I have an 8 year old, and I have enjoyed more cooperative games like Forbidden Island to be a good board game to get started.

In terms of other stuff, I have found a lot depends on how good at reading your kids are. I have also played Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and Machi Koro with them too.

Unstable Unicorns and Here to Slay might be a good start.

Dungeon Mayhem is a fun little battler. All very comic-booky art.

Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Island are both good fun coop games.

Santorini might be a fit.

Sleeping Queens is super fun for all ages

Ticket to ride, ticket to ride kids edition, Settlers of Catan and Settlers Kids edition are favorites at our house right now. Kids are 6,8. Uno works well for this age also.

Apples to Apples is a riot with my family. It's basically a cards against humanity for kids.

My 7 year old LOVES Pandemic, Get Bit, Clue, Chess, Battleship and Ghost Castle. A family favorite is Qwirkle

Qwixx and Yahtzee are fun. Also card game called Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza.

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Recommendation Requests should be posted to our Daily Game Recommendations threads. Reddit is a great place to pick peoples' brains and get game suggestions, but we get a lot of recommendation requests, so much so that we have the "Daily Game Recs"-threads dedicated for them. Historically, almost all well formatted questions in the Daily thread get answers. If you're looking for further suggestions, we recommend taking a look at our growing list of Recommendation Roundups. There's also the What Should I Get (WSIG) section on our wiki for a more general list of common recommendations.

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Not sure how comfortable with complexity your family is or what you consider classics, but one game mine has enjoyed is Everdell. It's a bit heavier than some classics but still well within the range of being a family game. You build a town with woodland critters. Machi Koro 2 is also a really fun one where you construct a town with establishments such as coffee shops and stores.

Cascadia and get its expansion landmarks too if you want up to 6 players

Tumblin’ Dice. Hands down.

Here's a list of the best family board games ever—the absolute classics, crowd-pleasers, and hidden gems. I'll explain each one in detail, highlighting what makes it special and why it’s a great choice for families. I’ve divided the games into categories to give you a well-rounded list.

Classic Board Games

1. Catan (Settlers of Catan)

Why it’s great: Players compete to settle an island by trading and building roads, settlements, and cities. The resource management and negotiation element (trading wheat for sheep!) make it engaging and strategic for all ages.

Family appeal: Kids and adults enjoy the strategy and trading dynamics.

Best for ages: 10+

2. Ticket to Ride

Why it’s great: A race to build train routes across the country! It’s simple to learn but has great strategic depth. You collect colored train cards to claim routes on a map, which feels satisfying and fun.

Family appeal: Easy rules with engaging gameplay.

Best for ages: 8+

3. Carcassonne

Why it’s great: A tile-placement game where players create medieval landscapes (cities, roads, fields) and score points by placing “meeples.” It’s highly replayable and quick to set up.

Family appeal: Simple mechanics with evolving strategy.

Best for ages: 8+

4. Scrabble

Why it’s great: A timeless word game where you score points by forming words on a board. It’s educational, competitive, and perfect for families who love words.

Family appeal: Great for kids learning new words and for wordsmiths.

Best for ages: 8+

5. Monopoly

Why it’s great: The classic property-buying game where players collect rent, build houses/hotels, and try to dominate the board.

Family appeal: It’s iconic and brings out healthy competition (and sometimes funny rivalries).

Best for ages: 8+

6. Clue (Cluedo)

Why it’s great: A whodunit mystery game where players deduce the suspect, weapon, and location of a crime.

Family appeal: It’s interactive and feels like solving a puzzle.

Best for ages: 8+

Cooperative Games (Work Together!)

7. Pandemic

Why it’s great: Players work as a team of scientists to stop global disease outbreaks. It’s intense, strategic, and rewarding when you win together.

Family appeal: Promotes teamwork and problem-solving.

Best for ages: 10+

8. Forbidden Island

Why it’s great: A cooperative game where players race against time to retrieve treasures before the island sinks. It’s fast-paced and perfect for beginners.

Family appeal: Beautifully designed and easy to learn.

Best for ages: 8+

9. Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters

Why it’s great: A cooperative game where players enter a haunted house to collect treasures while avoiding ghosts.

Family appeal: Fun and suspenseful for kids and adults.

Best for ages: 6+

Party and Fast-Paced Games

10. Codenames

Why it’s great: Players give one-word clues to help their teammates identify secret words from a grid. It’s brilliant for large groups and wordplay lovers.

Family appeal: Quick, clever, and encourages creative thinking.

Best for ages: 10+

11. Exploding Kittens

Why it’s great: A fast-paced card game full of humor where players try to avoid drawing exploding kitten cards.

Family appeal: Hilarious and chaotic, with a simple setup.

