Our Top 10 Most Played Games | Best Board & Card Games for Families

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Lock Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be our top 10 most played games over the past 2 years. I'm not going to say these are our favorites because I would actually say our favorites change frequently kind of depending on our mood, the season, all of these things. Um, we all have favorite styles of games. So, Emily loves card games. Kevin loves dice games. I kind of like tile laying and word games, like where you're kind of like building on things. But our favorites change. Uh, we do have what I like to call old faithful games that we come back to over and over again. That is probably what most of these are, but I looked at our log of games and these are the ones that came to the table the most in the past two years. So, I thought that since we just did like a huge game school 101 video earlier this week, which I will link up here in case you missed it, this would be a great follow-up because the holiday season's coming and this might help you make a wish list of games you would like to add to your shelves. Put them on your wish list and, you know, hope for the best if you want to kind of venture into game schooling. I am going to say the majority of these games um work for a pretty wide age range, I think. Um, and they all have, in my opinion, some sort of educational value, even if it doesn't like seem like it at first glance. We're just going to dive in. The first thing I have is like Emily's literal tried andrude. She's going to pull it every single time for the most part. Um, and it is Spot It. What I love about Spottit is that this is great even if your kids cannot read yet because there's no reading required. So, it is basically a matching type of game where you're trying to find um the symbol that's the same on both cards. There's normally there's only ever one and get rid of your cards the fastest because of that. Another thing that I love about it is that there are so many different versions. So, when I say that spotted made it to our table, it's literally made it to the table most, I just mean spotted in general. Um because we have a lot of them. So, we have camping and animals. Uh we have dinosaurs, we have Marvel, we have Harry Potter. By the way, Dobble is the other name. Um I believe that's what they call in like the UK. So, if you look up Spot It and you can't find it, maybe look up Dobble. Um we have Star Wars or Mandalorian. There's sports teams. Like I'm telling you, if you want to add a spot it and you're like, I don't really like the look of the original Barbie, Bluey, um, Princesses, I think we've had a Frozen one. I don't know. We have a ton. We have a ton of different versions. So, Spottit was like the number one most played game because we play it all the time. But, I love how quick and easy it is. It also was really, really great when Emily was younger. It's one of the reasons she loves it so much because she had like um an eye muscle problem and so playing it and having to hunt for the different images really really helped strengthen her eye muscles and like I mean she still has to wear glasses but we made serious improvements without having to wear the eye patch and I swear it's because of spotted like I know I'm not a doctor but I spotted has got to be the reason. The second most played game that made it to our table was top trumps. Again, not a specific top trumps, but top trumps in general because there are so many. So, if you want to add some to your science, you could get something like dinosaurs or awesome animals. If you're like, "Oh, no. I need to beef up my geography." Okay, no problem. Grab the United States or national parks. Um, no. I'd rather get something for history. Okay. How about some ancient Egypt? Or maybe even The Presidents? Or if you just want something for fun, maybe interest based, you could grab Marvel. They have Harry Potter. They also have Disney villains. There's something for everybody. The way Top Trumps plays, in case you've never played before, is it's very similar to a war style game. And each card is going to have different statistics on it. and you are going to kind of pick a statistic and then you're going to play war and whoever gets that higher number of statistics wins the cards. Um, sometimes we will play and we will keep going until there are no cards left till somebody has all of them and other times we will just play through one time and who has the most cards wins. It kind of depends on our time. The game that made it to our table the most or the third most, this is going to be no surprise, is Yatsi. Uh, this is Kevin's favorite game and nine times out of 10 it's what he picks for family game nights. Um, we also play it a lot like in the evenings, just him and I. So, it made it to the table a lot. Uh, it also has a special place in my heart. In case you missed the story in the game school 101 video, it is literally it was our gateway to game schooling game. Um, if you've never played Yatsi, you are basically rolling five dice and you are trying for things like three of a kind or full house and you're writing them down on a piece of paper and seeing who gets the high score. A yatsi is if you roll all five of the same number. This is a great game even without buying it. you can just get five dice and you can probably print I'm pretty sure you can print the scorecard offline and then you could play it and see if dice games are your thing. Uh the game that made it to our game table the fourth most was Dragonwood. This is a fantastic game um kind of of dice and daring is what they call it. You are basically rolling well, you're collecting cards and you're using your cards to turn in for dice to roll the dice to hopefully be able to win different um characters or monsters or enhancements because whoever has the highest number at the end wins. This is what I like to call like our perfect inthe-middle family game because it's dice and cards so it's like two for one and everybody loves it. It is a very very fun game. We kind of introduce the topic of probability using this game because we can talk about like, okay, you need 14. You only have three dice. Like, is your probability high or low that you're going to be able to do that with the three dice? Oh, wait, that's not even possible, you know, because some of the dice, not all the dice go to six. But anyway, it's very, very interesting to be able to use a game in that way. A game that made it to the table the fifth most was Sky Joe. This is a super fun card game. Um, the reason it made it to the table the most is because we sometimes will edit the way we play. So, I think you're actually supposed to play, let me see how