Anyone who's got kids will be aware of the worries about them being drawn into TikTok and other addictive phone apps. Board games offer the perfect antidote. They’re enthralling, face-to-face, and social, and most of them don’t involve using a screen at all. But when it comes to picking out titles for them to play, the marketplace is absolutely dominated by mass-market producers who favor glossy advertising over great gameplay.
Delving into the hobby market is the obvious answer, but here you have the opposite problem: dozens of worthy titles that look about as exciting as a brown box with a glum man on the cover. Fortunately, more and more designers and publishers are discovering the importance of serving the kids’ market and the last few years have seen a glut of great-looking, fast-playing games. Below are our picks for the best – but also check out the best family board games for ideas that are fun for everyone, regardless of age.
TL;DR: The Best Board Games for Kids
- The Color Monster
- Animal Upon Animal Junior
- First Orchard
- Outfoxed
- Toriki: The Castaway Island
- Cascadia Junior
- Stomp the Plank
- That's Pretty Clever! Kids
- Dragomino
- Unlock! Kids: Detective Stories
- Kids Chronicles: Quest for the Moon Stones
- Andor: The Family Fantasy Game
- My Lil’ Everdell
- Zombie Kidz: Evolution
- Horrified
Board Games for Toddlers and Preschool-Age Kids
The Color Monster
Very young children can’t really understand even simple strategies, but games can still be a great tool to learn about turn-taking and sharing. The Color Monster, based on a popular children’s book, achieves this but also helps with emotional development. On your turn, you roll a die and move to land on a color space, then talk about the emotion that’s associated with that color. Afterwards, there’s a simple memory element to place the emotion in the correct jar as a step toward a cooperative win. Adults have to take turns too, of course, making this a wonderful platform for sharing your feelings and experiences with your kids.
Animal Upon Animal Junior
Once kids have developed a little dexterity, at around age three, the wonderful world of stacking games opens up. Animal Upon Animal is a great place to start and is fine fun for adults too. A die roll decides who gets to choose an animal shape and who will stack it. Cause the pile to fall, and you must take some of the toppled animals: first to clear their pieces wins. It's the shapes that really make this game, a brilliant set of designs that open up a myriad of stacking options that reward clever play.
First Orchard
This is a super-simple cooperative race game against a cute wooden raven that’s so straightforward that even very small kids can play it by themselves. On your turn, you roll a die and either take a brightly-coloured wooden fruit of the corresponding colour or advance the raven if its icon comes up. Your goal is to pick all the fruit before the raven reaches the end of its track, which is short to make for a quick game. The rules are easy, the components are gorgeous, and it’s cooperative so it doesn’t feel too bad when you loose. Best of all, there’s one really simple strategic choice to make to increase your chances of winning in a largely random game, and it’s a lovely moment when your kids finally figure it out.
Outfoxed
Kids love working things out based on simple clues, it makes them feel super-smart, and Outfoxed lets them play as chicken detectives, trying to identify which of sixteen dastardly fox culprits stole the pie! There’s an exciting push your luck dice roll mechanic to either turn over suspect cards or get a clue, but if you fail the roll, the fox piece moves instead, and you’ll lose if he gets away. Clues come in the form of inserting tokens into a neat widget that tells you whether the suspect has a particular item of clothing or other identifying feature, so it’s a Guess Who style race to flip over the suspect cards and eliminate them to find the truth before the criminal escapes.
Board Games for Elementary School-Age Kids
Toriki: The Castaway Island
Yes, you did read that play time right, but don't worry: we're not suggesting eight-year-olds can sit down to play a ten-hour game! Rather Toriki is a campaign, where players are stranded on a remote island and must survive, explore, and escape, and the ten hours is the full campaign time. In theory you could play this in a single sitting, but you don't need to, as it's app-driven, and the app will save your progress for you. If you take the plunge, you'll discover a delightful combination of choose your own adventure style narrative, board game and video game that tells your kids a gripping story while introducing them to simple strategies, exciting secrets, and fun visual sleuthing.
Cascadia Junior
The original Cascadia is a cosy time that made our list of the best family board games in its own right. So what makes this version so especially good for children? Well it retains the satisfying pick-one gameplay of the original, but reduces your options to two from four, and makes the patterns that you need to complete in order to score much simpler. That allows children to play it by themselves without adult input. And it's had a kid-friendly makeover too, with chunky pieces featuring delightful watercolor-style illustrations of animals and habitats that children love to form into their own little wilderness as the game progresses.
Stomp the Plank
Piracy is a perennially popular theme for kids - and adults too, if we're honest - and this deceptively simple game brings your nautical fantasies to life with brilliant color. On your turn you choose how many cards to risk drawing, trying to avoid duplicates. If you get one, your elephant pirate piece advances along a plank that sticks out beyond the box, held by a magnet. If not, where you stop dictates how many barrels an opponent must stack on the opposite end of their plank. The rest is a simple matter of balance against gravity, but the sudden dunking of elephants in your tabletop sea is a delight that kids - and adults too, if we're honest - never seem to tire of.
