Best Family Board Games of 2024 – Review and Comparison

Are you looking for the best family board games to have some exciting gaming time with your kids or partner?

You can forget the old school games like Monopoly, Risk, and Clue! We’re here to give your family the best gaming time of its life!

The games listed below are brilliant in many ways. They are easy to teach and can be played in one hour or less. They are entertaining for both kids and adults. Finally, they teach handy skills to your little, or not so little, ones: counting, reading, critical thinking, intuition, long-term planning, and so on.

With this review, I have considered board games that can be played by an eight-year-old kid or older. Games for younger ages are typically less interesting for adults, so I left them out. Also, I assumed the player count between 3 and 5. If your family is either bigger or smaller, please check one of our other reviews based on the player count. 

Below is a quick comparison table of the top 10 family board games we have selected for you.

I can assure you that the top-rated family games below have all the potential to change the way your family sees board gaming.

At the same time, picking the best family games is a tedious task as this is the most popular board game type by a country mile. Thankfully, you don’t have to do it as we have done the hard work for you.

Best Family Board Games – Our Top Picks

1. Best Overall – Istanbul

After moving, you can trigger an action on the tile you have just landed on. Each tile is different and features a unique action.  For example, you can collect and sell goods, improve the wheelbarrow, get special abilities, buy gems, meet up with your assistants and so on.

2. Best Thematic Family Board Game – Colt Express

Before starting the game, you have to pick one of the bandits, a deck of action cards, bandit token, and six bullet cards.

Each of five rounds in Colt Express consists of two phases. During the first phase, you and other players take turns to select cards from your hands to create a collective pile of cards.

The cards allow you to do various things on the train. For example, you can move inside the wagon, to the roof or another wagon. Additionally, you can shoot another player, punch him, rob passengers or move the sheriff towards other bandits!

In the second phase of the round, you get to play cards from the stock pile you have created before. Cards with action get revealed and played in the same order they have been placed. 

Taking action specified on the card is mandatory unless it is not possible to take it. For example, your card tells you to rob a passenger, but there are no passengers in the wagon.

So, in short – you are planning your actions for the entire round and trying to guess or counteract other players’ actions. It is almost like having a robbery plan and getting to execute it on the day.

No matter how well have you prepared, there is always something that would not go according to plan. Other players, the sheriff or even passengers can intervene and force you to make changes to the plan.

The changing nature of the game is driven by some cards being played face-down and some actions getting changed on the fly. All of which creates chaos, genuinely hilarious moments, and loads of fun!

Finally, after five rounds of shooting and looting, the player who has the most money wins the game. 

3. Best For Kids and Parents – Ticket To Ride: Europe

There are three different ways to score points. For every train section, connected city pair and the longest rail network on the map. But be careful, every failed objective gets you negative points!

In fact, all games in the Ticket To Ride family, regardless of the version, are excellent for families. So what makes Ticket to Ride: Europe best of the lot? 

Firstly, Europe has mountains all around, and you need to dig tunnels for some specific sections. Every time you do so, you have to draw three train cards. For each card that matches your section color, you must give an extra train card of that color.

So the choice is yours. You can play safe by having extra cards in your hand, or you can try your luck in digging without any safety net. That adds quite a bit of spice to the game.

Secondly, Europe is a very busy and tight map. Consequently, it means that you will need to be quick at grabbing track sections that are in demand. So, be ready for a lot of interaction between players as there are many game pieces in the box.

Thirdly, the game features a ‘station’ concept that allows mitigating issues with the tight map. The idea is that by building stations in a city, you can use someone else’s track section to complete your objectives. In my opinion, this is a clever mechanism that allows you to take more risks and encourages opportunistic play.

Overall, Ticket to Ride is a modern classic board game that has cemented its place amongst all-time greats. It works great with parents, kids, friends, or anyone willing to spend five minutes learning the rules.

4. Best Fun Family Play – Camel Up

On your turn, you can choose from four possible actions:

• You can bid on a given camel for the current portion of the race, called a “leg”. If the camel you bet on is the first at the end of the leg, you gain coins. If you were the first player to bet on that camel, you earn five coins. Being the second gets you three coins, and being the third one gets you only two coins.
• You can roll a die using the pyramid. Initially, the pyramid contains all five dice, one for each camel. So when you have to shake the pyramid and get one die out, you do not know which color it will be. The color and the number of pips, 1 to 3, indicates which camel moves and by how many spaces.
• You can influence the race by placing oasis or desert tiles on the track, allowing the camels to either slow down or accelerate.
• Finally, you can bid on who will finish first and who will finish last in the overall race. Similarly to the “leg” bidding, the earlier you bid on this, the more money you could gain.

In short, when two or more camels end up on the same space, they stack up on top of each other, with the latest arrived going on top. That’s why this game is called Camel Up!

Now, let’s say you choose the pyramid action (i.e., moving camels), and the die that comes out is for the green camel that happens to be at the bottom of the stack. The green camel will move and carry all camels on its back at the same time! It means that a camel can move several times during the same “leg” by having other camels carrying him.

