If you’ve read my books, you can probably tell both that I’m a parent and a board gamer.
Board games are great.
Kids are great.
Board games and kids… don’t always go great together, as anyone who has sat through Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land with a young child can tell you. Modern children’s games are a little better – Peaceable Kingdoms does a great job making games for kids to play with each other – but they’re still not typically fun for the adults.
Here are 11 games that I’ve played with my kids when they were under age 5 and actually enjoyed myself, along with tips for rules changes or play strategies to make it more fun for everyone. Note that my possible age ranges for a game frequently don’t match up with what the designers say on the box, but I try to give enough information to let a parent decide if their kid could handle it or not.
Stay tuned for a list of board games to play with slightly older children soon!
- Dragomino
- Chicken Cha Cha Cha
- IceCool
- SOS Dino
- King of Tokyo
- Animal Upon Animal
- Catacombs of Karak
- Beasts of Balance
- Fireball Island
- Animal Kingdoms
- Colt Express
1. Dragomino
Good for: Ages 3 & up
Skills needed: simple matching, beginning counting
Why’s it good?
It simplifies the already-simple Kingdomino enough to the point that any kid old enough to focus through a board game can actually play, while still retaining enough strategic elements that parents won’t die of boredom.
To be able to play, kids need to be able to see where tiles match up to their existing landscape, and count to three. Older kids or adults will find more success by trying to pay attention to which landscapes (and eggs) will give them the best odds of finding dragons in a given moment, but because it’s odds and not a guarantee, the hapless youngest players will still pull out wins sometimes. Not to mention, every match gives you a chance to open an egg and see if there’s a cute dragon inside! If there’s not? Oh well, you get the consolation prize of holding the “Mommy dragon” token and picking your tile first next round.
The art is adorable, and the egg tiles were a brilliant innovation to take the scoring of Kingdomino (which involves multiplication and all takes place at the end of the game) and make it intuitive to toddlers and younger elementary schoolers.
Downsides: Almost none. The simplicity and luck-based elements may annoy older kids who aren’t used to getting beaten by younger brothers or sisters.
Setup time: Low. All the egg tiles need to be flipped down, and that’s about it as far as setup goes.
Number of players: 2-4
2. Chicken Cha Cha Cha
Good for: Ages 3 & up
Skills needed: Memory, matching
Why’s it good?
This takes almost everything that’s bad about memory games and makes it good. We’ve all played memory games. No one finds any matches for the first half of the game unless they get lucky, and then as more matches start getting found, the game careens toward an ending rapidly, with luck again playing a large element in who actually wins.
In Chicken Cha Cha Cha, there’s an inner ring of face-down tiles, and an outer ring with twice that number of face-up tiles. Players start with their chickens placed equidistant around the outer track, and they each take a turn flipping up one inner tile to try to find the next tile ahead of them. If they do, they can move there and check another inner tile for their next move. As long as they get it right, they can keep moving, but if they fail to make a match, it’s the next player’s turn.
No one moves much at the beginning, and to pass another chicken and steal their tailfeather, you need to be able to find the inner tile that matches the outer space in front of them – i.e. the tile they’ve failed to find. If your tailfeather is stolen, fear not! You’re still in the game, and if the player who took your feather stumbles, you can steal it right back. Victory comes when one player has stolen all the tailfeathers, which usually comes when someone has memorized all the inner tiles.
Victory in this game feels dramatic and earned, rather than lackluster and luck-based. Funny images on the tiles (“I gotta find the pooping chicken!”) add to the charm for the kids. Yes… for the kids. Parents are far too grown-up for such humor.
Downsides: Losing pieces is very noticeable. The game can be hard to find copies of.
Setup time: Minimal – you just need to lay the tiles out
Number of players: 2-4, unless you have the duck expansion, which adds 2 more players and poop tokens
3. IceCool
Good for: 3 & up
Skills needed: being able to flick something
Why’s it good?
The box is actually a matryoshka of nesting boxes that you clip together to form the board, which is themed as a penguin school. Most players are attempting to navigate the school and collect fish before the catcher can get to them, and one player is “it” each round. You play as many rounds as you have players, so each player gets a turn to be it. You’re supposed to flick the penguins, but as long as you’re hitting your piece with a single finger, it seems to count as a “flick” in the rules. As long as you’re generous with what constitutes a “flick,” children of any age can compete with adults on fairly equal footing. Actually, children may have an advantage because they don’t seem to mind hurting their fingers by flicking the penguins really hard.
Downsides: Oww, my poor fingertips. Those penguin pawns are hard.
Setup time: Minimal. The board snaps together very quickly and colored dots make the layout clear.
Number of players: 2-4
4. SOS Dino
Good for: Ages 3 & up (with help)
Skills needed: interpret simple tile symbols, match tile edges
Why’s it good?
So, this is a cooperative game, but the fun thing is that the game makers didn’t set a binary “win” or “lose” condition. There are several dinosaur eggs placed around the board, and several dinosaur pawns. Ideally, you’re trying to get them all to the mountains before the lowlands are covered with lava, but if you don’t succeed, you don’t lose – you still saved three eggs and two dinosaurs! It’s nice, because it lets the more strategically gifted players sort of relax and let less sophisticated players do their thing. It honestly even sort of makes it more fun. How many eggs can I save when my child only wants to move the yellow dinosaur and no other?
