Best Family Board Games Scoring System

At bestfamilyboardgames.com, we have come up with a scoring system that we use on all our reviews. When we score each game, we score it between zero and five on each of the following criteria:

For each category, games can be scored between zero and five. The following diagram explains the scale of scoring:

Game Scoring Range

Best Family Board Game Scoring Range

Scoring Categories

Gameplay

This score is based on the gameplay of the game. This is whether we feel that the game strikes a good balance between luck and skill. If a game relies too much on luck or too much on skill, then it won’t score highly in this category.

Ease of Learning

This is how easy the game is to learn. The major factors that can influence this include how well the game instructions are written. We don’t like to punish more complicated games here too much, but little things in the game design (reference cards, examples and tutorials) can help a game score well in this category.

Family Friendliness

This is a score about how likely this game is to be pulled out with family for a board game night. As our name suggests, bestfamilyboardgames.com is about finding board games to play with your family, so this is what this score is all about. Factors that influence this score are how easy the game is to play across age groups and how fun it is for a family group.

Friends

Some games just aren’t really designed for families. This score aims to even up the scoring for games that are more appropriate to be played with a group of friends instead of a family group.

Design and Quality

Not all games are designed equally. When gamemakers go above and beyond to design game artworks, packaging and well crafted game contents then they will score high in this category. A beautifully designed game doesn’t always make it a great game but the effort is never not appreciated.

Replayability

In our opinion, a game that can be played again and again and again is a well-designed game. This score helps you decide if the game is worth your hard-earned money.

Fun Factor

Board games should be fun; this is the whole reason we play them! This score reflects how fun a board game is to play.

Final Score

The final score that we assign each is the average to two decimal places of all the above scoring categories.

Reviewing Scores

We maintain a scoring spreadsheet that we put all our reviews into. This helps us to get an overall sense as to how each game performs relative to games we have previously ranked, so that we can ensure that the rankings match with where we feel a game should be placed.

Game Scoring System

Best Family Board Game Scoring System