All of these games will be available to pick up and play. We will have some games with expert players who will introduce and play with you throughout the day, as well as printed crib sheets. Grab a game, bring a friend, pull up a chair, and have fun!
Of course, if you like one of them, do buy them from your local games shop, like Fan Boy Three and Travelling Man both in the Northern Quarter, or Element Games in Stockport.
Also during the day do try your hand in our Games of Skill including our famous PitchCar championship - use finger-flicks to get your cars round the track in as few flicks as possible!
Younger Kids
Of course, depends on your kid, but I play these with my under-tens - not my under-sixes, though.
- Happy Salmon. Shout and jump around in a circle!
- Playing time: 5 mins.
- Tips for kids: Just keep it moving. Not so much a board game as a physical party game: no reading or maths.
- Get Help: Al
- Junior Dobble. Lovely quick game of spotting animals on cards before everyone else does. The cards we have are pretty tatty, though, smile.
- Playing time: 3 min.
- Tips for kids: It's actually a reaction game, so it's pretty easy to play so your kid enjoys it. No text or maths, so suitable for pretty much every child.
- Get Help: Al, Ross, Pete
- Sushi Go! A straight-forward card-collecting game with cute cards.
- Playing time: 20 min.
- Get Help: Ross, Pete, Al
- Machi Koro. Lots of luck, simple game mechanics, hiding a pleasingly competitive game.
- Playing time: 20 mins.
- Tips for kids: Avoid buying the red cards, which let you take money off other players (and making them sad). Encourage your kids to buy something that lets them win something on each die roll to cheer them up. Ignore the additive effects of the cards that let you win to keep it simpler.
- Get Help: Al
- Rhino Hero. Stack cards for your rhino superhero to climb as hard as they can!
- Playing time: 5 mins.
- Tips for kids: Actually a test of fine motor control, so physical not mental which might be good.
- Get Help: Al
- Exploding Kittens. Silly fun competitive card game.
- Playing time: 10 mins.
- Tips for kids: If you sit just before your kid you can go easy on them with what you play. You don't have to play the cards that let you steal cards from your kids, just let them sit in your hand.
- Get Help: Al, Pete
- Poo the card game. Simple card game. Chuck poo at your opponents.
- Playing time: 15 mins.
- Get Help: Ross
- Tips for kids: Don’t use the golden banana.
- Bandido. Super-easy to understand, quick to play, collaborative game that's surprisingly hard to win.
- Playing time: 10 mins.
- Tips for kids: You could take out some of the cards - the ones with most exits: especially ones with exits on three sides.
- Get Help: Ross, Al
- Forest. Very simple and quick game with fairytale characters that prompt discussion: based on counting up to seven.
- Playing time: 10 mins.
- Tips for kids: Suitable for any child who can count, as young as three or four. Could simply stop playing at any point and score, so easy to quit. Can throw the game by simply not playing the right card.
- Get Help: Al
- Junior Labyrinth. Try to run through a shifting labyrinth to collect the treasure!
- Avocado Smash. Snap-like card and word game: try to win all the cards!
- Playing time: 10 mins.
- Get Help: Pete
- Dwarves and Dice
- Mmmm! Throw dice and place them on the food your hungry mouse family can eat!
Bigger Kids
Not kids' games, but games older kids can enjoy - generally because they don't take a whole evening.
- Carcassonne. Place tiles to build medieval countryside and win points, place your meeple (little people) to win the game if you can understand the scoring system!
- Kill Doctor Lucky. Cluedo in reverse - hunt down Doctor Lucky and kill him when no-one else is watching!
- Playing time: 15 mins
- Tips for kids: Encourage them to try to catch Doctor Lucky as he comes past, not chase him around the house, then arrange to not be in line with them.
- Get help: Al knows it well.
- Dungeon Mayhem. Battle other players by drawing and playing cards to fight, defend and use special powers for your character.
