With thousands of new board games and card games published every year, there’s no shortage of game possibilities to play. But with so many choices, it can be a daunting task to narrow it down to just a few games to get.

In an effort to help make the right selection, it’s human nature to order items in groups and subgroups. And it’s no different with board games and card games.

In all the grouping and sub-grouping of board games and card games, perhaps the one that causes the most questions is the common label of “Family Game”.

So what makes a great Family Game?

To find out, we tapped the experts – our kids. And here are the top 5 traits they feel make a great family game.

Before the SaltCon Game Library closed on Friday night, we each checked out a game to hang onto over night so we’d have something new to play before the game library opened the next morning.

After a short but good sleep, Jake and I dove into our second day at SaltCon at 8:30 Saturday morning with a lot of game-playing energy.

Between the 2 games we checked out, we decided to play Scoville.

A couple days ago I started a mini-series of posts writing about my fun experience last weekend at SaltCon. After 2 days of solid board game and card game playing, I headed home having played 20 different games with a lot of great people.

Today, I’m sharing more about this fun gaming weekend – covering the rest of the games I played on my day 1 (Friday).

After a week away on a business trip, I was sure looking forward to a couple days of non-stop board game playing at SaltCon this past weekend.

And I’m happy to report that it was just as fun as I had anticipated!

SaltCon game tables
Ready to dive into the “Hot Games”.
If you like playing board games, then SaltCon is for you. It’s non-stop open gaming for 3 days.

With a game library of over 800 games, there’s never a shortage of something to play.

And if you’re not familiar with how to play a particular game, there’s always someone close by happily willing to teach you.

Yes, the games I played were a lot of fun. But most of the fun is found in the “who”, not the “what”.

And the people that play games at SaltCon are a fantastic assortment of friendly, fun players.

If you have a lot of board games and are continually getting more, you may frequently wonder how to best organize your games.

Here’s our 3 step process on how we evaluate and organize your board game collection.

It’s a great way to give a fresh start to the new year.

Now that we’ve rolled into 2015, it’s time to look back over all the board games, card games, and party games I’ve played during the past year.

For 2014, I’ve played 127 different games!

While 61 of those games (48%) are just single plays, that means I’ve played 52% of those games at least a couple times.

And just because I’ve only played a game once, doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. There are plenty of those 61 games that I’d love to play many times.

As reviewers, we’re constantly getting new games to figure out and play. And we did get a bunch of new board games for Christmas and have played all but one so far.

Over the last 5 years we’ve posted reviews of 250+ board games, cards games, and party games. Which means we’ve also played a bunch more than that.

So we can attest that some games definitely take more work to figure out than others.

We’ve had a blast playing a bunch of new board games that we got for Christmas.

The extended time off from work and school is a great time for playing games – and we’re taking full advantage of it.

This Christmas we had 11 board games under our tree!