Reviews

2021 Board Game Gift Guide

Our 2021 board game gift guide has tons of suggestions for every gamer on your list!

Games are some of my absolute favorite gifts to give during the holidays!

Why? Because, to me, the holidays mean spending time together. Enjoying warm, cozy nights with the people we care about most, sitting around a table, food filling the kitchen, the smell of hot cocoa rising from kitschy Christmas mugs, and the sound of cards shuffling as you play another round of your favorite game.

When you give someone a game, it’s not just gifting them a present, but also giving them the gift of presence. Whether its spending time with your kids, giving a teenager something fun to play with their friends, or an experience the whole family can enjoy together for night to come long after the holidays end.

Below we’ve rounded up our top game recommendations for 2020! To help you, I’ve got them separated into categories by age.

Toddler and Preschool Games
Kid Games
Family Games
Teens and Adult Games
Party Games
Gaming Accessories

If a game sounds like a good fit, just click on the name and you’ll be taken to where you can purchase it. Where possible, we’ve linked to Amazon for ease, but feel free to write these down and support your local game store or favorite shop in town!

You can also find all of the below games collected together in our 2021 Gift Guide on our Amazon Storefront!

Be sure to check back next week when we share our round up of the best Stocking Stuffer Games!

Toddler + Preschool Board Games

My First Advent Calendar

Okay, my first idea is for all you eager beavers out there! HABA’s My First Advent Calendar is an adorable gift filled with the chunky wooden animal friends we’ve come to love! The perfect way to kick off the Christmas season. Save all the wooden pieces to play with year after year!

Rhino Hero Junior

This game is new this year and has become one of my favorite kids games in our collection! Read our full review here.

Animal Upon Animal Junior

This is the perfect dexterity game for toddlers! Each wooden piece is designed perfectly for little hands and built to last. Read our full review here.

Off to Bed

My favorite themes in preschool games are grounded in the ordinary, real life tasks that they find themselves doing. Off to Bed is the perfect choice blending of age appropriate theme with fun game play. Read our full review here.

Quest Kids Matching Adventure

I was very impressed with this matching game. It’s a unique spin on the classic flip and match memory game that manages to be fun for the whole family while keeping the preschooler in mind. Read our full review here.

Roll and Play

Games that Focus on developmental skills like learning colors, expressions, animals, and parts of self are perfect for this age!

Kid Board Games for Ages 5-8

Hero Hockey (and Klask!)

If you’re looking for an event game, this is the one! All the fun of air hockey in a small, easily stored package. Full review (and comparison to Klask which is the fancier version) here.

Concept Kids

This clever party style game is a great choice for kids who love animals. We love that it can be easily shared with a wide range of ages, making it an excellent kid-focused family game.

Inspector Mouse: The Great Escape

Have fun while also improving your memory skills with this unique sequential order memory game. Full review here.

Pebble Rock Delivery Service

This game has all the table presence of a large game for adults. With a beautiful circular board and stellar art, this is a show stopper that kids get excited about. Full review here.

Mickey and Friends Food Fight

Laughter fills the room when this game hits the table! Food Fight is perfect for fans of games with minimal rules that you can get to playing fast! Full review here.

Family Board Games

Cascadia

Create the most harmonious ecosystem in Cascadia. We love the puzzle feel Cascadia has. It is thoughtful, accessible, interesting game with lots of variability to keep each game interesting.

The Key Series

One of the cooler game designs I’ve seen in a long time, The Key is a logical deduction game for the family. There are three games in the series. We’ve linked our favorite for this post. Find our break down of the whole series in our full review here.

The Castles of Tuscany

We are impressed by how this game manages to combine thoughtfully strategic gameplay into an easy to learn package great for the family to play together. Full review here.

TEN

TEN is a push your luck auction card game that is quick to learn and a blast to play. Try to collect the cards you need before you bust! Full review here.

Ship Shape

One of our favorite family games! Simple, fast, and fun for all! Full review here.

Land vs Sea

We love the unique puzzle vibe this tile/territory game has! Learn it in two minutes and enjoy with anyone.

7 Wonders Architects

This game is perfect for anyone looking for a family game that can seat a large number of people. As fun for kids as it is for adults, we love that it’s accessible for the whole family.

The Whatnot Cabinet

A clever set collection game that plays quickly. You’ll for sure want to play a few games back to back! Full review here.

Via Magica

This game is pure fun! It’s board game Bingo with strategy and a bit of luck. You’ll love playing it with players of all ages! Full review here.

Ticket to Ride and Expansions

Sometimes you can’t go wrong with a classic! After all these years we still love playing Ticket to Ride as a family. Our favorite expansion map is the United Kingdom with Pennsylvania map. Add new maps to your base game or try out the new stand alone small maps like New York, London, and Amsterdam

Teen and Adult Board Games

Rolling Realms

Don’t let this simple roll and write deceive you! We love how unassuming the strategy involved can be. And with such a variable set up, you’ll never play the same game twice! Full review here.

Funkoverse Harry Potter (or other characters)

I love these games for teens looking to play an exciting grid moment fighting game with their favorite characters. We love how you can mix and match characters from various games (think Harry Potter teaming up with Batman or Captain America!) to create your ideal team! Full review here.

Tidal Blades

Battle through challenges to become the Hero of the Reef in this showstopper of a game! It is filled with everything we love: variability, worker placement, dice rolling, card drafting, set collection, and incredible world building!

Wild Space

This fast combo building tactical card game packs a ton of game into a short time frame. The number of times we’ve brought this to the table in the past month meant it had to make this years list! Full review here.

Micro Macro Crime City

Imagine taking Where’s Waldo and turning it into a murder mystery game — that’s pretty much exactly what Micro Macro Crime City is and it’s a lot of fun! Be aware the game features mature themes. Full review here.

Carpe Diem

In this game you’ll attempt to build a lucrative city through interesting tile selection, card drafting, and scoring. We love the depth of this game which seems to grow on us more and more with each play. Full review here.

Scythe

One of our all time favorite games! Scythe is the perfect choice for players looking to enjoy a larger strategy game with accessible rules to avoid that initial play overwhelm. If you already have Scythe or are gifting for a fan of the game, check out the expansions for the game as well!

Lost Ruins of Arnak

We always get asked what’s on our Christmas list this year it’s The Lost Ruins of Arnak! We love the look of this game and are excited by the combining of many of our favorite mechanisms such as bag building, card drafting, and worker placement!

Party Games

Hues and Cues

Discover how well you can determine colors in this game that has to have been inspired by the joy one finds staring at the paint swatch aisle in Home Depot.

So Clover

This clever word game will have you giving clues to link words together. Perfect for any fan of party games like Codenames or Just One! Full review here.

Decrypto

An excellent deduction word game. Compete in two teams to correctly interpret the coded message and intercept codes for your opponents.

Pit

This card game is over 100 years old and is still some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing and yelling at my family! This commodity trading game is sure to be one of the wildest games to hit your table! (Get the version with the bell, trust me!)

Strike

Throw dice into the arena to be the last player standing. It’s so much more fun than just dice in a bowl. The original is hard to find but the Harry Potter version is the exact same game and available!