Best Family Board Game Reviews 2018

1995 is the year that Winning Moves USA (WMUSA) came into existence and, from that time, Winning Moves has not looked back nor gone back on its promise to provide some of the very best in games. Winning Moves’ line of products embraces board games, card games and even puzzles, and everything it touches just has the Winning Moves effect. Four words that are quite important to this brand are ‘classic,’ ‘retro,’ ’cool’ and ‘fun,’ and they occur in all Winning Moves products, bringing back memories of your childhood and helping you share them with the younger generation.

Winning Moves has repackaged Monopoly, the world’s most popular game, and serves it to you the way you used to know it. Remember how you used to play monopoly with the bi-folding board and those rules? Remember how much fun you used to have? Winning Moves Games brings you that nostalgic feeling with the Winning Moves Games Classic Monopoly, allowing you let your kids into your childhood memories.

This game is sure to bring fun to family game nights as everybody plots, schemes and develops plans and strategies on how to buy out other people’s property. You can own some of the most famous buildings around the world, make a lot of money, spend a lot of money and, unfortunately, lose a lot of money too. It is a game of strategy and everything happens at the roll of a die.

You can take a drive through Reading Railroad, build your home on Baltic Avenue, or just go wild and buy the whole neighborhood; it’s your money and it’s yours to spend. Be careful, though, that you don’t make the wrong choice and lose everything you worked for. That could happen in the blink of an eye. Also, make sure that, whatever you do, whatever risk you take and whatever decision you make is within the confines of the law, or else you may be asked to pay a fine or thrown in jail.

This game is not just a way to bring the whole family together to have fun away from electronics and gadgets, it is also a means of harnessing some important life skills, including decision making and bearing the consequences of a wrong decision, strategic thinking, logic, negotiation and compromise.

From business partners to life partners, Melissa and Doug have been creating kids’ products for over 25 years now. The duo believes that every child – and, in fact, everyone – has a boundless imagination and, given the right push here and there, can make that deep well of imagination burst forth. Hence, their production of wooden toys, pretend play sets and board games. The plan’s to encourage kids to discover and be whatever they want to be in a non-threatening atmosphere. So, kids aren’t pressured into planning for the future, but just bump into it in the course of play.

The Melissa & Doug Suspend Family Game is basically about balance. It includes a thin tabletop stand and 31 wire pieces with rubber tips. The aim of the game is to fix the wires to the stand without causing other pieces on the stand, or the stand itself, to fall. That’s not all; to keep the game going, you have to remove wires from the structure and add them to the top.

The aim is to see how high you can go before the whole thing comes crashing down. Be careful where you remove your piece from, so the whole structure doesn’t come tumbling down on you. There is need for a lot of nerve control, because a little shaking of the hand and you might shake the whole stand. Strategic thinking also comes into play as you decide which area of the structure is best to remove a piece from and which area is best to add a piece to.

The Suspend Family Game is not a competition; everyone in the family has to contribute his or her own effort to ensuring the Suspend Game does not crash. Everybody contributes something – ideas, motor skills, words of encouragement, whatever. With something as simple and non-threatening as a game, families can learn and reap the rewards of working together as a team.

The brand Melissa & Doug has quite a broad portfolio of games, some of which are:

• Melissa & Doug Classic Pick-Up Sticks Game – 41 sticks in a wooden box that comes with instructions inside the box
• Melissa & Doug Folding Princess Castle Wooden Dollhouse with Drawbridge and Turrets – for your little princess

Melissa & Doug has something for every child and every kind of play, including pretend.

Z-Man Games, born in 1999, is currently one of the best companies in gaming, transcending both time and taste. It has introduced into the market over a hundred different games, with different themes to meet the different gaming needs of practically everybody. Furthermore, it has partnered with some international game publishers to release English versions of their games, giving those already-published games an even wider market. Top-notch materials, visual aesthetics and overall fantastic design are some of the things Z-Man promises for every Z-Man game you get.

So, there is a disease outbreak ravaging the whole world and killing fellow earth members one at a time. You and three other teammates are the only hope the world has of surviving this deadly outbreak. In your team of four (or less if there aren’t enough players, but at least two), each member has a different strength and specialization. The plan is to work as a team, pool your resources, experience and expertise together and come up with a solution to this disease problem before time runs out. This is the story of the world of Z-Man Games Pandemic.

