same company and I'm expecting a lot more from them as well because the stuff that Adams Apple games is making is just pH phenomenal this one is also a little bit older again uh it came out in 2022 and it is the game Planet unknown so a big box here this is a pricier game big box and it is absolutely worth it this is easily my favorite game on this list um so let me tell you about it all right in Planet unknown players are corporations developing a new new planet for the preservation of humanity but stripped to its core this is a tile placement game where players are placing polyomino or basically Tetris pieces on a grid and at the end of the game they score points for completed columns and rows now there's a little bit more going on than that every piece that they place has two

22:51 colors on it which correspond to different tracks and as the players move up on these tracks they receive different Rewards or sometimes they can get a bonus action or tile or they can take a card that provides them with a new objective to offer players a little bit more that they can think about as they decide each turn which tile they're going to take because the thing that I really like about this game is the drafting mechanic the centerpiece of the game is a lazy Susan in which all of the tiles are stored and during the game players take turns being the active player the active player rot this Lazy Susan to the sector that most interests them and they take any tile they want but when they do this simultaneously every other player will take one of the two tiles in the sector that faces their player board so everyone is taking tiles from the Lazy Susan at the same time they're all placing them on their board at the same time they're all making track advancements at the same time and reaping the rewards this is a game in which players are always active and it's games like this that my family really loves that's wonderful but that's also not all because every planet board and Corporation board is also double-sided so players may optionally play a combination of asymmetric boards where the the planet gives them new restrictions on how they Place tiles or

24:22 the corporation board may give them special restrictions or bonuses for advancement on their tracks so this gives the game a lot of added replayability yet even with all of that it's still a very easy teach my 8-year-old had no trouble learning it although this is definitely a game that pushes her to problem solve and make difficult choices so those are my top 10 recommendations thank you for watching this video and I want to extend a special thank you for my patreon supporters who help keep this channel independent before you go don't forget to go to the perect board game and review a board game there so you can automatically enter to win the free copy of the pursuit of happiness I also hope you find Great Value in what that tool has to offer thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time