The best board games to play when you are confined to your home

What is more social than a board game? Even confined, it is possible (and also recommended!) to play—our tips for a fun time at home with family.

The play bars and play libraries are closed, evenings with friends and neighbors are no longer possible, but it is still possible to play, at home or on the Internet, at many board games. Below are tips on which games are best for you, depending on the situation. 

Even if you're not used to playing anything other than tarot or Monopoly, hundreds of easy-to-handle games are suitable for all containment configurations. If you already play regularly, you'll find better genre ideas on Martin Vidberg's One World of Games blog or his YouTube channel.

This selection deliberately focuses on titles with instead simple rules and still marketed. Shops are closed, but some offer mail-order sales, and The French leader in online sales, Philibert, continues its activity. We do not recommend ordering games from Amazon, where, for any ethical consideration aside, rates and availability are often unabating for board games. There are also many games available in tablet versions or playable with an Internet browser.

• Playing with your family with teens
• Playing with young children
• Playing as a couple or a duo
• Play solo
• Perfect games for those who live their confinement well
• Playing with the family with teens or grown-ups
• Classics within everyone's reach

Several great classics, released for several years and which you may have forgotten in a closet, can offer you hundreds of hours of play. Citadels (recommended to four or more players), a card game with straightforward rules, pits city builders against each other, with a system of character choice embodied at every turn, which makes it all salt. 

Catan, a classic of the resource management game, is straightforward to grasp, challenging to master completely; just like Raiders of the Rail, another sure bet of the strategy game puts you in the shoes of the railway barons. In a very different style, Time's Up!, where explanations and mimes must guess words, guarantees some memorable laughs.

Note that these classics, like many newer games, also exist in Android and iOS versions, priced at a few euros, so you can play it on a tablet or a large phone, even if you don't have access to it in the physical version.

More recent games

Several perfect games released in the last two years also rely on the imaginative — and vocabulary, even general culture — abilities of the participants. They offer you to save the souls of famous deceased by having their names guessed with a single word, which evolves as the answer boxes go around the table. 

On a comparable basis, the very popular game Just One asks a player, at each turn, to guess a word through the clues, in a word, that other players have written on their tablets — but beware, if several players have chosen the same name, their clues will be eliminated. Note that with a few contortions, it is possible to play Just one by videoconference.

On the strategy side, the very cute Draftosaurus, in which we optimize the placement of small wooden dinosaurs that we choose in a pickaxe before passing them to his neighbor, is suitable for large children but is quite fun between adults. 

Like Zombie Kidz: Evolution, a huge commercial success puts you at the helm of a group of teenagers battling a zombie invasion, with additional characters, tools, and rules unlocking game after game. The straightforward Yokai memory game is also an addictive game where the youngest often gets a head start on their parents.

Games that are a little more "hard."

If your teens like investigations, games like Detective offer long and complicated studies that will make them twist their brains. Frustrated athletes will enjoy the Red Flame, a smart simulation of cycling. Yu-Gi-Oh fans! Or the Pokémon card game that no longer has friends on hand to play a few games can also learn about Dominion, a perfect card deck-building game. 

If you have the soul of a storyteller, many original boxes and books exist for classic role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and many enthusiasts also put online free shooter games and scenarios for dozens of different universes, on sites like the Scenario.

I was playing with young children.

There are dozens of games suitable for the little ones. In particular, we recommend the following.

"Dream Catcher" and his unkempt.

"Dream Catcher" and his dowdy.

Memory games

Pique Plume, with its clashes of wooden hens (from 4 years), is a sure bet.

Cooperative games

The classic of the genre is Le Verger (3 years and older, which exists in version 2 years), where we collect fruit while trying to prevent the crow from eating them. It can leave traces in the rest of your confinement's soundscape because it asks players to shout, "In the closet, monsters regularly!", but The Hunt for Monsters (4 to 6 years) is also a sure bet. 

For toddlers, Little Cooperation, with its adorable ice pack, is accessible from 2 and a half years old. For young and old big dragon lovers, The Treasure of the Elves (4 years and older) will put you in the shoes of a Bilbo the Junior Hobbit. Magic Maze kids (5 years and older), a children's variant of a perfect cooperative game for adults, is also an excellent introduction to the genre.

