Fantastic Fun Games for the Whole Family #AD

Let’s face it, we all need some fun in our lives right now and one thing we lovely to do as a family at this time of year and over Christmas is play games.  We have an amazing range of games that we have collected over the years but we always add a few new ones each year. This year,  we were gifted some Spin Master games to try out and with adults teens and tweens, it was interesting to see how they fared in a family games night.

Grouch Couch

First up is Grouch Couch is a brand new game in our house and as soon as you get ‘Grouch Couch’ out of the box, you can’t help but be curious about what it does.

Inside the box, you get 1 Grouch Couch (a very grumpy looking red sofa), 16 treats, 15 lost goodies, 1 dice and of course, the all important instructions. The age recommendation for this game is 5+ and the game does include lots of small parts which could be a choking risk for very young children. It requires 3 AAA batteries.

Once the batteries are in, Grouch Couch is very easy to set up and play.  The middle ‘cushion’ of the couch lifts up and you place inside the 15 Lost Goodies.  These are small blue discs with images of things that you might lose down the back of the sofa. The idea of the whole game is based around the things that get lost down the back of the sofa and by feeding Grouch Couch treats, you might gain lost things and that is how you win.

Once set up, the first player rolls the dice which is numbered 1 – 5 and the sixth face is a hoover.  If you roll a number, that is the humber of treats you place on to Grouch Couch.  When you have placed them, press the remote control button on the arm of the couch and wait for the reaction.

Grouch Couch is very expressive and sometimes he will react with grumble, a burp or a chomp.  If he likes the treats, he will become quite animated, raising his cushions and actually eating the treats (they fall down behind the couch). As a sign of appreciation he will spit out Lost Goodies for you to collect.  If you get the hoover when you roll, that means you get to hoover up other players’ Lost Goodies.

When the game is over, Grouch Couch sings a little victory song and the winner is the player with the most Lost Goodies.

We thoroughly enjoyed playing Grouch Couch, it is a quick and easy game to play, quite fast paced and it is really funny to see how Grouch Couch reacts each time.

Beat The Parents

With a name like ‘Beat The Parents’, I knew that this game would appeal to my children immediately and I was right.  This is a family  trivia game where you pit your skills against your kids.  You work against each other in opposing teams.  What better to prove who the most knowledgeable ones in the house are?  Well, we all know that the parents will win …

Beat The Parents is a game suitable for two or more players and the recommended age is 6+.

 

Inside the box you get the game board, 110 question cards, 50 challenge cards, 2 counters and the instructions are rather cleverly on the inside packaging of the box (something I really liked as we are forever losing instructions).

Each question card contains three parent questions and three children’s questions.  Each team takes it in turns to ask the other team the three questions.  For each right answer, you move one space up the board. Kids always start and they move the same number of spaces as they have answered questions correctly on each card.  Play then turns to the parents and the kids ask them their three questions.  If a questions is answered incorrectly, the turn ends at that point.

 

There are ‘Challenge’ spaces on the board and whenever players land on those spaces, play stops for everyone to do a challenge.  These can be anything from making animal noises, making paper airplanes or finding a books with an 11 letter word in.  We loved the challenge cards, they make the game really entertaining. The challenges can be head to head or whole team play and the winning team moves the number of spaces indicated on the card.

The board is really well designed, it is colourful, appealing and really easy to use and there are spaces on the board to place the cards and to discard used ones too which is really helpful.

We so enjoyed playing this game and in spite of my optimism, the kids beat us.  Three times.  They haven’t let us live it down yet.  But I don’t mind as it was such good fun to play and there was lots of laughter.  And of course there is plenty of time for a rematch…

 

Hedbanz

Hedbanz is a brilliant game. It is such a quick and easy game to set up and play and is a ‘Who Am I?’ game which will give you endless hours of family fun.

Inside the box, you get 6 plastic headbands, 69 picture cards with a wide variety of different things on, 24 scoring chips, 3 sample question cards, a timer and of course, the instructions.

Setting up is very simple, clip together your headband and you are ready to play. The idea is that you each take one of the picture cards without looking at it and you place it in your headband facing your opponents.  Turn over the timer and you have to ask questions within the minute to try and work out what you are. The sample question cards are really useful, especially for younger players as they give you ideas of the right sort of questions to ask. If you get your picture within the time, you are awarded a scoring chip that you clip onto your headband.

It is great fun and because of the timer, it is really fast paced too. You could play without the timer if you wanted to, especially with younger players, but I loved the way it was such a fast-paced game with the timer and this makes it a lot more fun.  Hedbanz is a definite winner with us and I know it is a game that we will play a lot.

 

Disclaimer – we were sent these three games in return for a review.  All opinions are my own.