Playing board games with your family is one of the best ways for you to bond with your loved ones. In this modern era of technology, a board game is a wonderful way to trick your kids into putting their screens down and interacting with each other. Apart from family bonding, board games have several other benefits. You learn how to accept defeat gracefully as well as become a humble winner. It gets your creative juices flowing and exercises your brain. It teaches you how to strategize and think about your actions ahead of time.

You can play board games anywhere. It is an activity that everyone can enjoy, from kids to the more elderly. Board games can even distract you from the stress of your daily life. You forget about your troubles and anxiety and get a chance to have fun and laugh. However, if you are sick of the traditional games like the famous monopoly and scrabble, and want something fresh and unique, here are our top picks for your game night.

Pass the Pen

This is a game for the artists in your family. It is a modern take on the classic Pictionary. You get 10 seconds to draw and the other players guess what you are trying to draw. If someone guesses right, you get a point if not, after 10 seconds, the tip of the pen disappears and the next person starts where you left off.

Speak-Out

Speak-out comes with five to ten mouthpieces, 200 cards, and a timer. You put a mouthpiece in your mouth and try to read the phrases on the card out loud. Your teammates try to guess what you are saying and if they guess correctly before the timer runs out, you earn the card. Once each player has had two turns with the mouthpiece the game is over. The team with the most cards wins! This can be something you play with your kids or at a game night with your friends. It is one of the funniest games out there!

Bananagrams

One way to explain Bananagrams would be to say it is scrabbling on the go with a slight change in the rules. Four players start with 21 facedown tiles each with the rest of the tiles placed in the “bunch”. To start the game one player yells ‘split’ and everyone turns their tiles face up and starts using their tiles to build their crossword word grids that they can rearrange at any point in the game. The first player to finish using all of their tiles shouts ‘peel’ and everyone takes another tile from the ‘bunch’. If you cannot find any place for a tile you can shout ‘dump’ and replace one tile with three tiles from the bunch. The players keep building their word grids until there are less than 4 tiles in the bunch. At that point, the first one to finish their word grid shouts ‘bananas’ and is declared the winner if their grid is free of errors.

Buy Word

Think of this game as Monopoly but with words. All players are given $200 each to buy words and the rest of the money is kept in the bank. You purchase letters to make words. And then you sell the words that you made at a profit. The amount of your profit depends on the quality of the words you make. If you bought a bunch of letters and are not able to make up any great words, you can use online websites to unscramble your words. Just put your scrambled words in the input box and prepare to be amazed as different combinations of words are generated. Make sure not to tell the other players!

Equate

At its core, equate is Scrabble but with numbers. All you have to do is make true equations across the board with the tiles you have. When you make an equation on the board, it must connect with the equations that are already on the board. Make learning math exciting and fun with this board game!

It is hard to beat classic board games like Scrabble, Monopoly, and Pictionary. But change is an important element of life. Playing the same games over and over can become boring. This does not mean you have to stop playing board games. Just get new and different games to keep the spark alive in your game night. Board games bring families together and help you create an atmosphere of love and trust.