Best for ages: 7+

12. Uno

Why it’s great: The iconic card game where players match colors or numbers, aiming to be the first to empty their hand. Simple and endlessly fun.

Family appeal: Perfect for all ages and occasions.

Best for ages: 6+

13. Pictionary

Why it’s great: Players draw clues while their teammates guess what they’re drawing. A classic for family game nights.

Family appeal: Creative and laugh-out-loud funny.

Best for ages: 8+

Games for Strategy Lovers

14. Risk

Why it’s great: A game of global domination where players use armies to conquer territories. It’s intense and deeply strategic.

Family appeal: Competitive and epic, especially for strategy buffs.

Best for ages: 10+

15. Azul

Why it’s great: A beautiful tile-placement game where players compete to decorate a palace. It’s elegant, quick, and strategic.

Family appeal: Stunning design and easy-to-learn mechanics.

Best for ages: 8+

16. Splendor

Why it’s great: Players collect gems to build a trading empire, balancing resources and strategy. Simple yet highly rewarding.

Family appeal: Perfect for introducing strategy to kids.

Best for ages: 10+

Games for Younger Kids

17. Guess Who?

Why it’s great: A guessing game where players ask yes/no questions to figure out the opponent’s chosen character.

Family appeal: Fast, fun, and great for younger kids.

Best for ages: 6+

18. Candy Land

Why it’s great: A colorful race through a sugary wonderland. It’s perfect for introducing board games to little ones.

Family appeal: Simple and visually engaging.

Best for ages: 3+

19. Zingo!

Why it’s great: A fast-paced bingo-style game for younger children learning numbers, words, and matching.

Family appeal: Educational and entertaining.

Best for ages: 4+

Modern Favorites

20. Wingspan

Why it’s great: A beautifully designed game where players build bird habitats, managing food, eggs, and bird cards. It’s relaxing and strategic.

Family appeal: Stunning visuals and unique theme.

Best for ages: 10+

21. Dixit

Why it’s great: A storytelling game where players describe whimsical images in creative ways.

Family appeal: Imaginative and artistic.

Best for ages: 8+

Hidden Gems

22. Kingdomino

Why it’s great: A tile-laying game where players build their kingdoms by matching terrains. Simple yet strategic.

Family appeal: Quick, family-friendly strategy.

Best for ages: 8+

23. Qwirkle

Why it’s great: A mix of Scrabble and Dominoes, where players match colors and shapes to score points.

Family appeal: Simple and satisfying gameplay.

Best for ages: 6+

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Conclusion Love you all and happy holidays!!

Catan is a fun game. My youngest (now 7) can play it without an adult helping him. He loves offering unhinged deals to get cards. Even if they make no sense

not a board game, But “Taco, Cat , Goat, Cheese Pizza” is one of my kids fav ( ages 5+6)

One of the best games we have for that age is called Wee Little Piggies. Not sure if any new games are being made of it so you may have to get it from ebay. It's based on the 3 little pigs nursery rhyme and is amazing for helping memory and also taking turns. It's also interactive and my kids loved it and still do. You can watch videos online if the game play. It's easily the best game we've played for that age range.

Other games my youngest two like (aged 4 and 6):

Trash Stash - a garbage truck game where you have to be the first to put all of your garbage in the truck.

Hungry Hippos - noisy, but always popular

Pop the Pig or Pop up Pirate - always good fun.

Zingo - a bingo game with pictures. Good for memory and picture matching

Surprise Slides game (we have PJ Masks and Lightning McQueen version) - good for turn taking and learning how to follow rules.

Once they get older our favourite game to play with my oldest (age 11) is Ticket to Ride.

At that age, we liked animal upon animal, rhino hero, sneaky snacky squirrel, uno, and the eye spot it games.

Outfoxed, the littlest orchard and the little orchard, sequence, racko

My five year olds love this! Also Uno, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Go Fish, Gin Rummy, Dominoes, Yahtzee, Trouble, and Old Maid.

Edit: I keep thinking of more to add!

We like Count the Chickens too. Any cooperative game by Peaceable Kingdom we’ve found to be pretty good.

Zingo. Fun, easy to play and with minimal to no set-up/clean-up. Bonus- helps with early word recognition.

Carcassonne junior

Guess who

Skip bo junior

Animal upon animal (cute kids version of jenga)

Mancala

I was scrolling for awhile to see Chutes & Ladders. My now 7 year old nephew has loved it for years. It's just fun for all ages.

Peaceable Kingdom, which makes this game, makes a ton of co-op games for kids. My 4-year-old also has Snug as a Bug in a Rug, which similarly has multiple difficulty levels for various age groups, and works counting, color, size, and shape recognition.

We have also only called this game "the owl game" and my kids love it to pieces.

My 6yo's teacher uses dominos for addition examples a lot and my daughter has subsequently fallen in love with them. She'll play the actual game, use them to build mazes/buildings, match games etc. She got her own set for Christmas and is really excited for it.

