The Best Family Board Games of 2022 – Viewer Recommendations

0:00 last year i published my top 10 family board games and at the end of that video i invited viewers to leave comments recommending their favorite family board games for consideration in next year's list and true to my word i got busy i did my research and i checked out all of them so today i'm going to share with you the best viewer recommended family board games and a few of my thoughts as i piece together my top 10 for 2022 now believe it or not i do have limited space back there and also this is a totally independent channel self-funded so i'm very careful about what games i buy i don't exactly have publishers sending me games for free yet i'm very careful about which ones i pick i'll look at the rulebook and i'll read through it and i'll try to understand how the game is played and from there i'll make a call of whether or not it's a game i should add to my collection that being said the games that i took a look at fall into three categories the first category is games that just aren't worth mentioning i'm not really into dexterity games and i find they really frustrate the young ones any games that are out of print are not available for purchase i don't mention those there are several games that were listed that might be fun for some people's families but i don't really think of as age appropriate for all children so i'm just going to leave those games off and maybe what i'll do is i'll write

1:30 some thoughts in the description just so that for those of you who did mention a game you can check out to see what i've written below and i'll share a little bit of my thoughts on it but for the video i'm just gonna leave those out the next category are games that i think are worth taking a look at but not necessarily games that i've bought yet these are games that i might need to actually play to get a sense of how they go and to be honest it's one of the reasons i'm making this video so that i can kind of open a discussion with my viewers and say hey what do you think about these other games that i haven't tried yet are they worth looking at and maybe if there's a strong enough recommendation i'll take a closer look before i put together my top 10. and then finally there's the category of games that as soon as i looked at them i knew for sure that i was going to buy them they are very attractive they fulfill all of the criteria of what i look for in a family board game and they are my strongest recommendation at least at this moment until i've considered some of the discussion that i'm sure will ensue after i post this video before we get started i'm very excited to announce an exciting new feature on theperfectboardgame.com it is now possible to subscribe to price alerts to family board games or any type of board game in fact as of right now the feature is new so the sign up is very prominent but if you don't see it there in the future go ahead and check the menu up above where you might also see the shop link where you can buy of course this incredible hand-drawn board game t-shirt featuring over 100 board games uh but mostly it supports me so i can buy more board games and talk

3:02 about them on video all right first category which is actually the second category the first category is games not worth mentioning which we won't mention second category is games worth considering there are 12 games in this category so to make sure this video doesn't last forever i sort of have to go through them a little bit quickly but if any of them become finalists i'll be sure to go into it more in depth in the top 10 family games of 2022 which i will leave a card for or a link for go ahead and check that out the first game in the list is juicy fruits which is a very colorful and very fun looking game and it looks a bit like it might feel sort of a calico the scoring is very abstract but as you fill ships with fruit you make more room in your island to collect more fruit and score more points that game is juicy fruits the next game is dragon wood which didn't really impress me at all but it did seem very age-appropriate and has very little math skills involved maybe this is more of a game where parents are playing for the sake of the kids rather than playing with the kids and basically rolling dice to collect cards then we have a game that is very popular and i had definitely heard of this game before but because it involves dice i was never really interested in playing it the game is roll for it now the reason it gets the worth mentioning but not highly worth mentioning is because i think i found a game that i like much better than roll for it also roll for it doesn't have a theme you're just uh competing to roll dice in order to play

4:34 cards where each card has dice conditions on it but a lot of people have had a lot of fun with this game the next game is called ecosystem now ecosystem was not actually recommended habitats was recommended and i could not find habitats i think it's out of print but ecosystem is produced by a company called genius games and in this game you are placing or you're drafting cards to place them in a grid and all of the cards have something to do with an ecosystem so there are stream cards and bear cards and rabbit cards and each of the cards has different or tiles i guess has different uh scoring mechanisms like the river scores points if it's alongside more rivers and the bear scores points based on what it's next to inside the grid but what i really like about genius games if you take a look at them all of their games are very educational and very gamey they have like games about cellular biology and some really cool stuff from this company i think i'm more excited about the production company even than i am about the game ecosystem the next game is a game that people have said over and over and over again and at first i thought i had never played it before but it turns out i had played it a very long time ago i did not like it uh but it's popular with viewers which is the purpose of this video the game is cockroach poker now my description of cockroach poker is it's basically bs you know where you're playing a card and you're saying

