Great Games for Gatherings - According to the SimplyFun Family!

Written by: SimplyFun Team

Whether you are waiting for dinner to be ready, settling your stomach before dessert, or just trying to entertain the masses, holiday gatherings are a great time for games! The SimplyFun Family is often asked what our favorite games are and it is always so hard to choose! This time, we searched our memories for what to play when family gets together for big events and our favorite moments playing those games.

Below is what the team at SimplyFun had to say when asked about what our family-favorite games are during the holidays.

When the Ages Range

"Family has taken on renewed importance in recent years, and during large holiday gatherings, especially those with young children, it can be difficult to find a game that everyone can sit down and focus on for an extended period of time. So, I have taken a strong liking to the 'Family Stories - Chat Ring'. It is perfect because it encourages conversation rather than competition, making it easy for people of all ages to participate. What I enjoy most is how it helps us move beyond the usual small talk of "How is work going?" or "What's the weather been like?" Instead, it prompts meaningful stories and family history that we might not otherwise hear. We connect over shared experiences and often discover how differently people remember the same event. One memorable example is hearing stories about my wife's family's road trips. The children's memories focused on highlights like getting ice cream on a hot summer day in the back of a non-air-conditioned car, while the adults remembered the logistics of packing the car, managing schedules, and coaxing sleepy kids out of bed before the next stop. Those different perspectives always lead to laughter and great conversations."

"I love Pickles' Pig Tales because it is a game that can include all ages and be played with a lot of people. I love that it challenges the whole table but in lighthearted way that always brings joy and giggles. This game has also helped some of my friends who have been learning English to build vocabulary and then repeat it multiple times. For similar reasons, I like Buddy Match. I know both of these games are for younger audiences, but in a big family with lots of ages, I like to have games readily available that are inclusive and engaging for the whole group and both Pickles' Pig Tales and Buddy Match are perfect in that way."

"The game I bring out most for people of all ages, and particularly those that may not play many games is Walk the Dogs. Who doesn't like 63 little dogs of various breeds that start the game in a big conga line!? What is really fun for older players is to make up your own rules on when the strategy cards (Dog Catcher, Leash and Bone) can be played, as the primary game requires you to play them as you draw them from the card deck. Changing the number of cards players can hold in their hands and then allowing them to keep the strategy cards and play as a surprise turns this fun game of dog collecting into a totally hysterical and sometimes a bit of a ruthless game amongst doggy competitors."

When Competition is Your Family Motto

"A couple of more recent games that have started to rise in my personal rankings are Time Jumpers and SlideAscope. Time Jumpers for the more direct competition between players, where you need to pay attention to the moves they are making for your own strategy and SlideAscope is very satisfying when you can create a big chain reaction of matches."

"For Kilter, we started by trying to keep everything balanced, but after a few turns, we started joking about each other's strategies and choices (destructive vs constructive behavior) and started to correlate on how that person acts in a different game as well."

When Strategy is High and Attention Spans are Small

"Prickly Path is my family's favorite. It is a great strategy game that keeps kids and adults entertained. Everyone has a different plan of attack, and it is always a tossup on who wins. The game doesn't take too long and people stay engaged."

"My favorite SimplyFun game is Prickly Path, but for very silly and biased reasons. The look, theme, and names of our games are always done in group brainstorms. That way we get the best results we can. With Prickly Path, it was the first game where all my suggestions ended up in the game. The cactus-and-coyote theme, the game's name, even some of the mechanics we added when we changed the game from 2 to 4 players. There's a lot of my personal taste in that one, so it's been my favorite for a while now. Aside from that though, it's also a good game in its own right. Real quick to set up and explain to people, with some fun strategy and just enough of a luck factor to throw you a curve ball now and then."

When Pelican Cove is Everyone's Favorite

"While several games compete for the top spot, I think I have to give it to Pelican Cove. It's a game that, despite its mechanical simplicity, is different every time you play and very challenging. It's also fun to watch other people's strategies and the chaos that happens when players suddenly realize they might have to rethink their pelican placement!"

"Pelican Cove is my favorite. I like the complexity of situations when there is not a perfect solution. You must think through the various options and decide which one is best, even though none of the options can satisfy every pelican. I also like the time crunch of the sand dial. This provides a sense of urgency and haste to make your decisions, which can be a bit exhilarating in the moment."

"Pelican Cove is my favorite SimplyFun game as I love the challenge of seating all the pelicans according to their preferences. The harder it gets the better I like it as it tests the quickness of your spatial and deductive reasoning. As a lifelong puzzle lover, this is the ultimate puzzling experience as no two games are ever alike. And you can adjust the difficulty level to be comfortable for a variety of players. Or you can even play it on your own! Not many games are built to let both of those things happen, which is what makes it special."

"When my grandson got older, the favorite was Pelican Cove. He was exceptionally good at it and thought it was funny that Grandma had such a hard time with it. He would keep asking when we would be able to play with all the cards; we still do not play with all the cards when I play with him, only when he plays with his dad."

When You Want to Start a Discussion

"One of the things I appreciate most about Family Stories - Chat Ring is that every session sparks conversation. A prompt about family vacations led to a lively discussion about road trips, with each family member sharing a different version of what happened. What was a carefree adventure from a child's perspective was often a carefully managed operation from the parents' perspective. The conversation gave everyone a chance to understand each other's experiences in a new way. We laughed about how differently we remembered the same events, but we also learned more about the effort and thought that went into creating those memories. It's a great example of how games can bring people together and help families connect through storytelling."

"Whenever we play tested exactsies, as people were talking about the rationale behind their guesses, fun stories would always come up. Usually, it would be the kinds of things that the person talking doesn't find interesting but everyone else at the table does. Stories like how someone has a good guess because they took a class on dinosaurs in college, or that they feel so confident on how many stitches are on a baseball because of how they'd kill time volunteering at a stadium. Little insights into their lives pop up that get the people around the table curious and asking questions. Because games get everyone thinking in unique ways from their usual, unique conversations from the usual come up too."

"We have a number of games that inevitably lead to laughter and conversation between the players. Pickles' Pig Tales comes to mind, where there is always a "how did you think of that?" moment when creating the story. Engaging the creative side of people is quite often a good way to get to know them in a new way. Qualities is another game that leads to fun moments where there is often a contrast between how players view themselves versus how the other players view them."

When You Learn About Other Players

"A number of years ago I had given a copy of Take Your Pick to a friend's son that was going off to college. In the middle of his first semester, I got an unexpected call from him asking me if we had a 'booster pack' for the game. I said no, we didn't but we did have an expansion called Take Your Pick II. He immediately asked if I could send him a copy. Of course I had to ask WHY? He then shared that he and his friends were playing it in the evenings in the common room in his co-ed dorm, and it was attracting girls over to talk with them and play! I never thought our games would be called date magnets, but I guess they can be in the right place and situation."

"Over Christmas holidays I brought SlideAscope to play with the family. We were all playing with my 11-year-old nephew, and he won every time (sometimes by a lot). He spends much of his time coding small applications for fun, and playing this game with him showed me a little bit on how his brain works. It was fascinating to see how well he could predict the sequences and even guess what people before him were going to do, to prepare himself for his move."

"We would play Dish 'em Out a lot camping. One morning the game was sitting on the picnic table as we were getting ready to make breakfast. My grandson started pulling out the pieces of food from the game and telling us what we needed to cook. My grandson had one dinner set up for me and one for his mom and was tracking how we were doing with the real food and trying to tell us what we needed to do and when. It became quite hilarious by the time we got done. And no, not all the food came out on time! We learned that opening a Family Restaurant might not be a good idea!"