Kick Off Holiday Shopping with Family Games

It’s that time of year again! For those of you who are seasoned members of our community (thank you, btw!), you know that our annual holiday gift guides are a sense of pride for us. If you aren’t familiar, we craft several themed gift guides to help you discover new products and hopefully ease some of that holiday shopping stress. This family-focused game guide is the first of ten this year so be sure to check back for more great ideas!

These games range in style, theme, player count and length so you should be able to check a few items off your shopping list with this guide alone. But don’t forget that we’ll have more ideas coming so you can round out the shopping using those. Of course, people are likely looking for gift ideas for you as well so if something on this list strikes you, add it to your Amazon wish list!

Super Kawaii Pets

Arcane Wonders

In Super Kawaii Pets, players will collect adorable animals, then feed, heal and love them to make all the sad animals happy! Collect victory points by feeding the animals, giving them a loving home, and making sure they are healthy. At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins!

You’re the head of one of the companies that has been granted construction permits: new buildings and planning bonuses are yours for the taking! Accumulate millions and be the richest to win the game! On your turn, store resources or construct a new building. Be sure to plan your constructions carefully: between the mayor’s demands and the construction costs that increase as the game progresses, you’ll need to be opportunistic to beat your opponents to the punch…

King of Tokyo: Duel

IELLO

The time for the final duel is now! Choose your monster with its unique special power and roll the dice up to three times! Pull the marker to win: Fame and/or Destruction. Buy power cards to become even stronger and use Buzz Tokens to speed up your road to victory. Master your unique power and smash to defeat your opponent.

Captain Flip

PlayPunk

Ahoy, Captain! Raise your flag, take risks to recruit acolorfulcrew and earn maximum gold coins! Captain Flip is a game of obvious simplicity,explained in lesstime than a cannonball shot: On your turn, draw a character from the bag. Keep it or Flip it over. Then place it on your board to form your crew.

Quartz: The Dice Game

Lucky Duck Games

Quartz: The Dice Game is a fast-playing game full of player interaction. On your turn you’ll draw a crystal, roll the dice, and then reroll any dice up to 3 times to try to get the result you want. The dice will let you do things like draw more crystals, steal or give away crystals, and protect your crystals in your treasure chest. The player with the most points at the end wins!

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Wonky

The Op

To win, be the first to get rid of your cards. It’s that simple. Or is it? Wonky® is a party game with a hint of playful tension. Get rid of cards by playing one with an available matching cube. Successfully add that cube to the tower. The challenge is, the oddly-shaped custom-cubes, slip, slide, and wobble when stacked. With each added block, the difficulty increases for the next player. If the tower falls on your turn, add 3 cards to your hand. Special cards help escape precarious situations and put the pressure on your neighbor! Wonky® is simple to set up, easy to learn, and quick to play.

Wandering Towers

Capstone Games

Help your wizards get to Ravenskeep as quickly as possible. Using their magic they could even move the very towers atop which they stand to get there more easily! But how can they refill their potion bottles along the way? Well, here’s a little secret: Trapping wizards allows you to capture some of their magical essence in a bottle…

My First Adventure: Discovering Atlantis

Fable Fox Press

An interactive game storybook where children are the heroes that make the decisions! Choose a character, make different decisions, collect items, and try to reach the best ending! These game books promote critical-thinking and decision-making skills while encouraging learning from past experiences. For children ages 6 – 10, or younger children accompanied by an adult.

Crossbows & Catapults: Fortress War

Restoration Games

Grab a friend, build your fortress, and fire away at your opponents in a game of tricky shots and kinetic mayhem! Restored from the 1983 classic, Crossbows and Catapults takes castle bashing to a new level. Get the ultimate experience in Fortress War or try the basics with Castle Battle.

Next Station Paris

Blue Orange Games

Come join us in the City of Lights and craft the best metro network that Paris has ever seen! Players will flip station cards, draw subway lines on their maps, utilize bridge crossings, visit the French capital’s iconic monuments, all while taking advantage of the central platform, the busiest station on the network! Optimize your four sketched subway lines over all Paris districts in order to win!

Stalk Exchange

The Op

Welcome to the Community Hedge Fund where players take on the roles of gardeners dedicated to growing flowers and profits. When the market crashes, the Gardener with the most valuable Stalk portfolio wins. Garden shrewdly to grow your fortune.

Build the best neighborhood in the world’s greatest cities in this card and tile drafting game. Perfect for families, new gamers, and expert gamers who want a quick but strategic experience!

Builders of Sylvan Dale

Ares Games

After the Great Disasters, the Elders of Sylvan Dale summoned the best architects to design a woodland realm high in the trees. Builders of Sylvan Dale is a 3D tile placement game where 2 to 4 players play cards and place new dwellings on top of the ever-taller trees in the forest, collecting sets of cards for special actions, to stand out above the rivals and be remembered as the greatest architect of Sylvan Dale!

Boop the Halls

Smirk & Dagger Games

The Mensa award winning, Game of the Year, boop., is back with a new Holiday edition and has really leveled up game play (literally!!).

The hoomans are hanging ornaments on the highest boughs of the tree, but those clever cats are leaping up and boopin’ them right off. You can win “Naughty” by knocking off 3 of your opponent’s ornaments or “Nice” by lining up three cats in a row!

It’s worth mentioning that this is a project that we tackle in conjunction with our charity drive for the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital and a variety of other charities in our region. This particular hospital, which we’ve supported for almost a decade, has become known to world thanks to “The Wave” that takes place at the end of the first quarter of all home football games at the University of Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium. So if you see something cool but don’t have a recipient in mind, consider donating to a local children’s hospital.

How many people in your family play board games?

 

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