- Time: 10 mins
- Get Help: Ross, Al, Pete
- King of Tokyo. Battle other giant monsters - a winner for all Godzilla fans! Simple and lots of fun dice rolling.
- Playing time: 10 mins
- Tips for kids: you can choose what you roll, so go ahead and choose to re-roll energy dice and accumulate energy and don't use it, or buy some of the dubiously-helpful cards! Or stay in Tokyo longer than you should and die...
- Get help: Al knows it okay.
- Mole Rats in Space. By the creators of Pandemic, a co-operative game that's easy to pick up but hard to win.
- Playing time: 30 mins.
- Tips for kids: it's actually pretty hard! Or maybe we just suck at it. There are some harder cards with red borders in the game deck, pull these out before you play. As a co-op game you can advise.
- Get Help: Al, Ross
- The Settlers of Catan. Hugely popular modern game, race to colonise an island: each game is different, lots of luck and dice rolls.
- Playing time: 60 mins.
- Tips for kids: you can't change dice rolls much, but you can offer to trade when you spot they need something. I've also changed the Robber Rule: you still lose half your cards if you have eight or more, but if you roll a seven you don't place the robber and steal a card from that player, you just pick a card of your choice from the resources. Speeds up the game at the cost of diminishing trading, and makes knights less useful.
- Get Help: Al, Ross
- Ticket to Ride. Modern classic, build your railway line with little plastic trains to win.
- Playing time: 30 mins.
- Tips for kids: Avoid blocking your kid's routes across the map, especially routes where only one train line can be built. Work out what card colours your kid is collecting, avoid collecting those, and grab other colours to let more of your kid's colours come out.
- Get Help: Al, Bram
- The Witches: A Discworld Game. Fly around solving the problems of your fellow countrypeople and win Best Witch!
- Playing time: 45 mins
- Tips for kids: Everyone loses if the witches get too stressed, which you can help with by having tea with the kids - you get less stressed, but your kid's character does too, and it saves them doing it!
- Get help: Al knows it OK.
- Kingdomino
- Queendomino. Place dominos to build your kingdom.
- Get Help: Ross.
- Tips for Kids: Play Kingdomino instead, it's slightly simpler.
- Orc-lympics. Draft your Olympians and then decide who to put into each event. Get the most points and you win.
- Get Help: Ross
- Tips for Kids: Let them have more than 3 races in their team.
- Hanabi. Collaborative card game where you give each other hints to build up your own fireworks display for points. The key ingredient is that you cannot see your own cards
- Timeline
- Get Help: Ross
- Tips for Kids: Talk to them and give them hints.
- 10 Minute Heist: The Wizard's Tower.
- Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice
- Game of Trains
- Nightmarium
- Kingdom Builder
- Shipwrights of the North Sea
- Buccaneer
- 32 Dice
- Boggle
- Nab-It
- Yahtzee
- Quadropolis
- Keyforge
- Takenoko. Grow bamboo in the Emperor's garden to become the best gardener!
- Get Help: Al has got it out, it looks fun and easy!
- Munchkin
- Niagara
- Evolution: The Beginning.
- Monopoly Deal. Card game.
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- Citadels
- Flash Point Fire Rescue. Collaborative nice-looking game where you have to put out the fires and save the people.
- Get Help: Ross
- Tips for Kids: Play the basic version.
- Fruit Salad
- Get Help: Al opened the tin once.
- Wibbell++ Set of cards you can use for various word games, with one super-simple matching and pick-up game.
- Here to Slay. Play cards to build your party and defeat monsters - though mainly other players. Easy to pick up but very competitive. Ten-twenty minutes to play when you get the hang of it.
- Thieves!
- High Society
- Jaipur
Grown-ups
Definitely games for grown-ups, or kids that can cope with playing a complex game for a good length of time.
- Age of War
- Afrika Korps An old wargame, hexes and counters, with an unusual game mechanic that takes a while to figure out.
