Though I typically cover games of the video variety, considering that Christmas is right around the corner and you’ll inevitably be looking for ways to keep your family entertained over the course of the holiday, I thought it’d be wise to delve into tabletop territory to highlight a few card/board games that are worth your consideration.
Finding a tabletop game that can effectively appeal to a broad range of people from varying demographics is a difficult task, but the following games are both easy to learn and fun to play, making them the ideal Christmas entertainment line-up.
Take a look at the best tabletop games to play with your family on Christmas day below:
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Players: 3-10
Recommended Age: 9+
Description: One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a fast game for 3-10 players in which everyone gets a role: One of the dastardly Werewolves, the tricky Troublemaker, the helpful Seer, or one of a dozen different characters, each with a special ability. In the course of a single morning, your village will decide who is a werewolf…because all it takes is lynching one werewolf to win!
Because One Night Ultimate Werewolf is so fast, fun, and engaging, you’ll want to play it again and again, and no two games are ever the same.
Starting off with a personal favorite of mine, One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a game of lies and deceit – kinda like poker, but with more lycanthropes.
The game sees its character cards being divided between players, with two of them taking on the role of werewolf and the rest playing as humans (players do not reveal to each other the cards they have been given). The aim of the game is for the other players to successfully vote upon who they believe has been handed these werewolf cards, though before this vote is cast, they must conduct a “night” and “day” phase in which they’re tasked with utilizing each character card’s unique ability – including (but not limited to) swapping cards around, taking a peek at other players’ cards and assuming the role of another player – in the night phase, before discussing (or, as is more likely the case, arguing) among themselves over who they believe is the wolf among them during the day phase.
If at least one werewolf out of the two possible werewolf cards that are in the game is uncovered by players in the voting round, then the humans win. However, if players accidentally vote for a human, the werewolves win. It’s a game that rewards a cleverly constructed bluff, with werewolves being encouraged to lie about their role within the game, convincing others that they are human by pointing the finger of blame at another player, hoping that everyone will fall for their trap.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf‘s 10-minute rounds ensures that players with a short attention span won’t have the opportunity to grow bored, and its rules are simple enough that the majority of your family should be able to swiftly get to grips with it. If the relatives you’ll be spending Christmas with will be able to play a game that requires you to deceive one another without them feeling the inescapable urge to angrily drench you in eggnog, then this is an ideal solution to your holiday entertainment needs.
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Players: 3 – 6
Recommended Age: 12+
Description: Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. With an estimated one hour playing time, Betrayal at House on the Hill is ideal for parties, family gatherings or casual fun with friends.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.
Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.
Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline game play.
The easiest way to describe Betrayal at House on the Hill is that it occupies the middle-ground between Cluedo and Dungeons & Dragons, only it’s far more adaptable (and enjoyable) than that succinct explanation would suggest. While it will inevitably take more forward-planning than the likes of One Night Ultimate Werewolf to ensure that your relatives actually know what they’re doing whilst playing it, and the vast number of playing pieces, tiles, cards and assorted paraphernalia can prove to be initially off-putting for those who aren’t well-versed in tabletop games, if those you’re planning to play with exercise some patience in learning its rules then you could wind up playing this all night long.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is essentially the tabletop equivalent of a horror movie. Players explore the haunted house by placing down tiles, “leveling up” their chosen character and uncovering item and companion cards that will help them on their adventure. This continues until players trigger the Haunt, which will see one of them become be deemed the “traitor,” pitting them against the other players in one of a variety of scenarios. These scenarios task both the traitor and the other players with completing a quest, though the nature of these quests remain a secret between the two teams. If the traitor or the innocent players completes their quest first, they are deemed the winner(s).
The magic of Betrayal at House on the Hill is just how varied the game can be between play sessions. While one game can see players easily defeating the traitor by virtue of them having experienced a lucrative pre-Haunt, another game can see the traitor mercilessly hunting down his opponents, creating a real sense of tension and forcing all players to carefully and strategically maneuver around the board, as one wrong step could lead to their untimely demise.
Betrayal at House on the Hill requires more dedication than the other games on this list, but if your relatives will be willing to spend some time getting to grips with its rules, this is one of the most enjoyable tabletop games you could possibly play.
Snake Oil
Players: 3 – 10
Recommended Age: 10+
Description: In the Old West, the wily snake oil salesman had a special talent, getting the most skeptical customers to buy the most dubious products. Now it’s your turn! Invent your own zany two-word products – Rumor Mirror! Burp Balloon! – and sell them to all types of wacky customers. If the round’s customer buys your product, you win!
To set up Snake Oil, each player takes six purple word cards. The customer for the round draws a customer card and announces it. Inventors quickly combine two purple word cards from their hand to form a crazy new product to sell to that customer. When ready, each inventor quickly pitches his or her product directly to the customer. The customer can end any pitch that goes longer than thirty seconds. The customer decides which product to buy and gives the inventor of that product the round’s customer card as the prize. Inventors discard all used word cards and take two new word cards each. The player to the left of the customer becomes the next round’s customer. Play repeats until each player has been the customer once.
Whoever collects the most customer cards wins.
Ignore Snake Oil‘s garish appearance, with its tacky, cheap-looking cards and hallucinatory box art. If your family are unlikely to spend the time learning the previous tabletop games I’ve suggested that you should play, then this card game should fit the bill due to its simplicity.
I’m a fan of tabletop games in which players are tasked with injecting their own creativity into proceedings, and considering Snake Oil‘s success is solely reliant upon its players’ sales techniques, it certainly falls within this category. The game requires players to utilize their charisma in order to “sell” various randomized products to their prospective customer, with the individual who sells the most products being crowned the winner.
Unfortunately, if your family are entirely humorless then you’ll want to avoid this game like the plague, given that the amount of enjoyment you’ll squeeze out of it is dependent upon its players’ sales pitches, which are encouraged to be as funny as possible. However, if your family are known to engage in laughter from time to time (or at least crack a smile every now and then), Snake Oil is a card game that’s easy to grasp and, in the hands of the right crowd, lots of fun to play.
Dixit
Players: 3 – 6
Recommended Age: 6+
Description: Dixit is the lovingly illustrated game of creative guesswork, where your imagination unlocks the tale. In this award-winning board game, players will use the beautiful imagery on their cards to bluff their opponents and guess which image matches the story. Guessing right is only half the battle – to really succeed, you’ll have to get your friends to decide that your card tells the story!
Dixit is immediately eye-catching thanks to its beautifully illustrated cards, but it remains engrossing thanks to a premise that is appealing across all age ranges, making this the ideal tabletop game if you’re looking to entertain both children and adults.
Dixit tasks one player with assuming the role of the storyteller, who must describe the scene depicted on the card they are handed. They can do so in any way they see fit, but to succeed they must describe the illustration in way that is neither overly descriptive nor overly vague. This is because the other players must place down a card from out of their hand which they feel mostly relates to the scene the storyteller has described, with these cards then being shuffled and players having to vote upon which card belonged to the storyteller. For every player who guesses correctly, both they and the storyteller receive points; the players who have made an incorrect guess reward points to the owner of the card they have picked.
However, there’s a pretty big twist in the tale: if all players correctly guess the storyteller’s card, then the storyteller receives no points. This means that the storyteller must not describe their card in too much detail, yet they must also provide a description that is accurate enough to ensure that at least one player will provide a correct guess. The end result is a game that doesn’t require too much brain power yet remains engaging enough to appease a wide demographic, and looks lovely to boot.