Concept jr is pretty popular at our house. So is Sequence jr., King of Tokyo, Zombie Dice and Count Your Chickens. Count your chickens might be a bit young for a 5 year old though.

>Candyland, Chutes & Ladders

My kids are six and four, we love these.

Your submission was removed by a moderator for the following reason(s):

Recommendation Requests should be posted to our Daily Game Recommendations threads. Reddit is a great place to pick peoples' brains and get game suggestions, but we get a lot of recommendation requests, so much so that we have the "Daily Game Recs"-threads dedicated for them. Historically, almost all well formatted questions in the Daily thread get answers. If you're looking for further suggestions, we recommend taking a look at our growing list of Recommendation Roundups. There's also the What Should I Get (WSIG) section on our wiki for a more general list of common recommendations.

(If you believe this post was removed in error you can request a re-review by messaging the mods.)

Paleo and Keep the Heroes Out are cooperative and work well with 3 players.

chilled games : Oltrée, dorfromantik

The crew is a cool challenge and fun

Zombie Kidz games are pretty decent, on the simpler side

As a preface, my complexity ratings for these games is what I personally would rate them as.

Co-op

Hanabi is a card game, albeit a little "quiet" maybe - there are 5 suits of cards numbered 1-5 (more copies of the smaller number cards), and you're working together to make 5 stacks of the 5 colors in order 1-5. The twist is that your hand is held facing away from you, and everyone takes turns either giving a clue to someone about their cards ("You have three reds" and pointing to them), playing a card, or discarding a card to give you all more time. While the rules are simple, the logic can become quite complex; someone who is dedicated can sometimes deduce what's in their hand based on card-counting and what they see.

• Complexity: 2/5

• Price: $10 - $20.

The Crew is a trick-taking card game like Hearts, but again, a little on the quiet side because you're not allowed to talk about what's in your hand. Every round will have a particular goal, usually decided at random, such as "This player needs to take a trick that includes the blue 6." Again, a fun game of logic and deduction, as players get 1 opportunity to communicate something about their hand by laying a card down in front of them and indicating if it is the highest, the lowest, or the only value of a particular suit in their hand.

• Complexity: 2/5

• Price: $10 - $20

Marvel United is a deck-based boss battler. Everyone picks a Marvel superhero to use and their associated deck. On their cards are one of 4 symbols, indicating a different action: Move, Attack, Heroic (e.g. rescue a civilian). You go around to various locations, either saving civilians, attacking thugs, and accomplishing certain objectives until you're able to attack the main villain. You have to go fast though, or else the villain will accomplish their villainous plot.

• Complexity: 3/5

• Price: $25 - $40

Sentinels of the Multiverse is another superhero deck-based boss battler, where each of you picks a superhero and their associated deck to fight a supervillain (which has its own deck) in an environment (which also has its own deck). It's essentially a more grown-up version of Marvel United. The supervillain is played "automatically", where you just play the top card of their deck, then resolve all of their cards they have in front of them. The heroes take turns playing a card, using one of their superpowers, and then drawing a card. Then, at the end of the player turns, the environment also plays the top card of its deck - sometimes it's a good card for you, sometimes it's bad. There are some really complex heroes that your daughter may enjoy, and there are some simpler heroes that your wife will still enjoy.

• Complexity: 3 to 5/5, depending on which hero you pick

• Price: $50-75

Competitive

Qwixx is a luck-based dice rolling game. You have 6 dice - 1 red, 1 blue, 1 yellow, 1 green, and two white - and a score sheet with four rows (one for each color), with two of the rows numbered 2 through 12 and the other two rows numbered 12 through 2. Everyone takes turns rolling the dice and deciding to take the sum of one of the colored dice and one of the white dice to mark the corresponding total in the corresponding color row, e.g. if you rolled the dice and the red die was 3 and one of the white dice was 1, you would mark off the 4 in your red row if that's what you wanted. The one rule is that once you mark a number in a given row, you can no longer mark any other boxes to the left of it in the same row. You are competing to see who can get the most points based on how many boxes in each row you ticked. Games are quick and the math is easy. 

• Complexity: 1/5

• Price: $10 - $20

Five Crowns is a classic card-based set-building game, like Phase 10, but it doesn't require certain kinds of sets, only that you empty your hand. As you complete "levels" when you empty your hand, you get more cards in your hand for the next round. Points are scored based on what is left in peoples' hands when someone else goes out, and points are bad. I've played this game with my family since I was about your daughter's age, and I still come back to it.

