Celestia
In Celestia, 2-4 players board an aircraft with a team of adventurers to perform many trips through the cities of Celestia, attempting to be the richest adventurer by collecting the most precious treasures.
At the beginning of each round, the trip captain rolls dice to discover challenges and must then play the appropriate cards to continue on the journey and reach the next city. As soon as a player earns treasure worth at least fifty points, the game ends, and this player wins.
Dixit
An imaginative storytelling game, Dixit challenges players to use the images on their cards to bluff their opponents and guess which image matches the story. At every turn, the storyteller calls out a short phrase or word to match their card.
Sorry! Game
In this classic family game of strategy and chance, each player gets four pawns to move around the gameboard. Players need to pick a 1 or a 2 card to get a pawn out of the starting area, and then challenge opponents in this classic game of sweet revenge! Be the first player to get all four pawns to home base to win.
Scattergories
If you can think fast under pressure, you’ll love Scattergories, where each player tries to complete a list of prompts (like “things found in the kitchen”) based on a specific letter rolled during the round (L is for “lettuce.”) “I’m not very good at Scattergories and yet I still love it,” says Chief Content Officer, Laura Schocker. “It’s great for a group because you don’t have to all fit around a table to play.”
Apples to Apples
In Apples to Apples, each player gets seven “Things” cards to pair up with the Judge’s “Description” card. In each round, the judge reads the description — say it’s “Evil” — and every player lays down the card from their hand that matches that description. The judge chooses their favorite “thing” card, and at the end, the player who won the most rounds wins!
Kerplunk
This is a fabulous game to play with kids. The setup is easy: You take a tall plastic tube, push spaghetti-like sticks all through the middle to create a web, then dump a handful of marbles into the tube. On each turn, players pull one of the sticks out of the tube, hoping that none of the marbles fall. It’s a noisy game, which only adds to the fun!
Telestrations Board Game
Did you ever play the telephone game, where you whisper something into someone’s ear, and they whisper it into someone else’s, and then the chain continues? And at the end, it’s a completely mangled phrase from what you started with. Well, Telestrations is an even better version of that game. You start with a word or phrase and sketch it. Pass it to the next player, and they have to guess the word or phrase. Pass it to the next player, and they have to draw the guessed word or phrase. Continue around the room until you end up with some hilarious illustrations and completely off-topic words.