The first weekend of March, I spent a couple of days playing a bunch of fun games at SaltCon Spring 2024.

SaltCon Spring is a 4-day event held on the first weekend of March. This year, I arrived Thursday night after work and stayed through Saturday afternoon (taking Friday off work so I could play all day).

Even though SaltCon now hosts game events a few times each year, the spring gathering is the biggest of the bunch and one I look forward to every year.

This year, the attendance hit 2,400!

Read on to get a quick recap of the 16 different games I played and my thoughts on each.

16 Board and Card Games Played at SaltCon 2024 is an article from The Board Game Family

This time of year, it’s great to gather as family and friends for some light-hearted games.

Similo, by Horrible Guild, fits that very well.

That’s because Similo is a cooperative deduction game where everyone either wins or loses together. It comes in a variety of card sets of 30 cards such as Fables, Myths, Animals, History, and more. All of which have fantastic artwork that add to the enjoyment of the game.

The goal is to make the other players guess one secret character by playing other character cards from your hand as clues, stating whether they’re similar to or different from the secret character.

And because it’s nice and compact, it’s a great game to give as a gift as well.

Similo deduction game review is an article from The Board Game Family

We’ve posted a Board Game Gift Guide for the past 12 years. And each year we’ve recommended around 40 games to get your friends and family as gifts.

Which means that through our annual gift guides, we’ve shared close to 500 game ideas!

Well, rather than give another list of new games to check out, we’ve decide to roll back through our 12 years of game gift guides and pick out our very favorites to recommend for 2023.

So, without further ado, here’s our recommended favorites in each category.

Board Game Gift Guide 2023 – 45 Favorites! is an article from The Board Game Family

Over our 14 years of doing family board game reviews, we’ve played and reviewed a number of The Lord of the Rings games.

Today's review is on the lighter side of The Lord of the Rings board and card games, The Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom, by Kosmos.

Like a number of LOTR games, this game is a cooperative board game. Players work together to help Frodo and Sam get the ring to Mount Doom. They do so by rolling dice, reacting to cards, fighting Uruk-hai, dodging Nazgul, and overall maneuvering the Fellowship along the treacherous route.

While it’s a simpler LOTR game, we’ve still lost more times than we’ve won. Just begging us to play again.

The Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom game review is an article from The Board Game Family

Happy Star Wars Day!

To celebrate, we’re diving into a review of another Star Wars family board game – Star Wars: Unlock!

That’s right, the very cool Unlock! escape-room series of games now has a Star Wars themed game – with 3 distinct game adventures. As far as escape-room games go, the Unlock! series have been our favorite. So I was super excited when Asmodee published a Star Wars version.

After having played through all 3 adventures, I’m happy to report that all of them are super fun to play.

Star Wars: Unlock! game review is an article from The Board Game Family

How well do you get along with the people living under your same roof? Do you know what makes them happy? And can you provide that?

Well, even if you can’t help out in that regard, you can at least try to make them happy with their decorating goals in a fun cooperative board game by Floodgate Games – Decorum!

Decorum is a cooperative, hidden information game where players try to decorate their shared home in a way that makes everyone happy. The catch is that you don’t know what’s going to make the other players happy!

You must deduce what types of things make them happy by what changes they make to the decorations in the various rooms during their turns. Hopefully you’ll all be able to figure that out and arrange things just so before the game ends or you’re not going to survive in the same house for long.

Decorum board game review is an article from The Board Game Family

SaltCon Spring just keeps getting bigger and better every year!

This year over 2,000 people enjoyed playing board games, card games, dice games, party games, and more for 4 days straight as part of SaltCon Spring 2023.

And with that many people, there’s a broad range of gaming interests. That’s why there are also areas in the convention center set aside for RPGs, miniatures painting, dexterity games, play-to-win games, competitions, and an Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator.

But even as the event itself keeps getting bigger, this year the game playing for me was much more intimate.

15 Games Played at SaltCon 2023 is an article from The Board Game Family

Time is ticking down and there are only a few more shopping days left until Christmas Day.

If that puts you in a frantic rush for finding game gifts for your friends and family this year, we can help with that!

For starters, jump over to our 2022 Board Game Gift Guide and you’ll find a bunch of great games to choose from as gifts.

If you already have what you need with those game gifts and just need a few smaller games to pack a Christmas stocking with game goodies, then this list of 15 recommended games is for you.

15 Stocking Stuffer Games for 2022 is an article from The Board Game Family