The adorable little dinosaur pawns are a plus as well.
Downsides: An adult needs to help smaller kids figure out legal tile placement. There are a bunch of little cardboard sculptures that you’re supposed to set up each time. You can just… not, and simply set the top part of each cardboard edifice on the game board. At least, you can if you can convince the small children playing that you can. Good luck.
Setup time: Moderate. The tiny mountains/volcanoes don’t take that long to set up.
Number of players: 1-4
5. King of Tokyo
Good for: Ages 3 & up (with help)
Skills needed: rolling dice, making decisions
Why’s it good?
So, I wanna be clear here. The actual strategy of King of Tokyo is probably beyond kids until they’re like sixish or so. But kids can be a fun and impactful part of a game of King of Tokyo between adults. They can roll dice! Kids love dice. They can choose which flavor of giant monster they want to be, from robot cats to Godzilla-style kaiju. Kids love giant monsters. They can choose to hang on the sidelines and try to stay alive while the other monsters battle it out. They can, as one of my kids does, beeline for Tokyo and stand in the middle as long as they can, laughing madly as they attack everyone until they can stand no longer and die, yes indeed, but die as king. (In my heart, my middle child is king forever.) Their lack of strategic supremacy doesn’t prevent them from winning, either, as the adults will make the logical choice of targeting other adults first, sometimes leaving the winner as the timid child who went all-in on healing or the lucky child who committed hard to rolling points.
Downsides: There’s no good solution when everyone wants to be RoboKitty, and the potential to get eliminated from the game early can be rough
Setup time: Moderate? I usually need a quick rules refresher, so it’s probably minimal if you play this one more often.
Number of players: 2-6
6. Animal Upon Animal
Good for: Any kid old enough to pick up and set down small objects.
Skills needed: manual dexterity
Why’s it good?
It’s simple, with high-quality components. The animals are all painted wood and made of interesting shapes that don’t have a clear “best” way to stack them. I’ll admit that as an adult I generally play to try to keep my kids from losing rather than to win myself, but trying to set them up for moves their tiny chubby fingers can manage is an interesting challenge in itself. My inability to consistently succeed at losing (to three-year-olds) without outright intentionally knocking it over makes it fun to play.
Downsides: I’ve known dexterous 1 & 2 year olds who could probably play this game to some extent, and rambunctious four-year-olds who might have trouble. That said, I’m sure it builds dexterity, so this is less a downside and a “your milage my vary” warning.
Setup time: None.
Number of players: 2-4
7. Catacombs of Karak
Good for: Ages 3 & up (with help)
Skills needed: If an adult assists, all a kid needs is an ability to make choices and roll dice. To play independently, a kid needs to know how to read, count up the total pips shown on dice, and know less-than or greater-than (i.e. “I’ve rolled 7, which is less than eight, so I win this battle!”)
Why’s it good?
Karak is an interesting dungeon exploration game where you build the dungeon as you explore it. Mechanics are simple enough to grasp quickly, but deep enough to allow for very different strategies and outcomes from character to character and game to game. The dice-rolling combat mechanic also means that the silliest small child can stumble their way into victory, and the best plans of a parent can be waylaid by luck. That said, strategy definitely plays a role.
Downsides: Kids may get angry if someone kills a mummy and chooses them for the curse. There are several ways out of the curse, but sibling drama is likely. You could always choose to play without the curse, but it’s a fun strategic element.
Setup time: Minimal. Players need to choose characters, find the starting tile, and set up their health tokens.
Number of players: 2-5 players
8. Beasts of Balance
Good for: Ages 4 & up
Skills needed: Manual dexterity, interpretation of tablet display (ability to read isn’t strictly necessary, but you will get to read the funny creature names)
Why’s it good?
It’s a delightful cooperative game that combines the fun of trying to make a big physical stack of weirdly-shaped objects with the reward of seeing funny results on the screen. What do you get when you combine a bear with a warthog? And then crossbreed the result with a toucan? And send that animal to live undersea? The result will almost certainly be cute and have a silly name, leading to tons of giggles and replay value as you try to fill out your bestiary.
In addition, if your little butterfingers bumps the stack, it’s not all over. Ominous music signals your chance to be a hero. Rebalance all the pieces in the stack before lava rises to the top of an on-screen volcano to earn the right to continue your game.
Downsides: The game both requires and involves a tablet. If you’re looking for a break from screens, this doesn’t qualify. You need batteries for the plinth as well.
Setup time: Moderate the first time. You need to download an app and set up the tablet and plinth for pairing. After that, there’s almost zero setup time: turn on plinth, open app, go.
Number of players: The box says 1-5, but it really just comes down to how good people are at taking turns.
9. Fireball Island
Good for: Anyone old enough to be careful when needed. I have played with a three-year-old successfully… but honestly, I didn’t expect that to work.
