6 Sides of Gaming Family Holiday Board Game Gift Guide!

It’s that time of year again! We’re all starting to think about family and friends who we may not have seen for literally years (damn you straight to ALL 9 layers of hell, Covid!). This year, instead of just sitting around a table stuffing your face with cheese, meat, shrimp, crackers and just washing it all down with coffee and Baileys, why not get a board game that everyone can get in on and enjoy.

(that being said, the face stuffing option does sound pretty damn good as a second choice)

We’re going to list some great board games, starting with some kid-friendly choices and then move on to games geared for an older audience. Holiday board games, here we come!

---

Brain Freeze

Ages: 5+
Players: 2
Time to Play: 15-20 min

Brain Freeze is an elimination and guessing game with a tasty theme! Two players or teams compete to identify the secret sweet treat chosen by the other player or team in Brain Freeze.Ice Cream Sandwich, Milkshake, Ice Cream Cone, Popsicle, and Snow Cone are among the kid-friendly icons. Players use only strategic thinking, deduction, memory and logic to make hypotheses, keep records of answers, and eliminate variables until they believe they have identified their opponent’s secret sweet treat correctly. Guess correctly and you win, but guess incorrectly and…you get a Brain Freeze!

Brain Freeze is a fantastic game to teach children strategy, logic, and deduction in a fun way that they’ll enjoy. Making the learning of important skills in school and life enjoyable has never been easier! With a small number of components, Brain Freeze is quick to set up, simple to learn, and provides hours of entertaining mental exercise that never becomes dull.

---

Labyrinth

Age: 8+
Players: 2 to 4
Time to Play: 20 min

Labyrinth is a classic game of strategy and timing. This is a game so popular it has spawned a whole line of Labyrinth games. The game board is made up of tiles that are firmly attached to it; the remaining pieces that make up the labyrinth slide in and out of the rows formed by the tiles that are fastened in place. A tile is placed outside the labyrinth each round, and players alternate taking turns to remove it and sliding it into a row of the labyrinth to shift all of the tiles and push one out the other side; this removed piece becomes the next player’s piece in the maze.

The objective of the game is for players to collect as many treasures as possible by navigating the labyrinth’s shifting pathways. The player that collects all of his or her riches and returns to his or her starting position wins!

The gameplay of Labyrinth is straightforward at first sight and a great puzzle-solving game for children but it can also be enjoyed by adults, who can crank up the competition as they see fit.

---

Not Parent Approved: A Card Game for Families

Age: 8+
Number of Players: 4 to 10
Time to Play: 60 min

This is a game that really shines when the whole crew gets involved. With a minimum 4 players and topping out at 10, this is a game built for holiday get togethers. Not Parent Approved: A Card Game for Families is a word game for kids based on Cards Against Humanity. This game was designed to provide an attention-grabbing, simple-to-understand alternative to screen time for children and their families.

A note from the games publisher outlines why this game is so great for kids and adults:

• Gameplay is simple – It’s Mad Libs gone Bad Libs! Each round, one player picks and reads a question card and everyone else answers with the funniest answer card.
• Not Parent Approved gives kids a feeling of being naughty and cool but within (most) parental boundaries.
• Not Parent Approved makes it okay to put vampire bunnies, fart, and Grandma in the same sentence!

---

Heist: One Team, One Mission

Age: 7+
Players: 2 to 4
Time to Play: 15 min

Heist is a fast paced game that gets the whole gang to work together. With a game title like Heist, you can probably imagine what the objective is here.

In Heist: One Team, One Mission, players assume the roles of various characters — such as a money man, hacker, lookout, or explosives expert – and collaborate to crack an electronic safe and steal $50 million in cold, hard cash.The stakes have never been higher than this!

Choose your character and acquire tools to complete the action at hand. Pay attention to your team leader for one false move, and the alarm may be sounded! Heist has five progressive stages of complexity and a sixth, top-secret level is awaiting discovery…

---

Don’t Step In It! Unicorn Edition

Age: 4+
Players: 2 to 4
Time to Play: 15 min

Don’t Step In It: Unicorn Edition is a hilarious spinoff ofthe original Don’t Step In It game. Players mold fake, rainbow Unicorn poops and place them on the playmat. Players spin the spinner to determine how many steps they will take and whether other players should add, remove or rearrange the poops before the blindfolded individual begins walking.

After each person has a turn, the winner is the player who has stepped in the least poopsicorns (sorry, I had to). There are no ties; play until you find a poop-dodging winner!

---

Exploding Kittens

Age:7+
Number of Players: 2 to 5
Time to Play: 15 min

Exploding Kittens is a ticking time bomb of hilarious proportions. Players take turns drawing cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses the game.The deck is constructed of cards that allow you to peek at cards before you draw, forcing your opponent to draw many cards or shuffle the deck in order to avoid blowing up.

Each card you draw adds to the tension of the game since the fewer cards in the deck, the more likely you are to draw the kitten and burst into a blazing cat fireball. This a great and easy that is fun for everyone. The hidden, exploding kitten cards really do add some suspense which promises to be fun for you and your group.