Before board games (and card games) had been re-popularized in the past few years, as a kid, I was lucky enough to have tried some of the games that are still popular until now. This, I realize today, must be one of the reasons why I love tabletop games. Here’s my Top 10 List of Board Games I Loved During My Childhood:
10. Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and Ladders is a classic board game where two or more players race to reach the finish. Using dice, players move a number of tiles equal to the face of the dice rolled. When a player lands on the bottom end of a ladder, the player moves his token up to the end of that ladder. Landing on the head of a snake however, moves the token to the tail end of the snake.
9. Chess
Chess is a two-player strategic board game that represents medieval warfare on an 8 x 8 board with alternating black and white tiles. Each player controls a similar set of pieces, where each unique piece has its own form of movement.
8. Mastermind
Mastermind is two-player deduction game where one player secretly arranges a series of colored pegs, while the other player, in a limited number of turns, tries to guess the colors and order of the hidden pegs. The game is really challenging especially for kids, but it’s a good training tool for logic and deduction.
7. Scrabble
Scrabble is a classic word game where four players compete against each other to get the highest score by playing words across a board with various tile bonuses. This is a classic Bantigue-extended-family activity since we were kids: our aunts would hold contests for us to compete against each other. Winner of the game? Either prize money or bragging rights.
6. Taboo
Taboo is a word game where players in teams try to guess the word correctly without saying the taboo words. Players can say other words synonymous to The Word, but must avoid the rest of the words at all cost lest the team will be disqualified. It’s a fun game to play and can be very educational too.
5. Guesstures
Guesstures is a fast-paced charades-like card game where two teams compete against each other to get the highest cumulative point. The game comes with easy, medium and hard-leveled cards that comes with 2 words each. In turns, each team sends out a player (mime) to act four words (four cards), while the rest of the team guesses. A round will have 30 seconds each and as time passes by, cards slowly fall into the clapperboard timer. Once the team answers the charade correctly, the mime must get the card from the timer lest no point is scored even if the team guesses correctly.
4. Monopoly / Monopoly Junior
Monopoly is a board game about buying and trading properties, and developing houses and hotels. In Monopoly Junior, players buy and trade the city amusements like zoo, library, swimming pool, etc. instead of properties. In both games, players are eliminated as soon as they are bankrupt or when they don’t have money to pay other players. Eventually, the last player standing wins the game. It’s a pretty long game to play, but as kids you have all the time in the world anyway.
3. Cluedo / Clue
Cluedo is a murder mystery game for 3 up to 6 players, where players take turns to investigate and determine who killed Mr. Boddy, what murder weapon was used in the process, and in which room did it happen. We loved the game because of the element of investigation, but having to move from room to room can become quite tedious and slow.
2. The Mad Magazine Game
The Mad Magazine Game is a parody of the game Monopoly, where the first player to lose all his money wins the game. Some action cards have tasks that you need to accomplish in order for you to lose a certain amount of money, though some of these tasks are impossible to do without failing, but that actually adds the fun.
As kids, my siblings and I loved this game; as adults, to play this game with the same level of fun and craziness, you shouldn’t be ashamed of the tasks you are required to do to lose money. Otherwise, it won’t be as fun as it should be.
1. Sorry!
In Sorry!, each player races against the other to bring all four of their colored pawns to a space called “Home”. Depending on the card played, pawns can be moved backwards; players can split moves between pawns; and/or players can send other players’ pawns back to their “Start” spaces by using the apologetic card called “Sorry!”. This is one of those games we loved since we were kids and still love until today. This is by far the only game I have ever played where saying “Sorry” is actually part of the game and can oftentimes be annoying.
I hope the publishers create a card game version in the future as most of the popular games already have the card game variations already. A pocket-sized competitive game of apologies can be a fun game to bring for game nights.
Have you played these games when you were young? What about you, what are your favorite childhood board games?