Family Game Reviews - Traditional Games

We've been trying out some old fashioned games I used to play when I was a kid. We play a lot of video games together but I wanted to get back to basics playing some more simple games together from my childhood.

Marbles

I bought a set of marbles from ebay and we made a (not very circular) circle out of string on our living room floor. We each had a large marble and placed all the smaller marbles inside the circle. You have to take turns to flick your large marble at the marbles in the circle and hopefully knock a few out. You get to keep the marbles you win and the player with the most marbles at the end of the game wins. It's much harder than you'd think and it took us a while to get a good flicking technique going.

I quite enjoyed playing even though I wasn't very good and never won. It's a game that takes skill and practise to do well at. I remember playing marbles at primary school but not very much and I think I used to watch others playing it more often. Maybe if I'd joined in more often I would've easily beat my family at it.

Ratings: JD - 3, Emma - 3, Val - 1, Erin - 2  TOTAL 9

Pick-up Sticks

Another ebay purchase which was a nice little box full of pick-up sticks. You drop them onto the table and then take turns trying to pick them up without moving any other sticks. This takes skill, patience and eagle eyes from everyone playing. It's really tense to play when you're trying to slowly slide a stick out of a precarious position. It's a very simple game but really fun.

JD really enjoyed this one mostly I suspect because he's good at it. Like a pick-up stick ninja he's in and away with a stick before we see what's going on. Me and Erin got better at it as we played more and gave him more of a run for his money. We all enjoyed it more than I'd expected though and since it's quick to set up and play it's a handy one to keep on the game shelf near the dinner table for after dinner fun.

Ratings: JD - 5, Emma - 4, Val - 0, Erin - 3 TOTAL 12

Yahtzee

Yahtzee is one of my alltime fav games and I like to play it any time I can get someone to play it with me. JD got me this lovely Yahtzee board as a gift several years ago and I love it.

It was nice to have a game with everyone. JD's got a scoring app on his phone which we've been using since we ran out of scoring sheets a while ago. It's quite handy and does the adding up for you too. Which saves any dispute about bad maths!

Yahtzee is a quick game to set up and it doesn't take much more than 10-15 minutes to play depending on how many people play. Not everyone loves it as much as me but it's still the highest rated of the 4 games we played for this blog post.

Ratings: JD - 3, Emma - 5, Val - 2, Erin - 4 TOTAL 14

Dominoes

I also love a game of doms but it's not a love shared in my house. JD isn't keen on dominoes and is always slightly annoyed you can't add dominoes anywhere except the ends. Also everyone is displeased that doubles are placed differently. It's not my fault, I didn't make the rules. I just enforce them! Haha.

It's another game that takes hardly any set up and is quite quick to play. Simple but fun. We had a couple of games but I forgot to take a picture so this is a recreation with just me and JD.

Ratings: JD -1, Emma -4, Val - 1, Erin - 2 TOTAL 10

The results were that we all enjoyed Yahtzee the most and Marbles the least. But they were all quite entertaining for a bit of after dinner fun. I'm going to keep my eye open for other traditional games we can play.