We are so very excited to announce that we’re off and running with this year’s holiday gift guides! Every year, we gather together ideas for several games, stocking stuffers, gifts for young kids along with some home and electronics ideas. While this year has been far from normal, we’re still committed to putting these lists together. Actually, the fact that this year has forced people indoors has been even more of a reason. We’ve seen a lot more people playing board games and it’s fantastic! Shopping for holiday gifts might be a different experience this year, likely with more online ordering. As a result, it’s going to be so important to shop earlier before things sell out! Over the next couple of weeks, keep watch for our various guides to help you in your search for ideas. Naturally, we like to start our holiday gift guides off with a focus on the entire family so check out this list of 17 family games!

As we do each year, the format of each guide will be the same. It’s a list of the items with a description and where to purchase. If you see our logo behind the brand, you can click on that to see the article where we featured the game in more detail. Those articles usually include an overview of the product (more details of how to play if it’s a game) along with several pictures. We hope you’ll consider clicking through if you find something you like because sometimes (such as with Amazon), we get a small commission for each purchase and that helps us continue to keep SahmReviews.com up and running.

For those of you who have been here before, you know that the launch of our gift guides also means the kick-off of our annual Mega Giveaway promotion! Starting this afternoon, we will be launching over 100 giveaways between now and December 31st. We hope these guides will provide ideas on what to give as gifts and help wrap up the year with joy!

EXIT: The Enchanted Forest

Thames & Kosmos

EXIT: The Game is a series of escape room games for the home. Players must solve riddles and puzzles and crack codes to escape from an imaginary room or environment. But the clock is ticking! Can you escape? Escape room in a box: Bring the excitement and intensity of an escape room to your living room! Unique themes: Each game has a different setting with clues and puzzles integrated into the storyline.

Deadly Doodles 2

Steve Jackson Games

More dungeons! More deadly! In this expansion, 1 to 4 players doodle their way around new dungeons using the custom die to unlock magic doors, collect new loot, and fight more monsters. But watch out for cursed treasure! Do you have what it takes to face Deadly Doodles . . . 2?

This is not a stand-alone game. A copy of Deadly Doodles is required to play.

Seikatsu: A Pet’s Life

IDW Games

A family-friendly update to IDW’s hit tile-laying game Seikatsu by Matt Loomis and Isaac Shalev, Seikatsu: A Pet’s Life has players placing adorable pets around an illustrated living room board. At first, players will want to put matching animals together, dogs with dogs and cats with cats. As the room fills with pets, players will need to change their focus to the color of the pillows the pets are laying on because players score additional points based on the number of matching pillows in their rows. Simple to learn, easy to play, but with a unique scoring system, Seikatsu: A Pet’s Life is perfect for a family full of gamers.

Mystic Market

ThinkFun

Enter a mysterious world where enchanted commodities are bought and sold for profit. Mystic Market is an exciting, fact-paced card game where players buy and sell magical Potion-making Ingredients. The unique Value Track ensures that the Ingredients’ values will be constantly shifting, so only the shrewdest of traders will prevail.

The Korner’d Challenge

Endless Games

The Korner’d Challenge is a puzzle that’s also a game! The rules are simple; just match the colors or animals on the tiles to the pattern on the board. Play all your tiles first to win! But here’s the catch: like a puzzle, each tile has only ONE unique location on the board where it can be played. Simple in design, but deceptive in execution. That’s The Korner’d Challenge! Includes double-sided game board and tiles for 2X’s the fun!

One Hundred Torii

Pencil First Games

Lay tiles and create paths through a Japanese garden in this beautiful board game for 1-4 players. Earn the most journey points by expanding the garden and walking to landmarks through the torii gates. You will interact with people in the garden gaining additional advantages as you play.

MLB & NFL Trivia Games

MasterPieces, Inc.

If you love the MLB and NFL and you think you know baseball and/or football better than anyone else, here’s your chance to prove it with the new MLB Baseball Trivia and NFL Football Trivia Challenge board games. There’s only 1 champion. Do you have what it takes to win?

Who’s the G.O.A.T.?

