We are a game playing family and I’ve become pretty particular about what constitutes a quality game.
I love games with strategy involved that aren’t too easily beaten, and I am always looking for games that will challenge my kids and foster critical and strategic thinking. I love a good recommendation of a fun new game, and so I thought I’d share our current family favourites.
The first up is our most recent acquisition, and it contradicts everything I just said above. Stinky Pig provides pure hilarity and fun times for the family. The game is simple and similar to hot potato, but with a pig that hums a song when you press its tummy.
After pressing the tummy, the player must roll the dice and it will either tell them to pass the pig left, right or roll again. You do as it says and the receiver rolls the dice and continues. If the pig farts (yes, I just wrote fart) while you’re holding it, you have to take a token.
The person with the fewest tokens at the end wins. I had a good feeling when I bought it but didn’t expect the cackle laughing that ensued.
Two of our favourite games to play with our own friends are Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. We’ve found both Junior Catan and Ticket to Ride Junior to be great beginner versions of the games that stay very true to the originals, but make them more manageable for kids.
Spot It is another simple game that is quite fun and easy to take with you to play while waiting for your meal at a restaurant or elsewhere.
To round out our top five, I definitely need to include Uno Dare. Based on the classic Uno game, the +2 and +4 wildcards are replaced with Dare cards. Rather than taking the penalty you can choose to do the dare, which can range from using your best sportscaster voice to narrate the round, to standing on one leg until your next turn.
The dares keep the game fresh and changing, and there is always a lot of laughter.
