Christmas - parlour games?

UserX

So, we've decided to cut down on the gift buying this year and will be concentrating on the kids' gifts and just spending time together.

Christmas day evening we will be with family and there will be 5 kids (youngest is 8/9ish) and 6 adults (eldest is 78). We fancy having an evening of games and I'd be really interested to see what you all can suggest.

We're particularly keen for ideas that use things we probably already have to hand: pack of cards, dominoes, jar of coppers, paper & pencil, imagination etc etc.

However, I'm not averse to buying a boxed game or two (nothing electronic) if there are any really brilliant suggestions. The game would obviously need to be suitable for a group of all ages and will preferably be something that will stand the test of time.

We do enjoy a bit of competition, so it would be great if we can come up with at least one idea which will enable us to compete on a level-ish playing field with the kids to win very low value Christmas tree prizes :T

PasturesNew

Years ago we had Monopoly and Cluedo.

WantToBeSE

Hi UserX,
we are doing the same this year-less on presents and spending more time together playing games. Usually we play something like Monopoly (my 9 yr old is a whiz at this and always beats me!), Junior Cluedo, Scrabble, Mousetrap, Kerplunk etc.

I like the look of the logo game too, but i dont think it's suitable for my children (they are only 14 and 9). How about Uno or Charades?

Have a lovely time!

UserX

We do have Monopoly. But it takes forever to play

Cluedo is a good suggestion. The one I had when I was a kid has long since bitten the dust but I might have an ask around the family.

UserX

Hi WanttoBeSE

Uno always goes down well - yep, that can come along with us. Thanks for the reminder. I'd forgotten about Charades!

I've looked at the Logo Game online but don't know anyone who's actually played it - be interesting to see if any MSE'ers have experience.

tori.k

How about guess who, just need some post it notes add name of person then stick on the forehead/cracker crown and the person has to guess who they are with yes and no questions. another one we play is guess the film using utube to play music from films/TV programs. we find these type games are easy to adapt to all age groups.

SpecialBrew_2

One of our favourite family games involved one of those magnetic drawing screen thingies (Etch-A-Sketch? Not sure, ours was a cheap pound shop version that only fell apart a month ago after years of sterling service ). We'd each take it in turns to draw something and the others would have to guess what it was, with the one who guessed correctly getting the next turn to draw something. This doesn't sound that difficult or that fun, but even the best of artists would struggle to produce an accurate representation of most things on a cheap Etch-A-Sketch, and our efforts were particularly hysterical. Nearly every time we played this game the lot of us would be in tears of laughter by the end of it. It was a bit like the old 'Win, Lose or Draw' TV gameshow, only without all the paper (and probably without half the talent ).

What I liked about it was that a lot of the 'submissions' were relevant to our family in a way that a boxed commercial board game could never be - dodgy pictures of the pasties served up at our favourite football ground, of the time my grown-up son got his head stuck in the railings at school when he was five and the item-formerly-known-as-pizza which became a charcoal disc after my husband put it in the oven and forgot about it... that kind of thing.

I also like (a lot!) that there is no end point to the game - you can call a halt to it as soon as you've had enough. I've even known a game of snakes and ladders rumble on for over an hour, long after half the participants have lost interest, so being able to wind things up whenever things start to pale is a big plus. You can do anything paper-related with it too (okay, not Origami!), and we often played Hangman on it as well.

I'm missing ours already. Now that my youngest is eleven I might just buy another one and keep it with the board games

UserX

SpecialBrew, that sounds like great fun! I can certainly ask my sis to see if they still have an Etch-a-Sketch and if not, I'll hunt one down in town. Thank you.

scaredy_cat

get a cheap pad of drawing paper or even an old roll of wallpaper will do, a few markers and pictionary!

Artytarty

I think jenga,moth the wooden blocks is a great fun game for all edges! especially at Christmas when you can get a bit carried away after a few wines! you can just whip 'em out!!! The wooden blocks.....

Pooky

I've played the Logo game at a friends, great for older teens and adults but a bit limiting for younger kids.

There's a great card/board game called "sequence" that's well worth the money.

Chinese whispers is great when there a mix of ages.

Bananagrams is supposed to be good too.