Skills needed: Making choices, dealing with loss, not bumping things that aren’t supposed to be bumped
Why’s it good?
In this game, you play an explorer documenting the natural beauty of an island and looting the many treasures it contains. What’s fun is, in addition to moving your explorer around, you also get the opportunity to make the temple/volcano at the top dispense boulders and fireballs down various paths by rotating it and dropping marbles in the top. If the marbles knock over an opponent, you get to steal one of the treasures they’ve collected.
Yep, that’s right: roll marbles at people and take their stuff. If you can’t see why that’s good I can’t explain it to you any better than that.
Downsides: The balance elements that make it fun make it finicky to set up and play with. It can be good training to help kids learn to be patient and careful… but it can also just be frustrating and unfun if an excited child knocks everything over repeatedly.
Setup time: High for a kids’ game. There’s a lot of little treasures to lay out and a lot of little terrain
Number of players: 2-4
10. Animal Kingdoms
Good for: Ages 4 & up… if you are choosy with decrees
Skills needed: matching symbols, basic counting/number order
Why’s it good?
It’s a pretty crunchy strategy game made infinitely more friendly by a huge variety of adorable animal meeples and gorgeously drawn animal-themed cards. (The meeple variety is purely cosmetic: gameplay-wise they could be replaced by simple colored cubes. If you had no soul.) Kids love selecting their favorite meeples to place in territories, and the allure of claiming the “crown” spot in each section definitely excites them.
To win the game, you try to have the most animals in a given territory at the end of a round, but to place an animal you must place a card matching that area’s “decree.” There’s a wide variety of decrees, and many of them will be opaque to younger players, like the one requiring alternating even and odd cards. Still, others have simple and easy-to-understand rules, like playing animals matching the symbols/colors on the decree, or playing cards matching specific number, or playing cards in ascending numerical order without skipping (1, 2, 3, etc.). If you filter out the more challenging decrees, the game is pleasantly challenging for kids who’ve recently mastered basic counting, and still fun for adults.
Downsides: You need to take out the harder decrees if playing with young kids
Setup time: Moderate
Number of players: 1 – 5
11. Colt Express
Good for: Ages 4 & up
Skills needed: Decision-making!
Why’s it good?
Wild west yakety sax-style competing train robbers is a great theme for a game!
Programmers will be tickled, as it sort of sneakily introduces kids to programming concepts. At the start of a round, everyone takes turns putting cards in a stack according to the pattern for that round. For example, everyone might do a card face-up, then a card face-down, then two cards in a row. Then, one player takes the stack and executes it, consulting other players on exactly how they want to do their planned actions. For example, “You said you want to move – do you want to move to the train car ahead or the one behind? Okay, you said you want to shoot. Doc and Tuco are in range, which do you fire at?”
Technically, the player executing the stack is supposed to rotate, but that’s mostly because executing the stack is fun. You can just have one player do it the whole time, which makes it easier on the other players.
I recommend giving your youngest player Belle, or playing as though they have Belle’s special ability, because it’s a passive that ensures she can never be targeted as long as the attacker could target another bandit. It’s a strong special ability that doesn’t take strategy to use; actually, the opposite, as ending up in dangerous locations will be less punitive for them than anyone else.
Downsides: Only two out of the six starting characters are female. Really? What is this 1990s nonsense? The pawns are identical aside from color, so why not just make the character cards double-sided, with a male and female option for each color and ability?
Setup time: Moderate to high. There’s a fair amount of tokens to lay out and distribute, and every character needs two decks of cards, and then you need the “round deck” for the appropriate number of players. If you put everything away carefully, you can still get it set out pretty fast, but… that’s an if.
Budget extra setup time for your first game, so you can build the little train cars. I hit them all with a touch of superglue after we built them so they’d stay together. The box is actually quite nice, with a little compartment for each assembled car.
Number of players: 2-6. More players = more fun
Do you have another favorite game to play with small kids? Let me know what it is in the comments! I’d love to check it out.
EDIT: Here’s some further suggestions from readers I haven’t yet tested myself!
Dragon Adventure, Princess Heroes, Story Time Chess, Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters, The Mysterious Forest, Diamant (Incan Gold), Klask!, Rhino Hero Super Battle, Sorry!, Santorini, SushiGo, Carcasonne Junior, Encore!, Ghost Blitz, Color Monster, Bandido, Dragonrealm, Flash Point: Fire Rescue (official family rules), Flyin’ Goblin, Pitchcar, Go Cuckoo, Rat a Tat Cat, Zombie Dice, Cartoona, Mission Red Planet, Camel Up, Cockroach Poker, Cauldron Quest
I have found ways to play non kids games with a 3 year old by removing or simplifying some of the rules, such as mission red planet, camel up, Santorini, cockroach poker. It means adults can play the game with a sort of wildcard player who has no strategy and plays randomly, and means not needing to play kids games specifically
+1 on Animal Pyramid (as they call Animals Upon Animals in Finland), Ghost Blitz, and King of Tokyo. Although I’ve only played that last one with a group of extremely drunk adults, that’s basically like playing with a bunch of four-year-olds.