• Complexity: 1/5

• Price: $10 - $20

Dice Throne is essentially competitive Yahtzee, but you're heroes that are fighting each other, trying to do enough damage to knock the others out. Everyone picks a hero (there are generic heroes like "Paladin" or "Ninja", or licensed heroes like Black Panther or Captain Marvel), who each have a set of dice with symbols on it. Like in Yahtzee, you have three chances to get a roll you want, either based on the values on the dice (such as Small and Large Straight from Yahtzee) or based on the symbols. Either way, the outcomes correspond to a particular ability your character may have, e.g. getting 2 claw marks, 2 triangles, and 1 Panther symbol lets Black Panther do a certain amount of damage and some other effects. You can play cards to help modify your rolls, modify your opponents' rolls, or boost your abilities to do more damage. My wife is also not super into complex games, but she likes playing this one with me. An additional bonus to this game is that even though there are different sets you can buy, you don't have to buy any "core set" first to be able to play, and all the sets are intercompatible - you don't have to only fight Marvel vs Marvel, you can do Spider-Man vs Ninja if you want.

• Complexity: 2 to 4/5, depending on which hero you pick.

• Price: $20 - $50 per set

Hopefully this helps!

Articulate is always good. Carcassone is a classic. r/boardgames

Settlers of Catan is you want to play against each other. Pandemic if you want to avoid family arguments.

I have a good friend with Aspergers (mild). He LOVES this game. He isn't good at creating jokes on his own, but he is great at piecing them together, and he generally wins enough rounds to make him enjoy the game.

I quite like Risk but I'm not allowed to play since the "Great Risk Incident of 2014"

Cards Against Humanity. Your granny will love it.

You should check out "say anything" on the surface it looks like a family friendly tame version but because you get to write your own answers it can get well and truly dark and much worse than CAH if you play with the right people.

CAH gets old when you've seen all the cards a few times Say Anything is limited only by how much you personally want to put into the game.

Labyrinth by Ravensburger is another one I have had success with for younger kids. Only takes a slight change in the rules. Keep the regular rule for adults that you can only go after one treasure at a time but let the kids be able to go for any of their treasures. That keeps it remotely leveled and the kids love the sliding tiles part of the game.

Love this list. We've had a lot of success with a few of these. I specifically was looking to see if SOS Dino was on there as both of my girls (3 and 6) are big fans. We've also found Kingdomino (and Dragomino), Animal Upon Animal, and Outfoxed! to be good for both them and us. I'm hesitant on King of Tokyo because of the direct conflict and player elimination, however that really comes down to knowing how our kids would react. I think most games with kids will really depend on the kid, so I think inclusion of the "downsides" is really important.

This is great for my wife and I. We are trying to have 100 kids so we have 100 boardgaming friends and no one can say no to being our friends lol.

But seriously, even my daughter hates chutes and ladders, so I'll be getting some of these

>King of Tokyo requires a strategy to understand what to do with the dice that is beyond a 4-year-old, and the concept of what is happening is too abstract.

Oh, absolutely. I don't know if you read the blog post (fair if you didn't and you'd already played it with kids), but that's pretty much the first thing I say. I hesitated before putting it on the list, since they really can't play it without assistance, but I've had such a blast playing with so many different kids that I had to include it (even with serious caveats).

I could totally see how some kids would bounce off, though.

​

Thanks for your other suggestions! I haven't tried them before.

Have you tried My First Orchard? I just ordered it and am still waiting for it to arrive - but after reading the rules I was able to make a makeshift version with a few of my daughters other toys lol. It’s hardly a game.. but it reinforces color matching, and dice rolling, and taking turns. The game is also cooperative, all players against the raven. And it’s like 95% luck, and the win rate is supposedly around 60% so we do lose fairly often and I think it’s good for kids to experience that. My daughter was just shy of 2 years and she picked up the game immediately. Big hit.

It's a great game, its actually fun for the adult while still accessible to very young children. It deserves a reprint for sure.

My two year old daughter ALWAYS feeds the fruit to the bird lol. But I love the game. I try to get her to finish it before we move onto 'free play' where she just fucks around with the pieces and makes lines and patterns with them.

Another great one is Roll & Play. We started that when she was 18 months old and she always giggled, only thing she had trouble with was the colors. Now 7 months later she still loves it and she definitely ended up learning a lot about colors from the months of playing it!

Chronicles of Avel is legitimately good just for adults, my 6 year old loves it too. Zombie Kids Evolution is definitely lighter, but we had fun with our 30+ games.

I don’t have much of a gamer family but damnit if they don’t love Codenames.

My family goes for Catan at the most complicated. I've been able to get them into Pandemic, Sherrif of Nottingham, Just One (they're obsessed with it), Codenames, Dixit, Hanabi, Incan Gold, and lately The Crew. Especially the last one for any families who like standard card games.

Ticket to Ride is a family favorite.

My mother no longer invites me over for board games. She invites me over for Codenames lol