About Best Family Board Games
We started Best Family Board Games because we often visited our local game shop seeking fun new games for our family. This site began as a hobby, letting us review games we own and play, so you can more easily find games that fit your family.
About us
We are a couple from Sydney, Australia, who play board games with our family every weekend. Our local board game shop is fantastic, and we’ve recently spent quite a bit there trying new games.
Why we started this site
We started this site because we found ourselves constantly looking for a new game to introduce to our family. While sites like BoardGameGeek are great, we didn’t really feel this was our vibe. While we loved board games, we were not serious gamers. We love board games that are quick to learn, easy to share and fun for everyone involved, not just strategy nerds. We like games that balance luck and skill, and that you can play again and again so that you feel you get your money’s worth. These are the games we hope to review on this site.
Our board game collection
Our current collection has over 30 board games. This started with only a few not that long ago, but now it seems to be a rapidly growing collection. Below is a picture of some of our most popular board games, which you may recognise from some of our reviews. Every game on this site comes from our own collection.
Best Family Board Game Collection
How we pick games to review
A good board game cover goes a long way in helping us choose which board game we pick. This, surprisingly, isn’t the best way to choose board games, but it still seems to get us every time.
Whether we enjoy a game or not, we still review it. Generally, apart from the board game box design, we pick games to buy and try out based on:
- Number of players available We like games that can be played by at least 2 to 5 players.
- Price and value We especially love affordable games and good value for money. Generally, if we buy a game in the store, we are looking at the AUD $15 to $30 dollar range, but we are happy to spend more or less on a good game.
- Replayability We like to play games that we can play again and again, and not just once.
- Size We love games that are small and easy to pack into a suitcase to travel with.
You can keep track of when we write and update our reviews in our changelog, found here.
What games do we review
On our site, you will notice that we review a wide variety of games, including:
- Traditional Board Games
- Card Games
- Dice Games
While we are a family-friendly site first and foremost, we do own a few games more suited to older teenagers and families. We always publish our own age suitability for games beyond what the game itself specifies.
We don’t generally like games that drag on for hours; ideally, we like games that take less than half an hour to play. For this reason, all our reviews also specify a play time based on our experience.
How we write our reviews
Our review process is as follows:
- First, before writing any reviews or making any ratings, we like to sit down and play the game a couple of times and learn the rules.
- Based on how the first game is played, we then like to try the game with different numbers of players if suitable.
- We then discuss what we enjoyed from the game and key things we should mention in our review.
- Before we write our review, we then come up with a set of key scores for our review and check these against our existing list of review games to make sure it scores about where we expect it to score in our list of games.
- Finally, we write our review. They generally follow the format.
- Overview
- Gameplay Rules: We try to make these clearer than the game rules and explain things that might not be covered well in the official rules.
- Quick Reference: If needed, we highlight all the different cards/actions/etcetera available in the game so that you can quickly understand what’s available.
- Tips and Tricks: Things we have learnt in this game to help give you a competitive edge, if needed, or even make it fair amongst players.
- Honest Review: The most important part of the site is where we strive to give our honest thoughts and feelings about the game in a fair way to the game makers.‘
Best Family Board Game Scoring System
Why trust our recommendations?
Our recommendations are written honestly and fairly. We only review games we have actually played, multiple times. Our reviews are based on real gameplay experience with our family, but we always encourage readers to look at multiple opinions before buying.
Some other great review sites we enjoy reading:
How this site makes money
Currently, it doesn’t. We don’t currently accept any review recommendations or take payments for any review, and we buy all games with real money earned from our real day jobs.
If, hopefully, we grow this site into a larger resource in the future, we may include links or advertisements on the site, but we clearly state that in the future, before we do that, so check back here for the latest news on that front if you think things are changing.
Contact
If you want to get in touch, you can email us at support@bestfamilyboardgames.com
This is a hobby site, so we can’t promise a quick turnaround time, but we aim to get back to you within a few working days about your enquiry.
Our other sites
We also run a few other sites completely unrelated to board games and more in line with our day jobs, including:
- binarytables.com The one-stop resource for learning about the binary number system with binary tables, calculators and converters.
- engtables.com Engineering Reference Tables without the fluff or anything else.