Family games: getting grandparents, parents and kids playing together

What makes a game work for grandparents and grandchildren together

In a family the differences aren’t only about age. There are fast readers and people hunting for their reading glasses, those who know every proverb by heart and those who know every viral dance, those who want to win at all costs and those who just want to stay at the table. The games that work are those where these imbalances cancel out rather than pile up.

• A pinch of luck. On the wheel in Word Wheel, whoever is behind can land on the right segment, and a bankrupt can strike the family champion. Luck keeps everyone in the game until the very end.
• Skills nobody really has. In Doodle Guess on a single phone you draw on paper, and drawing badly is the norm: grandad and granddaughter start on an equal footing, and the wrong interpretations get bigger laughs than the right ones.
• Everyone involved, even out of turn. In games where anyone can shout out the answer, such as Charades or Doodle Guess, nobody is left watching. In games where only one person plays at a time, the turns need to be short.
• No races on the keyboard. Avoid games won by whoever types or reads fastest on the screen: they penalise anyone who isn’t at ease with a phone, at any age.

At Sunday lunch: games you can play without leaving your seat

Between the roast and the pudding nobody wants to get up. You need spoken games you can play fork in hand and pause when the tea and coffee arrive.

Would You Rather, read aloud

In Would You Rather every question offers two options. On a single phone, one person acts as reader, everyone answers with a show of hands and the reader records the majority choice. The best part comes afterwards: ask grandad why he chose that answer and get ready for a story from the 1960s. If everyone has their own phone, in a room the choices stay secret until the result, with percentages and avatars on either side.

Most Likely To, the kind version

In Most Likely To a question appears, on the count of three everyone points at someone at the table, and whoever gets the most votes receives a jokey title. It works in families because everyone knows each other well, but that is exactly why it needs tact: if the same person is picked three times in a row, change game before the fun turns into picking on someone.

Family true or false

A game that needs nothing: Nana Jean tells three stories from when she was young, two true and one made up, and the grandchildren have to spot the fake. Then you swap: the kids tell three things that happened at school. You uncover stories nobody had ever heard, and sometimes the made-up one is the most believable of all.

Christmas and big family gatherings: a running order that holds up

At Christmas and other big occasions the group can reach ten or fifteen people, and attention comes in waves. Rather than one game, you need a little running order that alternates quiet and noisy moments.

1. Opening, at the table. Word Wheel takes 2 to 10 players: if there are more of you, form teams and enter each one as a single name, with a spokesperson who spins the wheel and chooses the letters. A wheel, vowels to buy and a phrase to solve will remind everyone of television game shows, so even the grandparents pick up the rules in the first round.
2. Time to move. Charades in teams, on a single phone: choose two, three or four teams and tap each player to decide where they play. Put a grandparent and a child in every team: the generations get mixed up and you avoid the usual stand-off between the older cousins and everyone else.
3. Wind-down, on the sofa. A spoken game that doesn’t need much concentration, such as Telephone or the proverb game described further down, while the table is being cleared and the little ones start to flag.

The board game that comes out every Christmas stays put: these games keep it company, they don’t replace it. If the group is really big, the guide to games for large groups has more specific ideas, and the one on how to host a games night helps you plan the whole thing.

Roles for those who would rather not use a phone

Not everyone wants to touch a screen: there is the grandmother who doesn’t trust it, the uncle who says “I’ll just watch”. The good news is that in single-phone play, the phone is nothing more than a deck of cards and a referee. One person holds it at a time, nobody has to install anything on their own, and no account is needed. Anyone who prefers to keep their hands free can still have a real role.

• The reader. Reads out the questions from Would You Rather or Most Likely To and decides when to move on to the next one. It is the perfect role for someone with a good voice and little patience for apps.
• The judge of answers. In Name, Place, Thing on a single phone, answers are compared out loud, category by category. Someone has to decide whether “Rover” counts as a name and whether “Mousehole” is really a place: give the job to someone who isn’t playing, and their word is law.
• The scorekeeper with pen and paper. If you are running a tournament across several games, or have agreed some house bonuses, someone needs to keep the overall scoreboard on a sheet of paper. Whoever holds it is, in effect, in charge.
• The word-setter, out loud. In Word in Bloom, in the mode where players take turns to set the word, someone chooses the word for the others to guess. Anyone who isn’t keen on keyboards can whisper it to a helper who types it in for them, and then sits that turn out.
• The mime without a screen. In Charades the mime has to see the word, but doesn’t have to hold the phone: a neighbour shows it to them for a moment and then puts it back on the table.

House rules, to agree before the first turn

Most family rows come not from the game but from rules invented halfway through by whoever is losing. Five minutes of agreement at the start saves the evening.

• What counts as an answer. Regional words, brand names, nicknames, cartoon characters: decide beforehand whether they are allowed, not at the moment someone needs one.
• Help, agreed openly. The youngest, or anyone who doesn’t read easily, can have one helping hand per turn or a few extra seconds. Agree it in advance, so nobody sees it as favouritism.
• One phone on the table, the rest in pockets. The game phone is a tool; personal phones at the table break everyone’s concentration. If the kids want to play on their own phones, remember that in PartyGames online play is switched off for under-13s and only a parent can enable it with a PIN: Mum or Dad decides, not the oldest cousin.
• No questions that make people uncomfortable. That goes for Most Likely To, for true or false and for any game where you talk about the people in the room. The target should be laughing as much as everyone else.
• When to stop. A time or a number of games, set in advance. With children due in bed, it avoids endless haggling over the last game.

And one rule above all: only one person explains. If the explanations come from three relatives at once, the grandparents are lost by the second step. There is some practical advice in the guide on how to explain the rules of a game.

Three family classics that need nothing at all

Telephone

Everyone knows it, and that is exactly its strength. The trick to making it funny is the starting sentence: it should contain a name, a number and a strange detail, such as “Auntie Sue bought seven yellow melons at the market on Tuesday”. Put the youngest children towards the end of the line: hearing what the sentence has turned into is their moment.

Finish the proverb

A grandparent says the first half of a proverb and the grandchildren have to complete it: “Too many cooks…”, “Don’t count your chickens…”. When they don’t know it, they invent an ending, and the funniest one wins the round. Then the roles flip: the kids say an expression they use with their friends and the grandparents have to guess what it means. It is one of the rare games where every generation is an expert.

One sentence each

You tell a story in turns, one sentence each, but whoever is speaking has to use a word chosen by the person before them: “dragon”, “bus”, “meatballs”. The story ends when somebody, exhausted, says “and they all lived happily ever after”. For more ideas designed for younger children, there is the guide to word games for kids.