Finding activities that the whole family will enjoy might be more difficult than you’d think. Whether you have a dedicated family games room (lucky you!) or use your living room as an entertaining area for your friends and family, there are some must-have games that everyone will enjoy! At least, we love these and hope that you will too!

Pool, snooker or billiards

Our favourite thing to do on a Friday night is to have a cheeky game of American pool. Who doesn’t love some healthy competition? With pool, snooker or any other billiards game, you get that whilst developing many essential skills, making this game perfect for all ages. As Lamb and Bear comments games like snooker are much more than potting balls on a table, “by playing snooker you can improve critical thinking skills, focus, hand-eye coordination and more – it’s a great sport!”

If you think that you might not have space for a pool table, think again. Hamilton Billiards stock different sized pool tables plus, the team at Hamilton Billiards can create a bespoke pool table to meet your size and design requirements – what else do you need? They are a UK-based family run business with over 40 years’ experience that are members of the Guild of Master Craftsmen, meaning that they will create nothing but the best.

Board games

I can’t recommend board games enough. There are board games for any situation, for any taste, for any age. If you only know about Monopoly, Cluedo or Trivial Pursuit, please do yourself a favour and try something different – trust me. Mum’s the Boss shares the same opinion, saying “We tend to shun the traditional favourites like Monopoly (I don’t understand why anyone plays that) but we enjoy games like Carcassonne, Catan, Colt Express and (topically) Pandemic (which we started playing long before the real one hit!).”

Once you start exploring new board games, it will be difficult to stop, and soon you will have a shelf, if not a full cupboard, over boarding with board games! If you share our love for board games, please let us know which ones are your favourite!

Card games

Card games are perfect for any occasion and can be enjoyed anywhere. Whether you are at home, in the park or at the beach, card games are the easiest solution for some fun family time. You can choose to go for a specific card game, such as Uno or Dobble, or simply have a standard deck of cards at hand to play a variety of games. As Motherhood the Real Deal says, “If you have a standard pack of playing cards, why not play a game of Go Fish with the little ones? Or perhaps for older kids, why not a game of Bluff?”