That's Pretty Clever! Kids
Roll and write games are a really popular genre that works well for family play, but this one is a super-simple version aimed specifically at kids, allowing them to play by themselves. The craze was kickstarted by a game called That's Pretty Clever, and this is a variant of that original, themed around a children's party. On your turn you roll a fistful of dice and select any group of matching colors, crossing off symbols on your play mat that also appear on the chosen dice, hoping to get far enough along a group to score points. But watch out: in a pretty clever twist, leftover dice can then be used by other players to gain an edge, so choose carefully!
Dragomino
Children’s versions of popular family board games often aren’t worth the time over their bigger siblings, but Dragomino, a spin-off of Kingdomino, does something special. Your goal is to build a map in traditional domino-style, winning dragon eggs if your piece placement matches the ends of one or more adjacent dominos. So it’s possible for a good placement to get you several eggs, which may contain baby dragons for your victory tally. It’s a very simple framework yet it makes basic strategy play accessible to preschool children, an impressive and unusual achievement. It's a great board game for 5 year olds if that's what you're looking for.
Unlock! Kids: Detective Stories
Escape Rooms are very popular at the moment, especially with kids, and there’s a burgeoning genre of escape room board games that essentially provide the same kinds of puzzles in a one-shot box. The Unlock series is one of the more popular, and it now includes this fantastic entry aimed at younger players. The puzzles are simpler, there’s no timed element and no “failure” - you just keep trying until you get the answer. And the three scenarios, set across a farm, a funfair and a haunted house, are written to draw in young imaginations. It’s a great series of challenges that will fill kids with a real sense of accomplishment once they’ve solved all the riddles and made it out.
Kids Chronicles: Quest for the Moon Stones
This is an app-driven game, so you’ll need a screen to play, which might be a little controversial if you’re trying to steer the kids away from electronic devices. But the app is excellent and is incorporated seamlessly into a cooperative experience that will see the players working together to come up with a plan to find the legendary moon stones, so it can be a good incentive to encourage kids to get involved. Kids Chronicles: Quest for the Moon Stones is a junior version of the very adult Chronicles of Crime series. Players have to scan 3D scenes on the phone, identifying characters and objects they can use as clues, which will propel them through an unfolding narrative. It’s a simple mystery, but it’s very engaging for kids, especially given the great writing as well as the graphics and sound of the app element..
Andor
This has nothing to do with the Star Wars show of the same name, but preceeds it, offering children a new world of fantasy adventure. These kinds of games tend toward the longer and more complex end of the spectrum, and that’s a shame because it’s a theme that kids really dig. Andor aims to redress that with a straightforward yet fun and varied quest framework. Players choose a class and try and complete random missions while a dragon slowly makes its way toward the capital city. If it gets there before you’ve delved into the dungeon and rescued the cute wolf cubs therein, it’s game over. You can push it back by battling its minions, but that diverts efforts from those all-important quests, giving players a basic priority balancing strategy to work with.
My Lil’ Everdell
The original Everdell won a lot of acclaim thanks to its combination of rich worker placement strategy and incredibly cute artwork featuring anthropomorphic animals. That latter aspect has clear family appeal, so the rules and strategies have been simplified, and the cute art made even more cute for this slimmed-down family version. Players send their friends out into the meadow to pick up resources, which they can then spend to recruit other cards into their burgeoning community. Some give instant bonuses, others permanent round-by-round extras. Between them, they allow players to construct basic engines and build an ongoing strategy. It’s a fantastic introduction to the wider world of worker placement and engine-building games, offered in incredibly appealing clothes.
Zombie Kidz Evolution
At first, this seems too simple for this age bracket. Players move their characters over the school map, eliminating zombies. If they can meet and lock the gates against the zombie horde before being overrun, they win. But as each scenario is passed, the real magic of the game unfolds. This is a "legacy" style game for kids, where each game adds to a growing narrative. Your choices also make your copy unique with pens and stickers and unlockable envelopes of new rules and other content. It's a wild ride of imaginative customization that children will love.
Board Games for Middle School-Age Kids
Horrified: Universal Monsters
Don’t be fooled by the theme: this is based on classic Universal monster movies of the ’50s and is even less scary than they were. So it’s a great way for kids to face their fears as they work together to overcome some hokey horror foes. Players must move around the town and collect items necessary to defeat the selection of monsters they’ve chosen to face. There are six to pick from, each with different powers and requirements to defeat. But beware, as you’re not the only targets: you’ll also need to protect wandering villagers and guide them to safety. And when the kids are done, this is a pretty good horror board game for adults, too.
That's all we have right now for kids, but if you want to keep climbing through the years, check out our picks for the best board games for teens.
When Is the Best Time to Buy Board Games in 2026?
If you love board games, it can unfortunately be a rather expensive hobby. Thankfully, retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target tend to offer board game sales fairly regularly. Keep an eye out for those throughout the year. A sure-fire time to find a deal is during major sales, like Prime Day and Black Friday.
For more ideas, check out our list of the best classic board games, or for the more military-minded, the best war board games. And if you're on the lookout for a more general pool of ideas, take a look at our list of the best board games to play in 2026.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.
