New year's eve is just about here! It is tradition for our family to have an all night game night. If you want to add some games to your new year's night, check out some of these. There are games for both live and virtual parties. There is a note with the game when it is available on Board Game Arena. Learn more about Board Game Arena in this post.
In LLAMA, you want to dump cards from your hand as quickly as you can, but you might not be able to play what you want, so do you quit and freeze your hand or draw and hope to keep playing?
L.L.A.M.A. is available on Board Game Arena. It is a very light and easy to learn game. It's great for new players and most ages. Our 5 year old can play it and my dear old mom who doesn't like to learn new games can play it too.
In Martian Dice, your mission is to swoop down on the pathetic denizens of the primitive planet Earth and scoop up as many of the inhabitants as you can manage. We are interested in samples of the Chicken, Cow, and Human populations so that we can determine which of them is actually in charge. The Earthlings might manage to put up a feeble defense, but surely nothing that a small taste of your Death Rays can't handle. Make Mars proud – be the first Martian to fill your abduction quota!
Martian Dice is available on Board Game Arena. This is another quick and easy to learn game. It is very luck based and is in the vein of games like Pass the Pigs and Incan Gold. It makes for a good lightweight game to play during conversation.
On the surface Bristol 1350 is part co-operative teamwork, part racing strategy, and part social deduction. In reality, it's a selfish scramble to get yourself out of town as quickly as possible without the plague, by any means necessary.
It is fairly lightweight. Although it is a social deduction game, you don't need to lie or mislead anyone. There is no traitor. It is very accessible. How the game plays is very dependent on the personalities of the players.
In the co-operative trick-taking game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, the players set out as astronauts on an uncertain space adventure. What about the rumors about the unknown planet about? The eventful journey through space extends over 50 exciting missions. But this game can only be defeated by meeting common individual tasks of each player. In order to meet the varied challenges, communication is essential in the team. But this is more difficult than expected in space.
The Crew is available on Board Game Arena. The game has a series of 50 missions all requiring different tricks to be taken in specific sequences. If you aren't a fan of the space theme you can also check out Mission Deep Sea. The game play is fun and exciting. The missions gradually escalate adding to the excitement.
Trust Me I’m a Doctor is a hilarious card game that lets you become an old time doctor, treating serious medieval maladies with some VERY questionable cures. Players draw gross Ailments and horrifying Cures, then attempt to cure their patient by suggesting various outdated cures, aiming to match symbols on the cards and back up their combination with lots of verbal jousting. The first doctor to be chosen thrice wins, and if everyone is sufficiently grossed out this is a bonus! This party game encourages interaction with your friends. Each of these Ailments and Cures are REAL things that happened.
Oh man! Get together a group of boisterous friends that enjoy a bit of the macabre and you are going to have a blast with this one! It is a bit darker for family game night but if you have a house of teens, this will probably be a great option. You can read my full review here.
Abandon All Artichokes isn't your garden-variety card game!
A bumper-crop of prickly produce has overtaken your patch, and there's only one choice: abandon all artichokes! Prune your deck by harvesting fresh vegetables, each with a special power that lets you swap, discard, or compost cards. You need luck, strategy, and a green thumb to grow a winning hand!
This one is available on Board Game Arena. It is a fast and lightweight deck building game. The sole goal is to get the artichoke cards out of your deck. The art is fun. It's a great intro into deck building as well.
Prepare your adventurers for a challenging dungeon exploration in Paper Dungeons, a roll-and-write game that seeks to reproduce the feel of a dungeon-crawler. In the game, you control a classic group of medieval adventurers: warrior, wizard, cleric, and rogue. In each of the nine rounds, you select three of the six rolled dice and use these results to raise the level of your characters, produce magic items, obtain healing potions, and explore the dungeon to face challenges and collect treasure. You'll also find three large monsters waiting in the dungeon, and you can fight them for glory. In the end, whoever collects the most glory wins.
This is a unique roll and write game full of tough choices. You can level up, fight monsters, and travel through the halls of the dungeon. It has a 12 part campaign, so you could play the whole thing over new year's eve.
Monikers is a party game based on the public domain game Celebrity, where players take turns attempting to get their teammates to guess names by describing or imitating well-known people. In the first round, clue givers can say anything they want, except for the name itself. For the second round, clue givers can only say one word. And in the final round, clue givers can’t say anything at all: they can only use gestures and charades.
This is a great game that can host a ton of people. We played this at a party once but everyone playing had to write five clues. They all got put in a jar for selection. It was hilarious fun!
On the 11th of July, 1899 at 10 a.m., the Union Pacific Express has left Folsom, New Mexico, with 47 passengers on board. After a few minutes, gunfire and hurrying footsteps on the roof can be heard. Heavily armed bandits have come to rob honest citizens of their wallets and jewels. Will they succeed in stealing the suitcase holding the Nice Valley Coal Company's weekly pay, despite it having been placed under the supervision of Marshal Samuel Ford? Will these bandits hinder one another more than the Marshal since only the richest one of them can come out on top? In Colt Express, you play a bandit robbing a train at the same time as other bandits, and your goal is to become the richest outlaw of the Old West.
Colt Express is available on Board Game Arena. With a fun group of people that get into the game this one is just so fun. It's a light programming game. Even the best laid cards can go wrong and lead to riots of laughter. If you want a small box, check out Colt Super Express.
In Mysterium, one player tries to lead the investigators to their culprit.
Each night the team will be met with visions, but what is the ghost trying to tell you?
Can the psychics determine the weapon, location, and identity of the murderer? Or will a violent criminal pull off the perfect murder? They will have to decipher the images to help the ghost remember how he was murdered. The more players cooperate, the easier it will be to the catch the right culprit!
I just love to play Mysterium! This murder mystery game is perfect for the introvert in your group. The ghost gets to hide behind a screen, pass out clues, and just quietly take it all in. I'm always the ghost! This game is like a cross between Dixit and Clue, if that means anything to you. If you like either of those, you will probably enjoy this one. It is great for people that can take things figuratively and thus best for older kids and adults. Mysterium Park is a smaller more simplified version and is also quite fantastic.
