Christmas Gift Guide – Games!

If you’re looking for gifts that give fun, laughter and connection this Christmas, you need to be giving games! Most of these games will slot easily into a Christmas stocking and provide entertainment for everyone over the festive period.

  1. Truth or Trap

Truth or Trap is a new one from Gamely Games. It comes in one of their trademark small boxes and it’s awesome.

  • Age 8+
  • Plays 2+
  • Play time 15+mins
  • Cost £14.99

Each round a player (the big Meow) will challenge their opponents to identify whether they have been told truths or traps! The categories are really quirky and it’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s a trap. Categories like Brands David Beckham endorses, Pringles flavours, It’s one of those games where you learn loads of weird and fascinating facts (and if you’re me immediately either forget them or mix a few of them together to make one weird ‘fact’). Players bet paws on whether the answers are truths or traps – but you have to get both right to win your bet and earn extra paws. Each time you make a mistake you lose one of the nine collective lives as well as your stake. When the cats have used up all their lives the player with the most paws wins a golden sardine. Play over a number of rounds until someone wins 2 golden sardines to win the game!

It’s a great game to get the whole family bluffing, laughing and chatting about weird facts!

2. Flip 7

Flip 7 by The Op Games is a recent addition to the games menu for Cards or Die and it is getting played by everyone! It’s a fun twist on Blackjack/ pontoon/ 21 – whatever you call it in your house.

You start by being given one card then you choose to stick and bank your score or, flip another card. This means you could potentially increase your score or go bust if you draw a number you already have in front of you. Played over a number of rounds, the winner needs to score 200 points.

Cards are played face up so it’s as fun to watch other people’s turns as it is to have yours. There are also special cards which let you have a second chance, freeze a player or pick three cards in a row. Any of these cards can be played on another player or you may choose to play them on yourself.

If you’re a fan of probability or card counting you’ll love the fact that the number on the card also tells you how many of that card are in the deck – for instance there are twelve 12s – three 3s. Each round the played cards go into a discard pile and this is only shuffled in once the deck is exhausted meaning that if you pay close attention you are gaining information about the odds all the time. My brain isn’t big enough to keep count but even so I like having a rough idea – it gives me the illusion that I’m being strategic.

It’s extremely quick to pick up and learn and at it’s heart is a game of luck. Consequently if you can’t be bothered calculating the odds, you can still win! You don’t have to agonise about whether to play the flip 3 card yourself or on someone who is statistically more likely to go bust, you can just fly by the seat of your pants!

It’s a really fun, engaging game and I have not had anyone play it and not enjoy it!

The only downside is the box which is a source of much irritation to me and has already disintegrated! But then it does keep the cost down.

221B Baker Street

I know I’ve recommended this before and it is not a new game but it is an absolute classic and there’s something very Christmassy about getting together and solving a Sherlock Holmes mystery together.

This Sherlock Holmes themed game is reminiscent of Cluedo, so if you have folk who fancy something more traditional this is sure to appeal. You roll the dice and move to different places around Baker Street to collect clues. There are even shortcuts between some of the locations.

But unlike Cluedo, this game comes with a book full of clues. When you enter a location, you look up the clue specific to the case you are investigating. Some clues are a little like crossword clues or puzzles – some difficult, some easy. Some clues have more than one part and some locations don’t contain a clue. Depending on the case you will be searching for different answers too – it’s not just who did it, what with and where! Once you’ve cracked the case, it’s a race to 221B to dramatically announce your findings!

My daughter was captivated by Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and was desperate to play this one when she was still a bit young for it so we used to play it co-operatively so that she could play. We would split up and go to different destinations then trade clues and finally solve the mystery together. So, there are options if you want to include younger players. Plus you can always team up if you want to play with younger family members or more people.

Gibsons Games have been making and selling this since 1975 so when I describe it as a classic, it absolutely is!

  • Age 10+
  • Plays 2-6
  • Play time 90mins
  • Cost £22.95 from Zatu Games

What’s the Best Thing

If you’ve been to any of my events you’ll have definitely played some Big Potato games – there are loads to choose from and they are always a massive hit. This one is no exception.

What’s the Best Thing is a card game about ranking random things and working out where other players think things go in rank order! It’s a co-operative game where you are working together to get 5 things in order, then 10, then finally 15!

You start by placing the ‘Best’ sign at one end of the table and the ‘Worst’ sign at the other. You take a category card and a number card (keep the number secret – hide it under the category card). Your category could be zoo animals for instance and if your number is 7 – you would need to think of a zoo animal that you would score 7 out of 10. You then place your category card on the table with the number hidden beneath it.

The next player does the same but this time they have to consider whether their secret number is higher or lower than yours and the only clue they have is the animal that you rated 7 out of 10!

Once you have 5 cards in the line up you reveal the numbers one by one from worst to best. For each card that is ranked lower than the previous one – you lose a life. Try to complete the three rounds before you run out of lifes!

It’s pretty easy to get playing but the challenge lies in thinking of examples and choosing the right example for your group. It reminds me a lot of Herd Mentality – where you are trying to think what other people you are playing with might agree with. But, of course that often backfires. When me and my partner played we spent so long second guessing each other that it ended in chaos and we got hardly any right! By the end of the game I was left wondering whether we’ve even met before. It was hilarious and I definitely recommend it if you want more chaos and laughter in your life!

5. Mycelia

Are you looking for something to really get stuck into – maybe to play for the whole afternoon? Something that needs plenty of plays to really hone your strategy and get to grips with? My final recommendation is for you: Mycelia.

Not only is it beautiful with gorgeous components, it is such a good game to get stuck in to. And there are so many elements of it to enjoy. The artwork is fantastic – the style that you would find in old botanical notebooks and it even comes with information about the different fungi on the cards. It includes more than 69 mushrooms that can be found in the wild.

In this game you will be adding land to the board which will support different types of fungi, collecting mushrooms that you will grow later and spreading spores to enable you to grow and fruit more mushrooms. Once a mushroom has fruited twice it will decay. As the mushrooms decay you will get bonuses in the form of one off actions or actions that can benefit you at the end of the game or across a number of rounds. As you choose which mushrooms to collect you will need to consider the decay actions and which order to decay your mushrooms in.

There is also an element of area control – in order to harvest the spores and use them to fruit more mushrooms you need to make sure your mycelial network is uninterrupted. Breaking someone else’s network enables you to use their spores. This element of the game took me the longest to get my head around and adds another element and more depth to the strategy of the game.

Although it only takes around an hour or an hour and a half to play, we have happily spent a whole evening playing it and playing around with different strategies and varying levels of competitiveness.

At £43.99 from Zatu Games it is by far my priciest recommendation but it’s a real treat.

So there you have it – five perfect Christmas gifts for everyone. I also hear that you were very good this year so maybe treat yourself too! Have a fabulous game filled Christmas.

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