The mechanism is both simple and genius. It creates so many surprises in the flow of the race that makes the game so exciting to play. Ultimately, it encourages you to bid on late runners hoping other camels can carry them on their backs!

5. Best Sci-Fi Family Board Game – Clank! In! Space!

On your turn, you will start with five cards in hand from your deck of very basic cards. You can play those cards to move from room to room, to fight bad guys but more interestingly, to buy new, more powerful cards to add to your deck. From turn to turn, your deck will become bigger and more powerful! That is my friends, classic deck-building in action.

The map is not linear, and with the right items and locations, you will move faster by using hyper lifts, telepads, and teleportation. So figuring out the optimal way from point A to point B has some strategy involved.

Also, you can use more powerful cards, but they make you produce a Clank! The sound attracts enemies which result in more chances of your character getting wounded. So think twice before using them!

6. Best On The Go – Sushi Go Party!

To collect the necessary cards for a combination, players need to draft cards in rounds. During each round, players start with a hand of cards.

Each player drafts cards by picking one and passing other cards to the player on the left. The process happens simultaneously and goes on until all cards are drafted.

At the end of the round, points are summed up for each player based on the combination he or she managed to achieve. Depending on the type of food, the calculation works differently:

• For maki rolls, whoever has the majority scores 6 points.
• If you have three sashimi cards, you score 10. But 1 or 2 sashimi cards don’t score anything.
• A nigiri scores from 1 to 3 points, but if you managed to play a wasabi card before, it triples your nigiri score.
• Desert cards are not scored during the round but only at the end of the game.

The game goes on for three rounds, so you get to repeat the process a couple of times.

In short, you are trying to maximize the points based on cards in your hand, and the hands you’ve seen from other players. But sometimes, you’d also want to grab a card that the player on your desperately needs. This may feel counter-intuitive, but not letting others collect combinations may land you a victory in some cases.

The rules are truly simple and are accessible to the youngest of us, so if you are looking for introductory games for kids, Sushi Go is a great choice.

7. Best Civilization Building – 7 Wonders

In addition to resource and manufacturing buildings, other building types should be considered. Other structures allow you to gain victory points, money, military power, or science advancements that help to accelerate your progress.

Finally, the last third age features distinctive purple buildings. They add a great twist that allows you to boost your point accrual dramatically. The buildings typically come with tough conditions to acquire but are likely to pay back high dividends.

In addition, you can also decide to build a Wonder that consists of three parts. The preconditions and the benefits for wonders depend on each player’s board. 

8. Best Strategic – Pandemic

To win the game, you must collectively discover four cures to free the world from deadly viruses. It sounds perhaps easy, but in practice, it is far from it as team challenges are the essence of the game.

The great mechanism of Pandemic is that once in a while an epidemic outburst happens. As a result, cured cities get infected, and you have to stop the chain reaction that is getting out of control.

Predictable? Yes, but it ultimately means that you have to keep treating the disease non-stop unless you have discovered an antidote.

Pandemic is a reasonably tense board game that represents a combination of strategy (individual and team) and deep player collaboration. It requires a fair bit of thinking, planning and close to perfect coordination between players. 

If you are playing this game with kids, the chances are that you will be amazed. It is incredible to see how quickly can kids come up with plans, discuss and improve them. 

9. Best Fantasy Family Experience – Small World

Each race features a special racial ability, and you get to choose a superpower randomly. The combination of racial ability and the superpower results in a unique strategic approach for almost every game.

To start the game, you need to deploy your race on the map. Looking for quick wins and slow, but consistent expansion is the key to winning the game. You are likely to need to push a couple of other races out, but try doing it a way that you don’t lose the conquered territories later on.

Over time, your race reaches it’s full potential and starts to age. It is no longer able to expand at the same rate, so it might be wise to “decline” it. In short, it means turning the race from active conquerors to passive inhabitants. They are still present on the map, but no longer play an active role anymore.

With its unique race and special powers, the game delivers a very tactical experience and encourages strategic thinking. It keeps the family members engaged as you get to learn how to take the best advantage of the racial abilities and different superpowers.

Overall, Small World is an amazingly beautiful (especially the game board) and simple family board game. It has also earned its place amongst the best fantasy board games in our other review.

10. Best Cooperative Family Board Game – Flash Point: Fire Rescue

On your turn, you’ll have a bunch of actions to choose from. You can move, extinguish a fire, open and close doors, break through walls, carry victims, drive an ambulance or even a fire truck.

Once you have exhausted all your actions, you need to make the smoke and fire progress using two dice. The roll tells you the coordinates on the map where the fire danger gets intensified. If there was no previous danger noted in that location, you need to add smoke. Instead, if there was smoke before, it turns into fire. Lastly, if the area was already on fire, it explodes with fire expanding to adjacent rooms.

Depending on how lucky is your dice roll, you can injure firefighters or people you are trying to save.

Overall, the game does deliver a true panic mode experience. There is simply too much to do and too little time to take care of everything. You have to work as a team and find the right balance between controlling the fire and rescuing people. Making tough decision is part of the experience. Additionally, you want to make sure that the unique abilities of each firefighter are put to the best use.

Frequently Asked Questions