6 Teen Board Games for Family Game Night
If you’re looking for a way to bond with your older kids, you’ll want to play these fun family games for teens as part of your next family game night. The best board games for teenagers make it simple to spend quality time as a family.
Have you set aside board games because your kids are growing up? Just because your kids are getting older, it doesn’t mean you have to stop playing together.
Bring some fun back into your evenings by adding new games into your game night rotation that are designed for tweens and teens. There are plenty to choose from that are enjoyable for the whole family and are challenging enough for older kids.
Make it easy on yourself and start with one from this list.
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6 Teen Board Games for Family Game Night
To play this game, you simply choose a card and list 3 things that fit the topic. Sounds simple, right?
The fact that you only have 5 seconds to answer makes this game hilarious as players get tongue-tied and shout out whatever comes to mind. Adding to the pressure is the timer – a long twisted tube with a marble that speeds down while making a “zoooooop!” sound.
Categories include things like “name 3 animals you would not want as a pet” and “name 3 snacks made with chocolate.”
This quick-thinking game is perfect for older kids, especially those who think they have the answer to everything.
This faced-paced and incredibly funny game has quickly become one of my teen’s favorites. She and her friends play it often.
One at a time, players draw a card from the main pile and flip it over in front of them. Each card has a symbol and a word (person, place, or thing) on it. Moving clockwise, players draw a card until two players turn over cards with the same symbol. When that happens, they battle for the card.
To win the card, each player has to name something that fits into the category of the word that is on their opponent’s card. For example, if you draw a card with a brown circle and the word “superheroes” on it and another person draws one with a brown circle and the word “colors” on it, you immediately face-off by blurting out an example of what’s on your opponent’s card.
So if you shout out “yellow” faster than he can yell “Captain America,” you win the card. If you are both quick to think of something and say your answers at the same time, you keep naming things for the category until someone wins.
The goal is to end up with the most cards at the end of the game.
One reason this strategy game is one of the most popular board games for teenagers and has spawned a number of special editions and expansion packs is that it’s incredibly fun to play.
The goal is to gain 10 victory points by building roads, settlements, and cities.
Don’t be surprised if your plan is thwarted along the way by another player as they use your tools to settle their own part of Catan. Players are constantly plotting and looking for ways to create their settlements ahead of each other, no matter the cost.
The fact that the “board” can be randomly created each time you play makes it almost impossible to get sick and tired of the game because no two rounds are ever the same. The different layout means different strategies and tactics for everyone.
Here is another fast-paced, talk out-loud game that teens love to play. The goal is to decipher groups of seemingly random words into actual phrases before the timer shuts off.
While playing, teams repeat the words aloud, trying to guess what the actual phrase is. Would you know that “Wall Come Island Mash Ooze” is “Walk a mile in my shoes?” How about “Yore Luka Ink Hood” is “You’re looking good?”
If you guess correctly, you gain points for your team. You have two minutes to figure out three puzzles and the quicker you answer, the more points you earn.
It’s time to rediscover this classic board game for teens from your youth again because it’s perfect for older kids. Think about it. What teen isn’t interested in world domination?
Strategy is key to winning, and older kids will expand these skills as they try to defend their troops while attempting to attack those of their opponents. Players control territories and countries by placing their troops together on the map.
You’ll get more troops each round and you have to decide where to place them based on your tactical plan. Are you going to use them to defend your locations or go on the attack to take over someone else’s?
Players might claim victory after some bold play, but there’s always a risk involved in any strategy.
This game is like a modern version of the game Telephone that meets Pictionary. You do not need any drawing skills to play this game. Trust me.
We’ve played it a few times with friends and we laughed so hard during each and every round. It’s a fun and easy game for tweens, teens, and adults to play together.
To begin, players pick a card, roll a die, and draw the word or phrase that corresponds with that number on their erasable pad. When they’re done with their drawing, they pass their pad to the player to their left.
The second player guesses what the first player drew and writes their answer on the next page in the pad, and then they pass it to the person on their left. The next person looks at the word or phrase that was written (not the original drawing) and draws that object on the third page and then passes it along.
The game continues like this until each pad gets back to its original player.
At the end of the round, it’s hilarious to see if (and how) the original object changed as it moved down the line.
