Favourite games

Time to bust out favourite games for the winter holidays…

• Linkee, “the shouty-outy family party game”. Combines lots of weird trivia with non-linear connection-making
• Dixit, Apples to Apples with pretty drawings
• Settlers of Catan, addictive strategy game that is also simple to teach to first-time players (rare, in the world of strategy games)
• Broccoli (weird name for a game, but a friend of a friend may or may not have made up the game, so I’ve got no other name for it… as good as any, I guess!) At the start of the game, everyone writes a word, any word, on a slip of paper and throws it in to a hat. The group splits in to two teams. One person from each team gets their teammates to guess as many slips as possible according to the round’s rules within 60 seconds, putting the finished slips in a discard pile. You can’t “pass” a slip. After the time is up, the other team has a go for 60 seconds, so on and so forth until the hat is empty. Once the hat is empty, it’s refilled with the discarded slips and a new round begins. Round 1 is Catchphrase, round 2 is Charades, round 3 you get one word to describe the word on the slip (can’t be the word on the slip, of course), round 4 is facial expression only

Wouldn’t generally include digital games since they’re a bit one-persony, but have to include a separate note about Monument Valley, available for Apple, Android and Kindle Fire devices. It is a beautiful and unbelievably impressive game where you guide a princess through Escher-esque settings.