There’s nothing like a good board or card game on a rainy day or when spending time with new road friends. These six games easily fit into a small space, challenge the mind, and are loads of fun to play.
1. Suspend
This hanging balance game requires steady hands! Suspend comes with 24 notched, rubber-tipped wire pieces of different lengths. Players need to delicately hang their wires from a tabletop stand. As individual pieces are added on, the whole thing shifts in balance and threatens to topple over.
Any pieces on the stand that a player causes to fall needs to be taken and added to their pile. The first player to hang all of his/her pieces onto the tabletop stand wins.
2. Gobblet
Gobblet is like Tic Tac Toe, but with a twist to it. This two-player game includes a 4 x 4 grid board and 24 pieces. Each player gets 12 cylindrical pieces of the same color, but the pieces come in four different sizes. The object of the game is to connect four pieces of the same color in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row.
The game starts with each player’s 12 pieces divided into three stacks of four off the board. Players begin with the top piece that’s in a nested stack. Pieces played on the board can be moved from one spot to another, or pieces can be stacked over another that’s already on the board.
The tricky part of the game is that players have to remember what color pieces are under larger pieces before they are moved. After all, four of the same color in a row wins the game.
3. Quiddler
Quiddler is for fans of Scrabble and gin rummy. Players compete by spelling words from the cards in their hands. The game consists of eight rounds beginning with a three card hand and ending with a ten card hand. Each card is worth different points.
Players try get rid of their cards by spelling one or multiple words. Additional points are given to the player with the longest word and/or the most words. Cards left in a player’s hand at the end of the game are subtracted from their score. The person with the highest score wins.
4. Phase 10
Phase 10 is a popular game by Mattel, the makers of UNO. Although the cards look like UNO cards, the game more resembles Rummy. There are 10 phases (or hands) in the game and each phase requires a different combination of cards to be played.
Players must successfully complete a phase before moving onto the next one. Similar to UNO, the Skip card can be played to force someone to skip their turn and the Wild card can be used to replace any card in a hand you’re working on.
5. Rock Me Archimedes
Named after Archimedes, the mathematician famous for describing the principle of the lever, this strategy game uses a teeter-totter as the game board. In Rock Me Archimedes, each player receives 14 marbles of one of the two colors. During each player’s turn, you can choose to place a marble in one of the two center rows of the board, or roll the die.
The die is numbered one through three, indicating the number of spaces a player can move one marble, or split between multiple marbles. If either ends of the board touches the table during a move at any point of the game, that player loses and the game ends. The first player to get four of their marbles to the last two rows at the end of the board wins.
6. Blokus
Blokus takes up the most room out of all these games, but it’s so much fun! This strategy board game uses colored Tetris-shaped pieces. Players choose a color and receive 21 pieces of varying figures.
Each player lays down one of their pieces on the board. The played piece must touch at least one other piece of the same color, but only at the corners. The game ends when all the players are no longer able to lay down any more of their pieces.
Scores are tallied by counting the number of unit squares in the remaining pieces (1 unit = 1 point). The player with the lowest number wins.