I don’t know about you, but I buy games all the time whether it’s for a birthday, Christmas or just because. We play games all the time for fun and as part of our home school, like these history board games.
If you don’t normally play board games together as a family, I strongly encourage you to start. Tweens and teens will love playing any one of these six games.
More Fun Family Games for Teens
For even more inspiration, check out these other games for middle school families.
Families will love these fast-paced card games. They take less than 30 minutes to play and they make for a crazy game night. Plus, they travel well, so you can easily take them on vacation for something fun to do.
My family also loves playing Double Ditto. It’s a quick-thinking category-matching game that seems simple, but can be challenging when you’re under a 15 second time crunch.
If you’re looking for a cooperative strategy game for your next family game night, look no further than Pandemic board game. Families rush to cure diseases before an outbreak infects the world.
What fun family games for teens does your family play?
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We are a big game-playing family, but some of these we haven’t played before, so I will have to check them out. I like the looks of Sumoku, which reminds me we have a game called Krypto that we haven’t played in awhile. Scrabble and Qwirkle (listed below) are good ones for cross-generational play (think grandparents).
Here are some of the games we enjoy:
Ticket to Ride (a big favorite)
Blokus
Qwirkle
Ringgz
Set (I can’t play against my kids any more – they are too good!)
Scattegories
Mad Dash and World Dash – good for geography
Settlers of Catan
My boys (and husband, thankfully) are into games that don’t really appeal to me, but that they can play for hours on end.
7 Wonders (If I were to try one of these it would probably be this one).
Dominion
Civilization
Lords of Waterdeep
Games made by Columbia Games like Euro Front, (East and West Front, too), Hammer of the Scots, Gettysburg, etc.
My husband and oldest son also went to a game convention where they tried some new games. I think that may be where we ended up finding out about:
Suburbia
Pandemic
Betrayal at House on the Hill
If you are interested, here are a couple of resources for checking out games. Videos made by Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek). If you search for his name and Tabletop, you will see him and some friends playing different games so you can get a sense of whether they are for you or not. Another set of videos and reviews can be found at Dice Tower (I think these guys are from Florida). And of course, there is the website BoardGameGeek that gives you tons of information on every game you can imagine. If you use their advanced search, you can search for pretty much any category you can think of.
Sorry, this is so long. If you talk about books or games, I can’t seem to stop myself! We’ll be visiting family over Thanksgiving and it ends up being 4 solid days of eating and game-playing. I hope you enjoy your holiday!
Sarah
You’ve given me some new ones to check out Sarah! I’ve heard a lot about Ticket to Ride. I think I’ve had it on my Amazon shopping list for a while now, but just haven’t bought it. Mine are just getting into Scrabble. My 11-year-old finds it a bit hard to come up with words on the spot, so I don’t push it too much yet. Yeah, with 2 girls, we don’t play a lot of the world domination games here either. But who knows, maybe as they get older they’ll have a desire to play.
Thanks for the resources! We play a lot of games at our house and I’m always looking for new things to try.
Your Thanksgiving tradition sounds like a ton of fun! I definitely need to schedule another game night here.
Thanks so much for sharing!!
Megan
We LOVE Headbands! My husband, myself, my 14 year old son, and my 11 year old twin boys all have too much fun playing this game. We laugh until we cry whenever this game becomes part of game night
We love that one too Buffy! We actually own the original and the Disney version. We’re right there with you – we laugh like crazy when we play!
Sumoko is a favorite for our 13yo! Along with RISK. But, he also loves Axis & Allies. If he could only find people willing to play!
I’ve never heard of Axis & Allies Heather. We try to have regular family game nights, but still there are times that someone wants to play something and they can’t find a partner, so I definitely feel your pain!
Hi,
We are not big on board games but we have had Risk forever, I was looking at the new one in the photo thinking of how bright the colors should be. 😉
Our favorite to go game is Even Steven Odd at the moment, however some of these I have never heard of so will need to look into them.
Thank you for sharing!
I am a huge board game fan and try to use games in our homeschool as much as possible. I now have quite a few to add to my wish list!! Thank you.
Megan great list! I just shared 15 Board games we love for learning fun. I am glad to see I am not alone in using games to teach and have a great family night. Pinning this one 🙂