Great Board Games To Play With Your Family!

Photo © by Janiece.

Photo © by Janiece.

Photo © by Janiece.

Animation Library

The original version of cranium is often difficult for younger children, but Cranium's new family version allows everyone to play together! It still includes Creative Cat, Data Head, Star Performer, and Word Worm, and there is still clay for sculpting things, but this version also includes plastic frogs that players are sometimes asked to flip, as well as stacking cubes, for completing some very unusual challenges!

All players divide onto one of two teams, encouraging cooperation and team work throughout the game. In fact, more so than in many other team games, many of the challenges in Cranium Family Fun really require working together with your teammate(s). While playing this game, you may find yourself holding someone else's hand while guiding them to draw the object on the card (the person actually holding the pencil doesn't know what they are drawing!), drawing with your eyes closed while your teammate(s) guesses what you're drawing, working together to get two frogs to meet in mid-air, passing cubes back and forth from one player to another without using your mouth or hands, flipping frogs into a clay bowl across the table, and many more unique and fun-filled challenges!

This game takes less time to play than the original version of Cranium. (In fact, we often go through the board twice, turning around and heading back for start once we reach the finish line.). It's recommended for ages 8 and above. Although some reading is necessarily, a non-reader or beginning reading can get by fine by having someone else read the cards for him.

(Note: The frog animation above comes from Animation Library and is not representative of the plastic frogs that come in the game.)

Clip art (dark green frogs) © by Janiece.

Photo © by Janiece.

(Photo comes from the cover of the box.)

Photo © by Janiece.

Cro Magnon - My Review:

Cro Magnum is so much fun to play! There are four basic sections of the board, each one with a different task. All four sections involving trying to get the other players (called "tribes") to guess your words (as many words in one turn as possible), While you are in the first section of the board you can only mime and grunt your clues. In section two, you can only use clay to get your words across. With the third section you must try to get the other players to guess your target words by pointing to various other words on a primitive language card (it's harder than you think! There are only a few words on the language card to choose from!), and in the last section of the game, you use a charcoal stick to draw a picture of your words.

Each tribe (which can be an individual or a team) also must pick from a list of silly things to do at the beginning and ending of their turn. For example, if you (or your team) are the Broozers, you have to "stand up and pound the table with both fists while letting out a primal scream." Another tribe may be crawling around on all fours while searching for mushrooms, or scratching under their arms and laughing. This sounds pretty goofy, but adds a lot of laughter to the game!

Children need to be able to read fairly well to play this game. Because time is of essence, there's not much time for sounding out words. If you'd like to use this game as an educational reading game, just do away with the sand timer and allow the child to take as much time as he or she needs. This would work best one-on-one with a child.

Photo © by Janiece.

Photo © by Janiece.

Bumparena - My Review:

Bumperena is a little bit like pinball, except the people playing the game set up the pinball bumpers as the game progresses. Each person tries, on their turn, to add or rotate a bumper in a way that more balls will drop into their (or their team's) own personal goal.

The board is always changing! Sometimes just a single carefully placed or rotated bumper can make a huge difference in the course of the balls as they travel down the board and into the goals at the bottom. Even when you have what you think is the perfect plan for getting more of the balls in your goal, someone else will rotate one of your bumpers and suddenly more balls are set to fall in his or her goal instead!

The game is best with two or three players, but our family of four often plays it by dividing into two teams. Bumperena is a lot of fun to play!

We have quite a few of the Cranium games and enjoy all of them. Bumperena, though, has a unique style all it's own!

No reading is necessary, other than for the initial directions.

Photo © by Janiece.

Labyrinth - My Review:

My son and I love playing this game! You start off with a specific number of treasure cards. Each one corresponds to a location on the labyrinth board. Reaching each one of those locations is your goal. The catch is, the locations shifts around as each player moves! Maybe you have the perfect plan laid out as to how you will reach the dragon or the bat...but suddenly someone places a new piece on one of the rows between your pawn and your goal, shifting all the pieces over one and forcing you to come up with a new plan!

The game board varies with each time you play, as the labyrinth pieces are put onto the game board completely at random at the start of each game.

No reading is necessary (except for reading the rules initially). Strategy definitely comes into play in this game, but like most good strategy games, so does flexibility! Although the game says it's for ages 8 to 99, I think some 6 year olds could play this game too, especially if allowed to play by the version especially designed for younger kids. By the way, not everyone playing the game has to play by the same version. It works fine for some to follow the more difficult rules, while others play the easier version.

Photo © by Janiece.

Kids Battle The Grown-Ups Game - My Review:

In so many games, younger players are at a disadvantage. Not so with this game! The kids call out questions to the adults that are easy for the kids to answer, but, well, uhm, a bit harder for the adults. Ah, but then the tables are turned and the adults call out questions to the kids that are more from the adults generation! In other words, the kids might be answering questions about things grown-ups know more about and the grown-ups might be answering things that kids know more about! It makes for some hilarious responses and lots of fun!

Reading is required from at least one person on each team.