6:04 i'm playing three queens and someone says you know that's bs and you flip it over and it's three queens and they were wrong so you get a point and they'd lose a point whatever it's just that except instead of playing queens and sevens and stuff you're playing cockroaches and rats and worms and stuff can you tell i'm not impressed by it it's a game that you can play with a standard deck of cards so it's not a game that i would ever buy because i'll just use a standard deck of cards if i want to play bs but anyway cockroach poker cuter theme really popular with the viewers man i am so sarcastic right now and i apologize i promise i'll be more optimistic about the other games the next game is a game that's actually quite old it's a trick taking game and i have never even heard of it before it's called the bottle imp and in this trick taking game trump is determined not by a suit but by a value and as people take tricks the bottle imp keeps being passed around and that helps determine what trump is for the hand and then the person who's left with the bottle amp at the end of the game loses points and everybody else scores points based on how many tricks they've taken sounds really interesting to me but trick taking games aren't really things that i think i would play with my kids the next game is skirmish now skirmish has a its own deck which you can buy but i do think that the deck is analogous to a standard

7:35 deck of cards except instead of suits you have like knives and and axes and you know weapons i guess but what i like about the game even though it's basically just a card game is it plays a lot like the trading card game android netrunner and what players are trying to do is attack each other and hide their most valuable cards in different stacks the next game is keys to the castle and it kind of reminds me a little of zombie kids although you're not attacking any zombies it's got a maze element to it the way you set it up is you have several cards laid out in a grid and each player is on a different side of the grid and the objective is to get to the other side of the grid so you're trying to cut your own path across while simultaneously making it hard for your opponents to cut across the grid the next game looks really exciting but thematically i don't think it's something that would interest my kids it might interest other people's kids though which is definitely why it needs to be on this list the game is over boss and it kind of has a retro 80s video game feel to it the objective is to make a boss dungeon um that is has the most victory points and it's a tile drafting and placing game every tile you're placing gets a monster that you're putting on it and then there's

9:05 just lots of ways to score so you've got scoring for the kinds of monsters and what kinds of tiles they're on and then you get points for the tiles themselves and how they're arranged inside of the dungeon the next game is a game that i eventually found but it was very difficult it seems to be based out of england i guess but the game is called astronauts and i know very little about it actually but from what i can tell it's also called the ultimate space adventure game you are playing cards to go on a space adventure and so you're going to these different planets and the more cards you play the farther out in space you go but you don't get the points unless you can roll dice to make it home safely so there's a bit of a press your luck um aspect to the game but then the cards you're playing also give you modifications for your die roll which can be very interesting so it sounds like a really simple uh and fun space exploration game for kids but again uh it was like 20 bucks to import it to the united states and i kind of thought well i don't know if it's really worth it i got two more games in this category honestly these games could very easily be in the next category i just haven't bought them yet but i saved them for last because i think they're the coolest the first game is called boomerang and uh boomerang is a lot like sushi go a card drafting game where players are passing the cards to each other but whereas sushi go you simply scored points based on the cards you've

10:35 collected in boomerang there's a map of australia and you're getting points for the areas of australia that you visit and of course you visit those areas by having the cards for it also it has a really neat scoring idea which is betting on the cards that are going to come back to you after the cards have gone around the circle so you score points on your first and your last card and that's interesting because most the time in a game like sushi go the last card is the least valuable card and has very little impact on your scoring but in boomerang it actually has a really big impact on your scoring and then finally there's one key i was really excited to hear about one key because i recently played a game on board game arena which you can try for free called similo which i didn't like because i saw a fly in it but then one key fixes that flaw so what's the whole idea the idea of the game is one player is trying to communicate to the other players a secret key and that key is a picture and there are several pictures laid in front of the players to consider but only one player knows which picture is the secret key and the way they communicate to the other players is by playing cards and describing whether or not the card they play has something in common with or unlike the hidden key and players have to figure out okay well which cards must be eliminated and every

