I have 7 and 4-year-old sons. I had kids to have gaming companions. Go ahead and judge me. Luckily they like games like their old man. Well just like amoxicillin tastes like Bubble Yum, it turns out gaming is a stealth way to teach your kids how to think. They learn faster when they have a goal in front of them.
This post is intended to be a living document for resources to get your family gaming in gear.
General Tips
- Normal people don’t like reading rule books. Learning rules is best done via Youtube videos. Just search for a tutorial of the game you are interested in and use the rulebook as a reference. If you need even deeper rule clarifications I’m 99% confident any question you can think of is covered in relevant BGG forum.
- Find Moontower on BoardgameGeek. This is the best game reference site in the world. It’s an amazing compendium of user-generated content. One of the most engaged, enthusiastic niche communities on the web. I am stunned out how much you can customize your menus and widgets on the site. I don’t fully understand why more communities aren’t copying its features. It does have a learning curve but the ability to catalog games and log plays is superb.
Games for Kids Under 10
- Evolution: The Beginning (Link)
It’s a card game where you must manage populations of carnivores and herbivores as you try to eat the most food. The punch-counterpunch dynamic of the game maps faithfully to how predator-prey games in nature balance themselves. Concentrate too much on defensive traits and competing populations grow quickly. Modify a species to be an aggressive carnivore and more scavengers appear in the ecosystem. React and adapt. It imparts a beautiful sense of how evolution favors adaptation to the prevailing competitive landscape as opposed towards some march towards a higher form. An organism’s fitness is a purely relative concept. The game’s elegance mirrors nature well.
- Forbidden Island (Link)
Simple and fun coop game by the same game designer who brought you Pandemic. The game gets kids to work together and while the replayability for adults is limited there is enough variation in board layout and characters to keep kids engaged. Take about 30 minutes to play and requires no more reading than identifying the names of regions. I hear the follow-up Forbidden Desert may be even better.
- Catan (Link)
This was the gateway game that got us into European boardgames 11 years ago. Unless you are used to playing games for hours it might be a reach for age 6 but I’d feel very comfortable teaching it to an 8-year-old. While its conflict is economic like Monopoly, it feels less punitive and the entire design is one of the most elegant I’ve seen. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t enjoy playing this game. Lessons in negotiation, market dynamics, odds, and planning. I highly recommend the Seafarers expansion. We almost never play it without “the sea”. I do not recommend the Cities & Knights expansion which feels likes it changes the essence of the game a bit much.
- The Magic Labyrinth (Link)
By far the best version of a memory game our household has ever played, No reading required and adults and kids are on equal footing since the game is about trying to remember you and others’ footsteps through a maze with invisible walls. This game was a big hit around here and is one of our favorites to gift since its fun and has few rules to learn.
- Quacks of Quedlinburg (Link)
Quacks is a bit like a deck builder. It’s known as a bag builder but with a don’t-bust-press-your-luck mechanic. To most of you, that means nothing but for the remaining, you should know this an outstanding game. It’s fun, and while seasoned gamers won’t like this necessarily, it has enough luck to allow a first grader to compete with an adult. I found myself thinking quite a bit about the value of the “options” (they’re actually chips representing ingredients in a potion recipe) in the game and their respective costs. The concepts of theta, volatility, and vega would be visible to someone with a finance background if they looked past the game skin. An engineer would see this game as a very pure simulation (most likely AI) based problem especially since the game has no trading interactions. Avi tells me the designer is coming out with a much heavier follow-up catering to a less casual crowd.
- Pit (Link)
This game is a centurd old commodity futures trading game. No reading required and is a pure trading game. Open outcry style. It’s a frantic free for all where kids will offer to deal sets of grains (think rice, wheat, corn, barley, etc) to corner the market on a single commodity. The action unfolds in a way that gives a very organic sense for what is getting cheap (offered) vs expensive (what is scarce and in demand). The feeling of market pricing is intuitive and turns over quickly. Rounds take no more than 10 minutes. If your kid can count to 8 they can play although I suspect age 6 or 7 is the floor at which they can think more strategically.
- Carcassone (Link)
This is another gateway classic. It has the feel of trying to occupy area in an evergrowing modular puzzle. With younger children, I recommend not playing with the “farmers” because the scoring can confuse them unnecessarily.
Games for 10 and Up
- Decrypto (Link)
A party game like Codenames. Both games are great for teams and so many ages. As word games go Codenames and Balderdash are hall of famers. Decrypto is an instant classic and honestly, you can play it without buying the game. You just need paper and pen.
- Acquire (Link)
A several generations old classic. A game of M&A and stock ownership using the hotel industry as the theme. It’s in a sweet spot of complexity and has clever market-driven dynamics.
- Power Grid (Link)
A bit higher on the complexity scale. Auctions, networks, optimization, opportunity costs, replacement costs, and cutthroat market dynamics.
- Machi Koro (Link)
A friend argues that you can learn 80% of what you need to know about trading from a few dozen plays.
Games and Investing
I would credit a lot of my reasoning about business and money from playing games. While actually investing is the ultimate game to learn from here are some of my recommendations to get kids and teens starting to think about investing.
- Incomplete information games: Poker, Bridge, and Magic the Gathering
As a trader trainee, our curriculum included lots of poker. There is no better controlled environment for learning to make decisions under uncertainty. Many fellow trainees had extensive Magic the Gathering backgrounds for similar reasons.
- Fantasy sports and sports betting
Point spreads and draft positions are valuable early lessons in market efficiency
- Trading firm Susquehanna’s posts about boardgames
Boardgames: More Than Monopoly and Poker (Link)
On Trading Games (Link)
Articles
- Designer Nick Bentley on how to get your kids into games and speed their progress (Link)
- Gameschooling Teaches “Successful Intelligence” (Link)
Top Youtube Channels for Instructions and Reviews
- Shut Up and Sit Down (Link)
Matt and Quinns are exceptionally bright. And even more hilarious. They are amazing guides to the gaming world. My favorite board game channel.
- Jamey Stegmaier (Link)
A top game designer reviews and breaks down games expertly
- The Dice Tower (Link)
Tom Vasel is prolific and has a sense of humor befitting of a game zealot.
Podcast Series Devoted to Games and Learning
- Games in Schools and Libraries (Link)
Kathleen Mercury is the queen of teaching game design to youngsters. Her passion for turning kids into “producers not consumers” is unrelenting. With an open-source attitude, she is spreading the lessons of her innovative and fun approach to parents and teachers everywhere. She interviews the top practitioners in the game-based learning world.
- Boardgaming with Education (Link)
Ian Zang covers game-based learning and gamification practices with experts, enthusiasts, and teachers. Get in the weeds of using games to improve education.
Lists By Experts
- Kathleen Mercury’s recommended games for the classroom sorted by age group (Link)
- Kathleen Mercury’s “best-of” list if games used in her day camp. (Link)
- A thread of lists by game camp organizers. (Link)
Lists by Friends
- Erik Berg’s Favorite Games and Why (Link)
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