Big G Creative

Who’s the G.O.A.T.? is the hilarious party game that’s one part prediction, one part competition, and all parts fun. Pick who you think will be the best at a variety of off-the-wall challenges, then vote by tossing your squishy goat. You score a tin can if you voted for the player who did it the greatest, and the G.O.A.T. scores a tin can for being great! This game is the Greatest of All Time (with goats)!

Magic Money

Indie Boards and Cards

Merlin the Magnificent has passed away and left behind a marvelous menagerie of magical monsters for adoption. Bid against your fellow wizards to take home adorable critters of all shapes and sizes.Bid to adopt magical creaturesCollect sets to maximize pointsDon’t spend the most!Magic Money is a game of arcane auctions where players can bid as much money as they can imagine. The only catch? The wizard who spends the most is eliminated. So bid carefully and grow your own magical menagerie!

Folded Wishes

CardLords

Folded Wishes is an abstract game about folding origami. The first player with all four of their animals in a line wins. To succeed, you’ll need to fold your way through an ever-changing grid of paper patterns and earn the skills needed to make your folds even more powerful.

Superfly

iello (Loki)

The fly cards are on the table! Try to build the biggest collection, with either matching color or series of different flies. « 1, 2, 3 »: smash your flyswatter on the card you want. Another player is claiming your card? The die on your flyswatter will decide who wins! Reflexes and strategy for an original and fun game!

National Parks Get Wild

The Op

National Parks: Get Wild is an edge-of-your-seat dice game, where players race to restore ecosystems by returning animals to their respective parks. Roll the dice as fast as you can to be the one to have a park with only the required animals before other players. Showcasing 12 iconic National Parks with custom illustrations and fun facts about each park and the 6 featured animals, players will learn while having fun. It’s a wild dexterity game that features dice-rolling, habitat restoration fun for the whole family!

Shifting Stones

Gamewright

A Game of Tiles & Tactics

Leave no stone unturned! Nine mystical tiles lie before you in a grid of rocky ruins. Rearrange the tiles to match one or more of the patterns in your hand. The catch is that you must sacrifice a card every time you swap or flip a tile. Carve out the most points and your victory is set in stone!

Tile Up

Winning Moves Games

Tile Up is a fiendishly clever strategy game. Players try to score points by creating shapes out of their tiles that match goal cards. Easy enough, right? Not so fast! You can only place tiles on top of other tiles if the two tiles are different colors and the tile on top has a lower number than the tiles it is covering. The player with the most points at the end of the game, when the four corners of the gameboard have been covered with tiles, wins!

BUY DIRECT FROM WINNING MOVES!

Sonora

Pandasaurus Games

You have entered the Sonoran Desert. A place of vast beauty: technicolor sunsets pop-out over vistas revealing deep canyons, trickling tributaries, and ancient pueblo cliffdwellings. Immerse yourself in the secrets of the desert in this delectably fun “flick and write” where cunning and dexterity meet. In Sonora, players flick wooden disks onto a game board representative of the different vibrant landscapes across the Sonoran sands. Each area encompasses a different unique game, so skillful aim is required to play in the region of a player’s choosing!

Honey Buzz

Elf Creek Games

Honey Buzz is a worker “bee” placement game where you’ll forage for nectar and pollen, expand your beehive, and produce honey to sell at the bear market. There’s only so much nectar to go around, and you’ll want to find the right combinations to fulfill the woodland creature’s wants – as well as the Queen’s orders!

BUY DIRECT FROM ELF CREEK GAMES!

My City

Thames & Kosmos

My City is a unique, family-oriented legacy gaming experience that is played in relatively short episodes. The game consists of 24 different episodes beginning with the development of a city in its early preindustrial stages and progressing through industrialization. During each game, players customize their experience by adding elements to their own boards. Players’ choices and actions made during one session of gameplay carry over into the next session, creating a personalized gaming experience. For players who do not want to experience My City as a legacy game, a double-sided game board offers an alternate setup for repeatable play.

This first guide is filled with games we’ve labeled as “family” but there’s a variety of ages covered. As you look for ways to keep busy inside, game night offers you an opportunity to have fun while bonding. Look for our first giveaway to launch this afternoon and for additional guides to roll out in the coming days!