Board games! When has playing board games ever been a bad idea? Well, some people hate them, actually! If you’re competitive (like me), you probably enjoy them and tend to win a lot. Other people, be it because they lose a lot or simply because they hate the idea of sitting down for a few hours to play a game, just don’t mix with them.
Regardless of your taste, given the current worldwide quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic—better known as “Coronavirus!”—you’ll probably have a lot of free time on your hands right now. What better way to spend time with your loved ones than dusting off those old board games you got hidden in the closet?
- Sorry!
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Starting off the list, here’s one that’ll be equal parts fun and frustrating.
“Sorry!” is a board game that is played with 2 to 4 players. The goal of the game is to have your pawns go from the start placement to the home placement before your opponents. At any moment, any of their pawns could knock yours over. If they do, you’ll have to start from the beginning all over again.
You probably shouldn’t play this one if you or your family get easily mad. You might end up flipping the table.
- Clue
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A true classic. “Clue” is a board game that takes place in a recently murdered millionaire’s mansion. The objective? Find out the 3 Ws: who did it, where, and with what. You get to pick from 6 colorful characters and snoop around the entire mansion searching for clues.
After rolling the die enough time, you get to stop inside one of the mansion’s rooms. There, you get to ask your opponents about their cards. The answer to this whodunnit game is within a secret folder, which contains three cards that were shuffled and placed in it at the beginning of the game.
This game is excellent for guessers and detail-oriented people. Clue games are usually long, especially if 5 or 6 people are playing. Be patient with this one, and enjoy the fictional story you can create with other players.
- Cards Against Humanity
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“Cards Against Humanity” is a card game that really plays more like a board game. Since its release, it’s been marketed towards adults with a dark sense of humor. By filling in space in sentences on the black cards with random nouns on white cards, you can manage to create hilarious yet simultaneously dark thoughts.
This game is probably the most recently released one on the list, so older people might not be thoroughly familiar with it—or the terms on the cards. Likewise, many young people may not understand the cultural references on the cards, so be prepared to explain and fill any gaps in the humor.
Full disclaimer, kids shouldn’t play this one. They either might not fully understand it, feel confused or hear inappropriate things. Other than that, feel free to let the misanthropist inside you run amok.
You could count points and play to win, given that a Card Czar is appointed and chooses each round who was the funniest, but you usually play this game for the experience rather than for winning.
- Jenga
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This game has escaped most families’ closets and made it onto the tables of bars in a large format. The idea of “Jenga” is straightforward: take out wooden blocks from the tower until it tumbles. It’s okay, pure fun; family-friendly, too!
There’s really no winner in this game, just a singular loser, aka, whoever makes the tower fall to pieces. It’s a bit anxiety-inducing, but it’s definitely the most simple game mentioned so far—fair warning: be careful where you place it. Wind or an uneven surface makes this game a bit difficult to play properly.
- Scrabble
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Scrabble has a full set of rules and ways of determining who wins and who doesn’t—but that’s not all the fun to have with this game!
The gist of it is forming words in a vertical or horizontal direction on the board. Each letter of any word has assigned points, and based on the word you create you get some points. Technically, you can get pretty competitive with this, but most people have more fun getting creative with the words they form!
It’s a game that can be played with the entire family, or between adults, can become hilarious with all the slang, lingo, and cultural references that one could end up writing on the board. It’s a pretty accessible game, too. You just need to know how to spell.
- Monopoly
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Finally, the mother of them all: “Monopoly.”With thousands of versions of the game running around the market, it’s literally put itself into practice by being a product that you can find in a wide variety of stores and businesses depending on the theme. “Monopoly” won the real-life board game monopoly, but what is it about?
In “Monopoly,” the goal is to buy out all the businesses on the board—effectively, creating a monopoly. You must ensure that you earn more money than your competitors while ruining their businesses. It’s the most casual yet horrid display of capitalistic antics that a game could conjure, and it’s so much fun.
If you’re not competitive, you should avoid this game at all costs. The game puts all players against each other and encourages screwing over one another. By default, you’ll have to take decisive actions that eliminate the competition. Otherwise, a game of “Monopoly” could be pretty much infinite, and that’s where the hook is.
Since there’s a rush to finish the game, you instantly get into the mindset that you have to defeat your opponents, or the game will never end. That’s another reason you should only play this with competitive people: what could be a fun, chaotic game quickly turns monotonous due to a lack of action. Be wary—this game turns friends into foes(just for a little while!).
Take care during this quarantine. Remember to wash your hands, remain calm, and encourage others to do the same. In the meantime, enjoy these games!