Have Fun with Your Kids! A Roundup of Board Games Recommended for Parents and Children
In recent years, board games have been gaining attention among adults as well, and of course there are plenty designed for children, too.
They range from educational games suitable for kids around age three to strategic games aimed at elementary schoolers and up.
In this article, we’ll introduce a selection of games that kids can enjoy, as well as games that adults can have fun playing together with them!
If you’re a parent looking for board games to play with your children, use this as a guide to find games they’re likely to enjoy.
Fun for the whole family! A roundup of recommended board games for parents and kids (1–10)
Captain Rhino
Captain Rhino is a thrilling game that keeps kids on the edge of their seats as they stack a building higher and higher.
Players combine floor cards with folded wall cards to construct the building, and the first person to run out of cards in hand wins.
On your turn, you first build the walls, then place a floor/ceiling card on top.
You must place the walls according to the lines shown on the previous player’s floor card.
If you draw a floor card with Captain Rhino on it, you must place the Rhino figure exactly as indicated—right in the wobbly building! If the building collapses during play, the player who caused it loses, and among the remaining players, the one with the fewest cards left in hand wins.
The Great Race of the Cat and the Mouse
The cat-and-mouse chase for cheese is a blast in The Great Cheese Chase.
Kids are sure to love this adorable race! Move your mouse token the number of spaces shown on the die, aiming for the cheese scattered across the board.
Completing a full lap earns a 6-point cheese, while other cheeses on the board are worth 1–4 points each.
Once a mouse grabs a piece of cheese, it’s done for the game.
You’ll want to snag the high-value cheeses, but beware: if you land on a cat space or roll the cat symbol, the cat creeps closer.
Get caught by the cat and you’re out! When there are no mice left on the board, the game ends, and the player with the highest total cheese points wins.
Slide Quest
This game is for four players.
The four of you tilt levers on each side to guide a knight to the goal.
The knight is designed to move easily when the board is tilted.
Coordinate your lever movements as a team, navigate around obstacles, and drop sentries and villains into holes.
There are 20 maps, and the difficulty increases as you go, requiring more precise lever control.
Rather than someone winning, it’s a game where everyone cooperates to achieve the objective—perhaps a fresh concept in itself.
Animal Shogi
Surprisingly deep, the children’s version of shogi called “Dobutsu Shogi” (Animal Shogi) uses pieces illustrated with a lion, giraffe, elephant, and chick instead of the usual shogi pieces with difficult kanji like king and rook.
The board also has only 12 squares arranged in a 3×4 grid.
As in shogi, each piece moves in different directions, and if an opponent’s piece lies in the direction you move, you can capture it and make it yours.
The piece equivalent to the shogi king is the lion, so capturing the opponent’s lion wins the game.
There’s another way to win too: if you move your lion to the farthest rank from your side—the opponent’s first rank—you also win.
Whether you aim to capture the opponent’s lion or drive straight forward, it’s a game that offers a depth distinct from traditional shogi.
Ubongo
Ubongo is a puzzle game where you play to collect gems.
Use the puzzle shown for the number rolled on the die to fill the white-outlined puzzle area.
You have a one-minute time limit for each puzzle.
If you finish, call out “Ubongo!” After one minute, the 1st and 2nd players take gems from the board, and any other players who completed their puzzle draw gems from the bag.
The value of each gem—your points—varies by gem.
Play nine rounds of this puzzle game, and the player with the highest total value of collected gems wins!
Katamino
First off, the packaging label that says “for ages 3 to 99” really catches the eye.
This game involves combining blocks of various shapes to fill a frame.
By moving the slider, you can change the size of the frame, allowing for countless combinations and ensuring you won’t get bored compared to similar puzzle games.
The difficulty also changes depending on whether you use the small blocks or not, so it truly offers fun for a wide range of ages, from young children to adults.
It can also be played by two people.
Crash Ice Game
This is a game where you break hexagonal plastic pieces that look like ice with a hammer.
You have to chip away at the ice carefully so that the penguin on top doesn’t fall.
Spin the roulette and break as many ice pieces as the number it lands on.
There are also events like skip a turn and reverse, which keep the game exciting.
It’s like a stick-pulling sand mound game with a bit less randomness.
How you break and which hexagonal pieces you leave will likely have a big impact on who wins.
Gobblet Gobblers
Gobblet Gobblers is a board game that’s like a 3×3 tic-tac-toe turned into a 3D version where players place O’s and X’s.
The basic rules are the same as tic-tac-toe: you win by claiming any one row.
However, in this game the pieces, called Gobblers, come in three sizes—large, medium, and small—so a larger piece can cover a smaller one, even flipping a spot you claimed into your opponent’s.
You place pieces while keeping an eye on how many pieces of each size both you and your opponent still have.
As your supply runs low, you’ll need to reuse pieces by lifting ones that were covering others, which can dramatically change the board state! It takes more thinking than playing on paper, but it’s a tic-tac-toe-style game that kids can enjoy too.
Mancala: Kalah
Keep moving colorful stones in Mancala Kalah.
The rules are simple: the winner is whoever clears all the stones from their own side! At the start, place four stones in each of the six pockets on both your side and your opponent’s.
On your turn, take all the stones from one pocket and drop them one by one into the pockets counterclockwise.
If you finish placing stones in either your own or your opponent’s regular pocket, it becomes the opponent’s turn.
If you finish in the slightly larger pocket called the “goal,” you get another turn.
Your goal is the larger pocket on your left, and you keep gathering stones toward it.
It may look tricky at first, but kids enjoy handling the cute stones, and the strategic thinking makes it great for learning, too!
Ride a crocodile?
“Ride the Crocodile?” is especially recommended for animal-loving kids: you stack various animals on top of a crocodile.
The rules are simple—roll the die and place that many of your animals onto the crocodile.
However, the die has faces other than numbers.
If you roll the crocodile, you don’t place animals on top; instead, you attach them to the crocodile to widen the base.
If you roll a hand, you pass your pieces to another player and have them place them for you.
If you roll a speech bubble, another player chooses which of your pieces you must place.
If the stack collapses while building, you take two of the fallen pieces as your own.
The first player to get rid of all their pieces wins!