TRI-CITIES, WA – If you’re looking for a fun way to spend time with your kids over the holidays, consider having a family game night! Local nonprofit, Tri-City Area Gaming, came up with their Top 5 Family Games for Holiday Break.
Top 5 Family Games for Holiday Break by Tri-City Area Gaming:
Just One – In this cooperative word game, 3–7 players work together to give clues and guess words successfully. One player will be responsible for guessing a word based on single-word clues written down on whiteboards by all other players. But be careful! If your clue is shared by any other clue givers, then that clue is eliminated from what the guesser has to work with. The guesser changes, and play repeats. Just One plays in about 30–45 minutes depending on how many times each person wants to be the guesser.Cover Your Assets – In this competitive card game, 4–6 players will compete to collect the most valuable sets of riches. On a turn, players can lay down a pair of matching cards from their hand, or they can attempt to steal a set laid down by another player by playing down a card that matches the set they want to steal. The set’s owner can play a matching card of their own to protect it, resulting in a progressive back-and-forth between players, and a very expensive stack. When the deck runs out, whoever has the most expensive set of cards in front of them wins. Play lasts about 30 minutes.Catch the Moon – a competitive dexterity game for 2–6 players. On a turn, a player rolls a die that tells them how they need to add one or more ladders to a shared sculpture. If they fail to add their ladders to the increasingly unstable stack, or if the stack falls down, they collect a raindrop token. Once all of the tokens have been collected, the player with the fewest tokens wins. Play lasts 15–30 minutes.Telestrations – a cooperative game for 3–8 players that plays in about 30–60 minutes, depending on how many players there are. Telestrations is kind of like the telephone game, but with drawings instead of whispered statements. All players begin by selecting a secret word and writing it into their notebook, then passing it along to the person on their left. That person then draws the secret phrase and passes it along for the next player. That player then attempts to guess what the last player was attempting to draw, writes it down in their notebook, and passes it along. Play continues until each player gets their book back. Then they flip through their notebook from start to finish sharing how their secret phrase devolved based on the drawings of other players.Wits and Wagers – a trivia game for 4–7 players. But don’t worry! You don’t have to be good at trivia to play. On a turn, one player reads a question that always has a numeric answer (like, how many stairs are in the Empire State building, for example). Then each player writes their guess on a card and places it facedown in front of them. The reader collects the cards and organizes them on a felt mat in ascending order. Players now place bets on whose answer they believe is closest to the real answer without going over. Answers in the middle of the spread have a lower rate of return than answers on the extreme ends. Once the answer is revealed, those closest to the answer collect winnings while all other players lose their bets. Whoever ends up with the largest chip count at the end of the game wins.
Tri-City Area Gaming is a nonprofit dedicated to making games inclusive and accessible to everyone. Learn more on their website, or connect with them on Facebook.
