2016 Gift Guide: Games

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Games are such a great gift for anyone. I love getting games for people I might not know quite well yet, or for someone who has a bit of everything already. They make great family or combined gifts too.

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Here’s our list of great games this year for a range of ages. I was checking through them and they all have excellent reviews on Amazon as well!

In no particular order:

• Zeus on the Loose – Play cards strategically, adding numbers as you climb up the mythic mountain. Grab Zeus when the total reaches a multiple of 10. Suggested for ages 8-14
• Rubiks Cube – A classic and always a great choice in our house. There are so may varieties of the cube puzzles now so if your recipient already has one you can find a unique one they don’t have yet.
• Game Night In a Can – A great choice for families that love hosting game nights. It’s a creative, silly challenge game with many ways to play. Good for ages 10 and up or around 5 and up if teamed up with adults.
• Escape the Room – we did a whole post on this one, but it’s definitely worth adding to the list. A really fun family or large group game night/party game from ThinkFun.
• Balance Beans – A fun logic and problem solving game for elementary kids starting with the Kindergarteners. Set up the Red Beans according to the Challenge Card. Then carefully place the colorful Beans on the Seesaw to keep it from teetering. When you balance the Seesaw, you are actually balancing an equation!
• Clue Master – Clue Master is a fun logic game that develops the skill of deductive reasoning, a key ability in math, science, computer programming, and many other fields. The more you play, the more deductive tricks and strategies you’ll learn as you reason logically from the clues you’re given! Perfect for tweens this is another great new game from ThinkFun.
• Yoga Spinner Game – Have an active little one on your list? Yoga Spinner is the perfect introduction to yoga for the kids constantly moving in your life. Give the spinner a whirl and perform the pose on the corresponding Yoga Pose Card. If you can hold the pose for 10 seconds, you keep the card, and the first player to collect a card in each color wins!
• Reverse Charades – Instead of one person acting out the clues and a team guessing, the team acts out the clues and one player guesses. Maybe even more fun than the original! They have expansion decks too.
• Dragonwood – recommended to us by many of you (and many Amazon shoppers). Collect sets of adventurer cards to earn dice, which you will use to roll against your foes. Stomp on some fire ants, shriek at a grumpy troll, or strike the menacing orange dragon with a magical silver sword. Choose your strategy carefully because the landscape of Dragonwood is ever-changing. Only the bravest will overcome the odds to emerge victorious! Suggested ages 8-15
• Superfight – A silly, but simple to play card game. There are character cards and power and weakness cards. These cards are used to create fights like this: A KINDERGARTEN CLASS THAT BREATHES FIRE AND IS WEARING JETPACKS vs. A PIRATE SWINGING A SHARK ON A CHAIN AND RIDING A SEGWAY. As you can imagine, the arguments over who would win the fight end up very interesting. My boys love introducing this game to family members. They also have lots of fun expansion decks.

Since games are so timeless you can definitely check out our suggestions from the last couple of years!