We have a stack of board games in our garage ranging from Twister to Cluedo and Pie Face to Monopoly and over the last few years, as the kids have got older, we’ve loved playing every one of them.
The reason they’re all in the garage and not in the house right now (apart from lack of space ;-)) is that we’ve been enjoying playing with our collection of games that we call our travel games.
We call them our travel games because they’re the ones that we take on holiday with us or anywhere that we expect to be sitting around for a while. They’re all small, portable, easy to set up and easy to play which is what makes them idea to take with us when we’re going away somewhere.
And we’ve had hours of fun playing them all – this Summer, we were more likely to be found in a quiet area of Butlins playing one of these on a night than we were watching the evening entertainment. Even when we were even camping in the middle of a field you would have been able to hear us playing one of these in the tent with a torch lighting up the games for us.
Uno
This is a game we’ve played in all sorts of variations since the kids were little – we’ve played Uno Roboto, we’ve had special High School Musical and Hannah Montana game cards but the basic game has always been one we’ve loved. It’s a card game where the aim is to get rid of all your cards before anyone else but there’s a few twists and turns and Wild cards in the pack that make it all the more fun. I love how simple this is for kids yet fun enough to keep adults interested!
A pack of Uno cards will set you back anywhere between £5 and £7 usually but we bought our latest set on offer in Tesco for about £2 last year. We bought a load and gave them to everyone as Birthday presents through the year. 😉
Dobble
This is a game we discovered last year when we we saw it reduced in our local Tesco store. It’s the easiest out of all the games we play to set up and I’ve even took this one in my bag when we’ve gone out for a meal to play while we’ve been waiting. All you do to play is turn over two cards, which each have a number of different pictures on them, and you have to be the first to say which two pictures are the same.
Sounds simple doesn’t it? It’s not as easy as you think to spot the two that are the same and as childish as it might look from the picture, it’s definitely not – we enjoy it just as much as the kids!
Cortex
This is a new one to us but we discovered it at Carfest over the Summer when we saw a stand where people were playing Dobble. Cortex is made by the same people but it’s designed to be a little bit more complicated than Dobble so is more suitable for older children. The guys showed us how to play the game but oddly enough they weren’t selling the games on the day, they were just showing people how to play them. We had to track ours down at our local branch of Waterstones as nowhere else we went sold it but I’m pleased we did as this is Miss Frugal’s favourite game at the moment.
The cards in this game are a series of challenges that are designed to challenge your brain. There are different types of challenges like memory challenges and logic challenges and you have to try and win as many cards as you can. When you have two of the same category, you get a piece of brain and when you have four pieces, you have a whole brain and you’ve won!
Yahtzee
We bought an electronic version of Yahtzee a few years ago and loved it so when we saw this travel version at the car boot sale for 50p we bought it to add to our travel collection . I won’t explain the rules to you as I’m sure you know them but I will say that I prefer the electronic version as we all roll the dice at the same time with that one whereas this only comes with one set.
It’s easy to play though and definitely a fun game still and actually, you could make your own by searching online for some printable Yahtzee score cards and finding five dice to play with.
A good old pack of cards
You absolutely can’t beat a good old pack of cards though can you? I keep one in the glove box of our car just in case as there are hundreds (a slight exaggeration possibly?) of games you can play with the humble pack of cards.
Do you have a favourite game that you play on the go? We’d love to hear about it as we’re always looking to add to our collection.
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