We all know the horrors of seeing family at Christmas and having to fend off mundane questions from in-laws and distant uncles. You know something that makes family gatherings (in any season) more palatable?

Food.

But also board games (plus they’re non-perishable).

To prepare you for the holiday season, here are our top 5 games to play with your family this Christmas—or any family event!

1) Mysterium

Perhaps your family is a fan of Cluedo, but there’s that one cousin that’s just too good at it and always wins. The 2-7 player cooperative deduction game, Mysterium, might be just the game for you.

In this thematic party classic, one player acts as ‘The Ghost’ and the other players are psychics called to this house to investigate who murdered this person and turned them into a ghost. Each psychic will be following their own line of questioning, identifying a suspect, location and weapon from information the ghost gives them.

The catch? The ghost is not allowed to talk throughout the entire game. The only way they can communicate is through cryptic but beautifully illustrated ‘vision cards’.

Since everyone at the table is working cooperatively to solve the mystery, there’s little risk of saltiness. Though the ghost cannot talk, the players can, and you and your family will discuss these mysterious images, wondering whether the ghost meant for you to choose the barber (because of the scissors in the image) or the gardener (because the card is green).

With gorgeous components, from the moody DM-style ghost screen to the crystal ball shaped player pawns, Mysterium’s atmosphere and cooperative play will bring the family together.

2) Decrypto

Just like Mysterium was a fresh family alternative to Cluedo, Decrypto is a fresh take on Codenames. Like Codenames, Decrypto is a team-based word game, however—in my personal opinion—I think it’s even better.

Each team will get a high-tech screen with red plastic-covered slots to slide in word cards. Though the word cards at first look like garbled red images, slide them into the slots and the red plastic will reveal your team’s four secret words. It’s a little touch, but one that perfectly matches the ‘high-tech’ aesthetic of the game.

Say your secret words are ‘France’, ‘wolf’, ‘coffee’ and ‘man’, in that order. Each turn, one person on your team will draw a card with three numbers on it and look at it secretly. Perhaps their code is 3-4-1. So now, they say to their team, ‘morning, moustache, art’. The team will look at their secret words, associate the clues with the numbered words, and hopefully (if they’ve interpreted it right), say the code ‘3-4-1’.

It’s a little more complex to explain than the easy-to-pick-up Codenames, but the extra effort is absolutely more rewarding.

Because, oh, I forgot to mention, the other team is listening to your clues and they can attempt to intercept you and guess your code (and vice versa, of course). So, yeah, you could use ‘Eiffel Tower’ as a clue for France, but that would make your code very, very easy for the other team to intercept!

The fun of Decrypto is trying to make clues obscure enough for the other team not to guess, while at the same time, not confusing your own. It’s a family must-have, in my opinion.

3) Sushi Go Party

My mum ADORES this game. When my family and I go on camping trips, this is the game we bring. We play it around the breakfast table, we play it after dinner, we play it in the mid-afternoon, it’s just the perfect, light family card game.

So what is Sushi Go Party? In this adorable little game, you and your family will be at a sushi train restaurant. As the sushi whizzes past, you are trying to grab the best combination of sushi to score you the most points. I absolutely love how this game imitates the movement of a sushi train. Each turn, you will choose one card to keep from your hand of cards and pass the rest along! Each type of sushi scores differently. Too much eel will score you negative points, but just the right amount will score 7! If you have more maki than everyone else at the table, you get 6 points! If you put wasabi on your nigiri, that’s triple points!

Though Sushi Go Party does have a smaller non-party version, I highly recommend this bigger tin as it contains more sushi varieties and hence, more replayability. What’s also great about Sushi Go Party is that it introduces the card-drafting mechanics, potentially opening your family up to playing more strategic card-drafting games like 7 Wonders or Bargain Quest in the future.

4) Bohnanza

This set-collection game is severely underrated. Yes, the art is a little old-fashioned, but Bohnanza itself is a surprisingly hilarious game of bidding and yelling.

In essence, all you are trying to do in Bohnanza is grow and sell large quantities of bean varieties. Each turn, you must plant the first 1-2 cards in your hand into your two available fields. Then, you reveal the top two cards of the deck and you decide whether you want to keep them, in which case they get planted directly into your field and you must harvest whatever was already there, or trade them away. It doesn’t matter if you were setting up to plant the next three chilli beans in your hand, if you don’t trade away those beans in front of you, you’re forced to plant them.

And here’s where all the fun of Bohnanza is.

More often than not, those cards you have to reveal off the top of the deck are cards you do not want. But other players might want them quite desperately. Maybe Aunt Lisa is going to offer you two chilli beans for that one stink bean in front of you. But your dad can give you one chilli bean and take both the stink bean and that cocoa bean in your hand that you don’t want.

Let the chaos and the arguing ensue.

Though Bohnanza is a confrontational game, it is backed by strategy. Since you’re always watching other people’s trades, wondering if you can jump in and get rid of some of your unwanted cards, there’s no downtime! Playing up to 7 people, Bohnanza is a chaotic card game that, if anything, is hilarious to watch your family play.

5) Pandemic

All the games we’ve covered on this list so far are more party-oriented games. Games that are fairly light and breezy to play. That changes here. For a more strategic and ‘board game-y’ experience, look no further than the cooperative crisis-management classic, Pandemic.

2-4 players are working together as members of the Center for Disease Control, tasked with stopping outbreaks of four diseases across the world. Once all four diseases have been cured, you and your family win the game. At the beginning of the game, each player will select a role, from the Scientist to the Researcher to the Dispatcher, each with their own unique ability. Each turn, you perform four actions, which involve anything from curing a disease by spending five cards of the disease’s colour to flying to a research station across the board. Then, you draw up cards from the player deck and reveal infection cards to see where the diseases spread to next.

The theme is a little on-the-nose for what’s been happening in 2020, but regardless, Pandemic is a revered cooperative strategy game that’s heavy enough to provoke strategic thinking and problem solving, but light enough that even kids can play.

Buying Guide

In summary, if you’re looking for...

An atmospheric cooperative deduction game? Mysterium.

A clever team-based word game that’s not Codenames? Decrypto.

An adorable card-drafting game approved by my mum? Sushi Go Party.

A chaotic game of bidding over beans? Bohnanza.

A strategic and cooperative game about curing diseases? Pandemic.

And there we have it! Our top 5 board games to play with family this Christmas! What do you think? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below!

 2021 Update

6) Paris

Travel to Paris during the La Belle Époque Period, just after the World's Fair, and the construction of the Eiffel Tower, where prestige and architecture rule. In Paris, players are tasked to purchase some of these magnificent Parisian buildings in order to make a profit and invest in the development and upkeep of some of Paris’ most iconic buildings and landmarks

Paris is a medium-weight Eurostyle-game with straight forward gameplay, short player turns, and an ingenious point-salad-like mechanisms. You mainly score points by obtaining the right buildings and collecting the right bonus cards.

The simplicity, elegance, and art makes this a wonderful game for your family to crowd around and enjoy this Christmas.

7) Tumble Town

If you're looking for something less refined and more dice stacking fun, then look no further than tumble town. In Tumble Town, players become the mayors of their own western township. Players must strive to build the latest and best buildings for their settlers, with each building providing a different ability. These abilities work (or don't work, depending on player skill) to create an engine to ultimately score you more points.

Tumble Town is a simple and wonderful engine building game that will have any avid board gaming family pleasantly surprised.

8) Steampunk Rally Fusion