You and three other friends or family members will pick a character each, and you are to work according to the strengths, expertise and weaknesses of your chosen character. This is not a competition and, even if it is, your only competition is time. You must race against it and beat the clock by providing a cure before the whole world is wiped out. Actually, the whole world would be wiped out in 60 minutes, so, what that means is that you have 60 minutes to save the world. Sounds challenging, right?

This is one game that will keep you engaged for the full duration, seeing as it follows a storyline that is not just riveting, but challenging also. Everyone loves a good challenge now and then. Now, when that challenge is to save the world, it’s all shades of yes. You learn to make critical decisions in the heat of the moment with the world seemingly on your shoulders, and you do this in a non-threatening environment. There can’t be both winners and losers; you all win or you all lose, so all the sore losers will so love this one.

The name of this company already suggests to one that PlayMonster considers itself the grandmaster of play. It believes quite strongly in play, its importance and life-changing qualities. The plan is to push for play – not just for kids, but for everybody. Its range of play things makes this possible so that even the most stuck-up of adults will not have an excuse. With over 30 years of experience in this play business, you can trust PlayMonster to meet your play needs. In the world of play, leaving you with PlayMonster is leaving you in capable hands.

How much about everything do you know? You think you know something about everything, like a well-rounded individual? Then you will sure love The PlayMonster 5 Second Rule. With 576 questions, there are enough questions to go around. The questions are on anything and everything – from questions about famous pets to questions on soccer and even dog breeds.

But there is a catch; you have just five seconds to answer any question, irrespective of how long the answer is. For instance, if you are to give five different dog breeds, you are to think about and say the five in five seconds. Easy, right? Relax though, it’s not a do-or-die affair; after all you are playing with family. If you don’t know the answer to any question, just say the first thing that pops into your head; it is a family game, not a Super Bowl competition.

The PlayMonster 5 Second Rule game shouldn’t just add to your knowledge, it should elicit laughter and excitement around the table. So, go ahead and deliberately fail a question; say something silly, that’s the fun of it, but don’t do it too often – you still do not want to look stupid.

To emphasize the lightness of the situation, PlayMonster has constructed the timer to diffuse built-up tension with its playful zoooop sound. Counting down five seconds has never been more interesting.

PlayMonster is not new to board games; it has some others that you might like to try:

• PlayMonster Accentuate – for all the lovers of movies and fake accents
• PlayMonster Classic Stratego Game Board – so you can do battle and probably win

PlayMonster games are designed to appeal to different kinds of kids and adults; PlayMonster sure knows how to get people playing.

Hasbro offers a wide variety of play and entertainment media in the form of toys, digital and board games, movies and television. Hasbro offers gaming options to everybody, young or old, man or woman, blessing us all with its great wealth of expertise. When it comes to producing the best in play and entertainment, Hasbro doesn’t shirk its responsibilities. Rather, it dives headlong into the manufacturing process and comes out with something that that has been designed to blow your mind. The plan is not just to blow your mind, however, but to also create the ‘World’s Best Play Experiences.’

There is a 100 square you have to get to but, unfortunately, the road is not all rosy. There are roadblocks that could get you stranded or take you as far back as where you started from. You don’t have all the time in the world, because you’re racing against other people and there is only one winner. But there is good news – you can pick up speed by being nice here and there and doing good deeds. There is always a reward for good deeds, and in the Hasbro Chutes and Ladders game, your reward could be moving a few steps faster or being rescued from a previous predicament.

Well, you don’t exactly ‘do’ the good deed, but you ‘land’ on the good deed. Here is how it works: you spin a spinner and that tells you how many steps you can move. If your new square has a good deed written on it, you might be asked to take a few more steps forward or even climb a ladder, but if it is something bad, then sorry, down the chute you go.

This game is really all shades of awesome and a very interesting and fun way of subtly teaching kids the importance of good deeds and the consequences of bad ones. Some of these salient truths are registering in their subconscious even as they ride high on the adrenaline caused by the need to get to the finish line first.

Other awesome games that can only be Hasbro include:

• Hasbro Games Toilet Trouble – so you can subtly teach your kids the proper use of a toilet
• Candy Land the World of Sweets (Amazon Exclusive) – because kids can never have enough sweets

The instructions for the Hasbro Chutes and Ladders game are written in English and Spanish.