12:07 round more and more cards are being eliminated until at the very end the sole remaining card has to be the key and if so it's a cooperative game and all players get a victory point or you know they win collectively lastly the games that have really impressed me and that i've already purchased so first i better talk about the game that i think is better than roll for it the game is rescue animals this game it looks like it's independently published it's very simple artwork and very simple game play too the objective is to rescue animals and you do that by rolling dice so during the game all players are rolling their dice simultaneously and then like yahtzee or something if they have dice they want to set aside they can set those aside and keep rolling their other dice and then as soon as they have the conditions to rescue an animal they shout rescuing and then they claim the animal card and uh play continues with the other players competing for the remaining animals just keep doing that round after round after round now that sounded really simple to me and i would not have bought that game but when i was looking at it on amazon as i said is my first step and my wife saw the cover artwork she was like we should buy that game and i usually don't pass up an opportunity when my wife encourages me to buy a game so i put it in the cart i read the rule book and i thought oh gosh this game is kind of dumb but we played it holy cow my kids love it so much my wife loves it so much the next game is called mountain goats mountain goats happens to be another dice rolling game and as players roll

13:39 their dice they're creating sums and that resulting sum allows them to move their goat up the mountain once a goat gets to the top of a mountain it can accrue victory points but once another goat gets to the top of the mountain it kicks that goat off and so there's a little bit of a conflict of do i want to move up this mountain over here and get my victory points once i get to the top or do i want to put my dice together another combination so that i can go up this mountain and kick my opponent off because they're over there making too many points and i don't like that i want to kick them off so you're kicking goats off mountains and you're trying to dominate your own mountains it's a really really fun objective for a dice rolling game mountain goats now the next game won the spiel dr's in 2018 and i don't know if i say that right spiel to yar's the game of the year in 2018 um and it's called luxor in the game players move through a egyptian temple by playing cards from their hand so we've got cards and what's interesting is that you cannot rearrange the cards and when you play you can only play the far left card or the far right card so if i play my far right card it leaves me four cards when i draw one from the deck it has to go in the middle again and you're planning a few moves ahead as you move through the temple uh you're collecting different treasures in order

15:11 to you know get your victory points of course it's a victory point scoring game and you can collect more treasures along the way but in the center of the temple is like the most prized treasure of all so you have to kind of decide on your strategy are you going to move through the temple as fast as you can in order to get to the best treasure in the center or are you going to take your time and try to collect smaller treasures but treasures that will add up as you move through we've played it a couple of times and everyone in the family has really enjoyed it but it is a turn-taking game it's not one of these players playing simultaneous games and so it can go a little bit longer the next game reminds me of one of my favorite games ever my favorite game one of my favorite games ever is santorini now santorini is an abstract strategic game that would be way too hard for my young kids to be able to compete with the older kids or adults in the family so i can't play santorini with my children but this game i can play and it kind of has a similar feel to it it's hey that's my fish and in hey that's my fish on your turn you can move one of your penguins in a straight line and then remove one of the pieces of ice on the iceberg that you're all floating on now the ice has fish in it and the fish are victory points so taking ice off the iceberg means victory points for you but it also reduces the area with which

16:42 there is to move and then finally saving the best for last is my favorite discovery so far the game explores like many of my top favorite family games explorers is a game where all players are playing at the same time what's happening is everyone has their own map and every map is a grid of little terrain spaces grasslands and mountains and deserts and water and so on and the objective is to move across the map and get points by getting to special tiles so one player flips over a card and then there are two terrain types and every other player chooses which one they want to use to explore they do this by using a little dry erase marker and marking off spaces and the next player flips over a card and everybody does it again so you're crossing off spaces and crossing off spaces and then at the end of the round everybody tallies up their points and you have three more rounds and then that's the whole game really simple gameplay continually you're active which is great i love how easy and addictive it is to make the decision of which direction you want to explore and i think that really lends itself well to the theme of the game and that is probably the best game that i've found so far but i'm gonna leave it open for discussion this time which of the ones that i've mentioned are your favorite family board game or i'll change the question is there something new that's recently come out

18:12 that i don't know about yet i would love to know i'd love to know your thoughts as well i haven't made my top 10 list yet the comment section is open thank you so much for watching don't forget to subscribe so you can get alerts when games drop in price you do that by going to theperfectboardgame.com and then entering your email address make sure you verify your email address because you'll get an email to ask you to verify and if you do you'll be able to take advantage of excellent deals up to once a day like i do and save yourself some money uh thank you and i hope to see you next time take care bye