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I hope this is the right place to post this. I am moving and will live next door to my brother and sister-in-law. I have an 11-year-old niece there too. Every time I am there moving stuff into my new place, my niece wants to play games with me. She lives in an isolated, rural area and doesn't have many friends on top of that. So she really looks forward to me playing games with her. I have a few that are okay for a kid that age: Avon Hill games, Risk, Life, Scrabble, Monopoly, Othello, and Mille Borne. I played these games a few times with my own daughter when she was younger, but we were in a more suburban area and my daughter has more friends. So she played with friends mainly and only with me if we were snowed in, rained in, etc.
The Avon Hill games are strategy war games and take hours to play and there just isn't the time (and my niece gets bored). She won't play Scrabble for some reason and gets bored with Monopoly after a bit. My niece does play the other games I mentioned. By the way, she has and tries to play chess too, but plays by her own made-up rules that she stubbornly sticks to (and they make the game difficult, but not in a fun or challenging way). I gave up trying to play chess with her.
I need game ideas since I am getting bored with Life, Mille Borne, and Othello. But what kinds of games would be fun for an 11-year-old these days? Especially ones for just two people that last about an hour or so before she has to go home. Any suggestions of a few I can pick up? She's not allowed to play video games so those are out. I am looking for board and card games.
As someone with a lot of nephews and nieces I have played with over the years here are other games that come to mind:
Careers
Labyrinth (I think there are different versions- If playing the Brio version you can alternate and do scoring average)
Probe (Parker bros hangman type game)
Racko
Stratego
Ticket to Ride (with only 2 players an hour should work)
Card games:
Any variation of the attain a specific total number value (31/41/51 etc)
Crazy Eights
My favorite for two are the Shedding type games (Spit/ Slam/ Speed) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spit_(card_game)
At the risk of sounding sexist, I highly doubt that an 11-year-old girl will enjoy any of the Avalon Hill strategy games. Indeed, she probably wouldn't even like Risk. Young girls, by and large, aren't interested in warfare or games that are based on it.
You could try Clue. If she's put off by the fact that it's a murder-mystery game, you could modify it to say that you're trying to find a missing person, and solving the mystery will locate that person. If she has any interest in geography, you could try Great States. Trivial Pursuit can be a lot of fun, and I think they make versions for younger people.
Here's a really obscure one: Rush Hour. No, I don't mean the one-player game by Think Fun (though that one's fun too), but a board game the object of which is to successfully commute from home to work and get there first. It's pretty silly and a lot of fun. I found a copy on eBay. It's very rare, so if you think you'd be interested, I'd snatch it up right away.
Thanks all! There are some good ideas here and I will look into them.
And I typed Avon Hill didn't I? I blame auto-correct on my phone, that thing hates me. I meant Avalon Hill (Axis and Allies, Axis and Allies D-Day, Axis and Allies Pacific, Axis and Allies Europe). I am probably an odd duck in that I played those games since high school and yeah, I was the only girl playing then. I played with my daughter a few times, mainly during things like snowed in days and such. But we never finished a game. But my niece is very much a girly girl. She does like Risk however and asks to play it. We never get to finish though and she's not good at it. My daughter is really good at it, better than me. My daughter is probably an odd duck too because I am a weird mom, haha.
Those adventure games Winter Sucks look interesting. Fox in the Forest might be perfect since it's designed for two.
Probe looks good too, she used to like to play hangman. And I forgot all about Stratego. That would be a good one.
Clue would work if my daughter joins in, but she's going to be off to college and really rather play video games online with her friends. But I can get her to play a few times, she's a good teen. I bet my niece would love Great States though.
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Guess Who is a great game.
Each of you has a board with all the characters, and you each draw a character card, and you go back and forth trying to guess which character your opponent has. "Is your person a man? Does your person wear glasses? Does your person have red hair?"
And you flip the pics down, with a "no" answer, so all your left with standing is the correct guess.
I hope this is the right place to post this. I am moving and will live next door to my brother and sister-in-law. I have an 11-year-old niece there too. Every time I am there moving stuff into my new place, my niece wants to play games with me. She lives in an isolated, rural area and doesn't have many friends on top of that. So she really looks forward to me playing games with her. I have a few that are okay for a kid that age: Avon Hill games, Risk, Life, Scrabble, Monopoly, Othello, and Mille Borne. I played these games a few times with my own daughter when she was younger, but we were in a more suburban area and my daughter has more friends. So she played with friends mainly and only with me if we were snowed in, rained in, etc.
The Avon Hill games are strategy war games and take hours to play and there just isn't the time (and my niece gets bored). She won't play Scrabble for some reason and gets bored with Monopoly after a bit. My niece does play the other games I mentioned. By the way, she has and tries to play chess too, but plays by her own made-up rules that she stubbornly sticks to (and they make the game difficult, but not in a fun or challenging way). I gave up trying to play chess with her.
I need game ideas since I am getting bored with Life, Mille Borne, and Othello. But what kinds of games would be fun for an 11-year-old these days? Especially ones for just two people that last about an hour or so before she has to go home. Any suggestions of a few I can pick up? She's not allowed to play video games so those are out. I am looking for board and card games.
Thanks!
Uno is an oldie but goodie that I loved at her age and now enjoy playing with other people's kids as well as my partner.
A game won't take an hour, but we usually do a "best of three" series of games whenever we play. It's fun because while there's an element of chance to the game, there's also a fair amount of strategizing that goes into winning as well.
Parcheesi and Clue are also fun games for both kids and adults, although those are games that are more fun with a larger group--especially Clue.
My boyfriend's kids enjoyed Exploding Kittens (an Oatmeal game) and another game called Chickapig. We'll still play both from time to time.
While your niece isn't allowed to play video games, would one of the JackBox games (assuming that your niece has either a smart phone or a tablet) meet parental approval such as Drawful which is fun with both two people and with a group?
Not all of these are board or card games per se
Cribbage (my all time fave two player game)
Battleship
Checkers
Dominos
Yahtzee
Jenga
Mancala (I never played this but my kids learned it at school and loved it)
Jigsaw puzzles
If she doesn't think she's too old some of the following might entertain her for a while
Connect Four
Operation
Ker Plunk
My late husband taught his son to play cribbage at an early age, as soon as he could grasp the math involved, and told him he would never "let" him win. When the kid won it would be fair and square. They continued playing for years until his son became an adult. If the girl likes math at all, it might be fun. They used to play the cut-throat way, where if you saw some points your opponent missed, you could get them yourself.
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