Finish Your Holiday Shopping with More Family Games

Hopefully you’ve found an assortment of gift ideas from our prior gift guides (Games for Teens and Adults, Card Games, Stocking Stuffers, Games and Activities for Younger Kids and our first installment of Family Games). There are so many great games that can draw families to the table that it’s just too many for one list. So, as we do every year, we’re wrapping up our annual gift suggestions with more family games.
Thank you to the many sponsors who provided donations for our charity drive and for providing product samples for us to evaluate for the gift guide.

Tortilla Takedown

Step into the ring for a flavorful brawl! Tortilla Takedown is a lucha libre–inspired combat card game where players build combos of punches, kicks, slams, and takedowns to deal damage. Play special cards like No Way José or Flying Fajita to block, redirect, or spice things up. With hilarious moves, strategic play, and over-the-top Mexican wrestling flair, this game is as fun to watch as it is to play.

G’Nuzzle

G’Nuzzle (MSRP $19.99 for 2-4 players ages 7+) is the clever new product creation from the Pickle Everything Game guys that combines the best of both worlds: puzzles and games. G’Nuzzle delivers hurry-up, hands-on, brain-teasing fun that is uniquely different every time it’s played. G’Nuzzle contains two separate puzzles, one illustrated with silly pickles and the other featuring equally whimsical pet pals. To play, players choose to play one of the two G’Nuzzles. Each player has 60-seconds to strategically build the G’Nuzzle as fast as possible… but only when there is a connecting piece displayed. Each round, players compete to be the first to use all their pieces and win the game.

Waddle

Strategically place your penguins to form groups and claim fish to score the most points! Turn order matters a lot; in Waddle, it’s tracked by marbles on a two-column track!
On your turn, you’ll have two options:
“Place a Penguin” onto any unoccupied hex adjacent to the lowest numbered water hex. Then, pick up your marble and place it on the top of the same Turn Tracker column
“Scout Ahead” by picking up and placing your marble on top of the inactive Turn Tracker column.
How players “Scout Ahead” will be massively important! Going earlier in the future could allow you to grow or connect into a large waddle (group), claim a big fish, or block an opponent’s important play.

Glyphics

Bored of charades? Terrible at drawing? Then this game is for you! Simply choose a word from your card, create using any shapes you need, and be the fastest guesser to win a point! Packed with a variety of game pieces and a vast array of prompts, every game night becomes a uniquely engaging tabletop adventure that’s never the same twice.

Creature Caravan

In Creature Caravan, players flee from the threat of Ember Zombies swarming in the south. As you travel across the board, you can convince creatures to join your caravan. Once in your caravan, these creatures can help you on your journey by providing more opportunities to gather food, earn money, and even defeat the ember zombies.
Creature Caravan is a light strategy game, where everyone plays simultaneously (little to no downtime!).

Locus

Flip, Draft, and Write— Shape Your Strategy, Fill the Grid, Win the Game!
In Locus, every shape placement is a strategic puzzle! Each round, players reveal a set of shapes, then take turns drafting the one that best fits their grid.
Choose carefully—each scoring zone/color rewards different
placements, and smart strategy will maximize your points!
Rotate, mirror, and fit polyomino shapes, unlock powerful moves, and adapt as the grid fills up.

Cat Between Us

Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx

Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx is an adventure that continues each time you play. Your achievements unlock new gods and divine gifts you will carry forward. You can easily add or remove players each game or run multiple adventures at once, so there’s no need to play the entire adventure with a single group.
Riddle of the Sphinx uses the same rules as Santorini, but what makes it unique is that you must work with a limited supply of blocks and domes to complete increasingly difficult objectives, unique to each riddle. Achieve 1 objective to win, or achieve additional objectives for extra rewards and bragging rights!
Highly thematic and accessible.
Beautiful miniatures and production.
Game altering variable player powers.
Supports 1 – 4 players.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A

Live the life of a Pokémon Trainer and help protect the peace in Lumiose City! Lumiose City—a home for people and Pokémon alike. Thanks to an urban redevelopment plan driven by Quasartico Inc., the lush greenery of verdant parks intermingles with facilities using the latest cutting-edge technology.
A lot has changed here since the days of the Pokémon™ X and Pokémon Y games! Choose Chikorita, Tepig, or Totodile as your first partner Pokémon, and then set off on a grand adventure! Your journey will take you to all manner of sights in the streets arrayed around Prism Tower, including shops, restaurants, and places called wild zones—where Pokémon roam free. As you catch, train, and battle Pokémon, there will be plenty of people to meet too—like AZ, the enigmatic owner of Hotel Z, and Team MZ, the crew that aims to keep Lumiose a peaceful place. Catch, battle, and Mega Evolve—all in real time!
Step onto the battlefield and command your Pokémon directly—there are no turns! For the first time in the Pokémon RPG series, Trainers and their Pokémon can both move around in real-time battles, and your Pokémon will unleash their moves when you tell them to. Strategically swapping out your Pokémon and accounting for each move’s timing and area of effect will greatly help you in this new style of battle.
Harness the power of Mega Evolution! Unleash your Pokémon’s hidden energy to temporarily transform its appearance, enhance its capabilities, and perhaps even change its type. Use this power wisely and try to overcome your toughest challenges, like those posed by the rampaging Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon across Lumiose City. Investigate these dangerous incidents so you can put a stop to them—you may even encounter new Mega-Evolved Pokémon along the way!
Compete in the Z-A Royale when night falls—or battle with other players in the Z-A Battle Club You’re invited to join the Z-A Royale, a competition for Pokémon Trainers to test their skills and determine who’s strongest. Each night, a battle zone for the competition will appear. Prepare yourself by spending the day catching and training Pokémon, then venture into the battle zone to take on other Trainers. Be strategic and complete bonus card challenges as you battle to speed up your climb from Rank Z to Rank A. Reach the top, and you might just have a wish granted. You can also test your skills against friends or Trainers around the world in the Z-A Battle Club. Take on up to three other Trainers at once, locally or online, in frenetic real-time battles!

Word Fluxx

The alphabet is now in Fluxx! Have you heard the word? The alphabet is now in Fluxx! In this word-building version of the ever-changing card game, the Keepers each feature a letter, and the Goals involve making words of various types. With twice the typical number of Keepers, you’ll have plenty of letters to build nouns and verbs, palindromes, three-letter acronyms (TLAs), Roman numerals, and more! Word Fluxx spells F-U-N!

We hope our suggestions have helped you find gifts for people on your holiday shopping list. Need additional suggestions? Stop in your local game store, let them know a little bit about who you’re shopping for and they can help find just the right gift.
What has been your favorite item from this year’s gift guide suggestions?