many rounds you're supposed to do, 10 rounds. We don't always play 10 rounds. Sometimes we'll play one if that's all we have the time for. Especially if this is a game that we're using as a tiebreaker game for our family game nights. We will play one round. Sometimes we play the best of three, best of five. We don't let the rule of the fact that it's supposed to be 10 rounds stop us. If we can only play one round because that's what we have time for, great. If we play 10 rounds, also great. So, that's one of the reasons why this one has been played so much. We love it. Um, you basically have like 12 cards upside down. You can't see them unless you replace them with a card that you have drawn and you can flip over, replace kind of thing. Um, so it's and you're trying for the lowest score. So, it's interesting. Uh, it's also been interesting trying out different methods. Like one time, you know, we were all trying to get the lowest score possible, so we're collecting as many negatives as possible. One time Emily was like, I wonder because you kind of like when the last person flips their card over, you're kind of leaving everybody else stuck. So, she tried the method of like flipping hers over the fastest and seeing if we would get stuck with higher numbers. And that it did in fact work. So, we've tried that numerous times. But I love that this game introduces like the negative integers. Um, so when especially when Emily started like having kind of some like I was she was having problems with positive and negative and all that. This game was great for that cuz she finally was like, "Oh, I can see that like the negative does the opposite of what I'm thinking in my head." So it was it was fantastic for that. The game that made it to the table the sixth most taco cat goat cheese pizza. This is one of Emily's favorites. The only reason it's probably not number one is because there are times when Kevin and I are like no we're not going to play it. Um or I'm like I really like the way my hand feels today because Kevin and Emily are vicious. Like they like bam and I'm like you know what? I'm good losing. I want to keep my fingers. It is fun. Um it's fastpaced. You are it's silly. I mean you're literally saying taco cat goat cheese pizza as you're flipping the cards. If the cards match, you slap them or you do some sort of funny movement. Uh it's one that like when like friends or family come over, we love to make them play because it's they should just be tortured along with us, right? And again, it's funny and it really the rules are pretty simple. Like it's not complicated. You can learn in seconds. So, it's a really fun one to pull out when like new people come over. Number seven is Rackco. This is the classic game of rackom and stack them is what they say. Um it is essentially you trying you you fill this little tray with 10 cards and you are then drawing cards and replacing cards in your tray to try to make your cards go from the lowest number to the highest. They don't have to be sequential. It just has to be in order from lowest to highest. Um sometimes that's harder than you would think, but it's really fun. This has been one that we've played for years because especially when Emily was doing like greater than or less than, this was a great game for that. Um, but we love it. I mean, it's one that Kevin and I played even before we had Emily. So, it's a just a fun family card game. Number eight is, sorry that was loud. Clue the classic game. Um, this is another one that Kevin and Emily love. I mean, I love it, too, but they like love watching the movie and playing this game. Like, that to them is the perfect family night. Um, and so we play it a lot. I will say this one has like the double board. It has the boardwalk side on the back. I think we've maybe played that twice in all of the years that we've had it. We prefer the classic like original clue. I don't know why. That's just our preference. Um, and it gets played a lot. I would say probably at least once a month this one's coming to the game table, maybe more. It's just that, you know, who done it kind of thing. Um, I love the logic behind it. I remember in the very beginning when we started playing, like Emily would have to play on somebody's team because she couldn't fathom like why we were exing these things off or why she couldn't guess the dining room. I mean, she could, but you know, we had already established it wasn't in the dining room. So, I mean, that was probably when she was six or seven, but and obviously it's for eight and up. But anyway, she started very early playing like alongside me or alongside Kevin so she could learn it. And then I think I even made a dry erase like I made a board with pictures instead of words. Like they're like the characters pictures and the pictures of the weapons um and printed it and laminated it. So she was even playing or attempting to play before she could read because I had done that. Now she beats us on a regular basis. So I wouldn't worry about her there. Number nine and 10 are some of my favorites. Quarkle. And this is another one that you can play without needing to read because it's basically just colors and shapes. And I love that. I told you guys I love tile laying games. And this is like one of the simplest tile laying games that there is in my opinion. You are just trying to create a line of circles where they're all either the same color but different shapes or they're the same shapes but different colors. So there's six shapes and six colors. Um, this is kind of an example. Think bananagram type of layout except with shapes and colors basically. And then number 10 is upwards. I also told you guys that I love word games and this is tile laying and words. And I love that you get to like build up on what other people have done. I mean, I love Scrabble, too. I love really I love all word games. Splirt, Scrabble, all of them. But I love that, like I said, this one you're like, you're not just laying the tiles, like you can build up. You can change words that have been laid down. I feel like it's really fun in that sense because it's like kind of more of a classic spin. Um, anyway, so this has been a fantastic one for spelling and vocabulary because sometimes we'll lay down words and Emily's like, "What does that mean?" or "Is that even a word?" And so we always have a dictionary close by. So that has been a great one for that. So there you have it. Again, like I said, these may not necessarily be our favorites because our favorites change, but these are the top 10 most played games on our table in the past 2 years. Now, I would love it if you would tell me down below what is either the last game that you played or probably the most played game in your home. [Music]