Games of skill

The Pyramid of Animals (4 years and older) offers precisely what its title describes, a fun building game with animals. Plus rock'n'roll, Frog Soup (from 5 years old) will make you catapult small plastic frogs by trying to avoid the witch's cauldron (and the cup of hot chocolate or the glass of orange juice placed next to it). 

Roulapik (4 years old) offers you to collect food thanks to your little hedgehog ball covered with scratch. The Viking Valley (6 years and older) adds a small tactical dimension to its central mechanism of knocking barrels with a bullet.

Games of visual discrimination

Recognize the fruits on the menu and be the fastest when you find five: very simple and very useful, Halli Galli (from 6 years old) is a classic. Catching Dreams (4 years), Golden Ace 2020 child at the Cannes International Games Festival, is particularly cute; you have to select the right cuddly to hide monsters of various sizes.

The stories you're the hero of

The interactive book series My First Adventure offers very successful "interactive" books, adventures to do with parents from 4 years old.

Games to print or download

Since the beginning of the containment of games to be downloaded directly, creators have been offering. This is particularly the case for the multi-award-winning Wilfried and Marie Fort (The Valley of the Vikings, Mister Wolf). 

They posted on their Facebook page a small underwater exploration game to print at home. Or Hybrids, a drawing game proposed by the comic book author Boulet on his Facebook page. The blog A World of Games tested several games to print in this video:

It is also worth noting the existence, for parents who love to tell stories, of the role-playing game P'tites Witches, available for free on the website of its author, Antoine Bauza, and perfect for a group of two to four children, plus one or adults.

I was playing as a couple or a duo.

• The 3D set of Santorini.
• The 3D set of Santorini.

Several big hits designed to play four or more have had useful variations in the "two-player" mode. These include Code Names Duo, a cooperative version of a game in which his team can guess words, or 7 Wonders Duel, a two-player variant of one of the board game's biggest hits of the past decade.

Some of the best strategy games of recent decades are designed for two players, like Mr. Jack - London, where one player plays Jack the Ripper, the other the police, or Santorini, which evokes a bit of a three-dimensional chess game. 

Star Realms offers a luxurious and well-designed space exploration card game for couples or roommates who both love optimization and are not afraid to go up against a little more complex rules. More bluffing-oriented, Schotten Totten is a classic duo game, with poker-inspired mechanics.

Alongside strategy games, there is a whole range of puzzles or investigative games, such as the excellent Unlock!, which cleverly reproduces the mechanics of escape games where you can no longer go. To play a duet with a big child, Shy Monsters, minimalist bluff game, is also a perfect choice.

Note that many recent games offer variants to play two, often cooperatively; If you have games hanging around at home, now is the right time to watch their rules.

He's a bit of a poor relative of board games: with a few ready exceptions, like the very lovely Palm Island, the classic Adventurer, and investigative-puzzle games like Unlock! Which can technically be played alone if you have the talent of a Sherlock Holmes, there are few games really adapted solo.

On the other hand, it is quite possible to play online on specialized sites like Brettspielwelt. As the pandemic is global, you should find partners from Catan or Carcassonne without any difficulty. Similarly, Board Game Arena allows you to play remotely with friends — the site was overloaded on March 19.

Finally, all you need is a phone or webcam to be able to play role-playing remotely. Specialized software like Roll20 is specially designed to, and there are many online communities, such as All Walkers, to find players or even a game master who will introduce you to this hobby.

If you have the composure of an astronaut in the face of confinement

Pandemic Legacy, an excellent game in which we play, in co-operative, a team of doctors trying to curb the progression of various epidemics, is a particularly successful game, but whose theme can prove, to be, stressful or happy in this rather special time.

Some games based on betrayal and bluffing can also leave traces in the family fabric, especially if your family has a few bad losers (we don't talk about you). Oriflammes, Golden Ace 2020, is a perfect example: this little card game offers amazing turnarounds, but it's hard to win without making a few low shots. Even more rugged, Cerberus puts all the players in competition for one of the places in the boat to escape from the underworld.

 All but those who have already been overtaken by Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld, and thus join the "bad guys" camp.