- Playing Time: Half an evening. Probably a whole evening if you both understand the rules, but we just end up with a couple of battles that settle it.
- Get Help: Al
- Anachrony. Resource-building game with a nice mechanic where you can steal resources from yourself in a future turn, but then you have to pay them back.
- Playing Time: whole evening.
- Get Help: Al has staggered through it once!
- Arkham Horror. (3rd Edition) You are one of a team of investigators trying to prevent other-worldly horrors from destroying the world in 1920s Arkham! And probably failing...
- Playing Time: All evening
- Get Help: Al
- Blood Royale Build your dynasty and trade and fight to come on top in medieval Europe. Really needs five players.
- Playing Time: Whole evening.
- Get Help: Al
- Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Build a palace from connected rooms: requires a fair bit of analysis to play well, or just build a fun crazy palace!
- Get Help: Al got through it once, and it hurt his head.
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2nd Edition). One player is the evil overlord, the others a team of heroes and heroines battling through dungeons and scenarios to save the day.
- Playing Time: whole evening
- Get Help: Al
- Diplomacy A turn-based 1959 board game of deceit and back-stabbing. A famous, terribly interesting game: probably not best played socially!
- Playing time: Whole evening, and none of us will play it with you.
- Dixit
- Escape from Colditz (Anniversary Edition) Re-write of the classic game.
- Playing Time: half an evening.
- Get Help: Al has staggered through it once, but doesn't quite get it.
- Escape: The Curse of the Temple
- Excalibur Conquer villages with your knights and gain the most tax to win.
- Playing Time: whole evening.
- Get Help: Al
- Kingmaker. Win the War of the Roses.
- Nuclear War. Fun party game: nuke your opponents!
- Get Help: Al played it twenty years ago! It wasn't hard, it's a social game.
- Operation Faust
- Panzer Blitz An old-style Avalon Hill wargame simulating Soviet-German armour combat.
- Pirates of Penryn. Smuggle your barrels of booze while fighting off the other players stealing your gold.
- Get Help: Al has played a bit of it a couple of times...
- Rainbow Knights
- The Resistance
- Samurai Spirit
- Scythe. Big modern classic: build big robots, stomp about a board collecting resources and building up your position. We have all the expansions too, including airships!
- Playing time: 60 mins when you know what you are doing, whole evening otherwise.
- Tips for Kids: the game is designed to confuse who is winning, so it's pretty easy to go as easy or hard as you like. Encourage them to do fun things, like Build All Your Mechs, and they'll gain the victory stars they need. But you'll have to know the game and help them out.
- Get Help: Al, Bram
- Secrets
- Sentinels of the Multiverse. Co-operative: battle with your superhero team to defeat the super-villain. We've NEVER won this!
- Playing time: half an evening.
- Get Help: Ross, Al
- Skull
- Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game.
- SpyFall 2
- Uno
- Wingspan A lovely attractive game based on birds with cute little wooden eggs! Bit tricky to see how to start, but don't be put off and you'll get it after a few rounds. To make it simpler skip the scoring between rounds. To make it easier, give everyone some extra resources and eggs at the start of the game. To make it shorter, play fewer than the dictated four rounds and score then.
- World of Warcraft Actually simulates the online MMORPG pretty well, especially since it takes hours and hours and hours to play.
- Playing Time: whole evening. And just play one of Horde or Alliance, one team, one character each, or you'll never get anywhere!
- Get Help: Al
- Wrath of Ashardalon
Classic Games
Why not? You like a game because you like it.
- Monopoly. Buy property and charge rents in an attempt to drive everyone else bankrupt.
- Scrabble. Make up words for points from random letters: longer words and harder letters get you more.
- Cluedo. Move from room to room in a big country house trying to find whodunnit.
- Risk. Classic game where you roll dice, move piles of armies and try to conquer the world.
- Chess. Abstract game, move pieces in patterns to capture the King.
Boardgame Library