Boggle, they sell a travel size.

How about a pack of cards?

Left right center, super fun any group size and you just need the dice and some kind of counters which can be beans or coins or something else at your destination.

Quirkle

Five Crowns
Yahtzee
A basic deck of cards. X2

Bigger board games we bring
Ticket to Ride
Clue
Monopoly

We LOVE Poetry for Neanderthals

I often play with my 3 kids 10-14

Rat a tat cat is another good card game.

Spot It
Poetry for Neanderthals (we just use the cards, skip the game board)
Ratuki

I’m looking into magnetic chess (not actual chess) for Christmas.

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza card game. Exploding Kittens is another card game that we love.

Anonymous wrote:Apples to Apples. If you don’t want to bring the box, put the cards in a plastic baggie. Charades means nothing to pack.

Came here to suggest the same. We love it.

We also loved playing a game that a relative taught us recently and requires nothing other than strips of paper and pens. Every player gets 5 slips of paper and writes down 5 random words - single nouns or short adjective+noun combos. Fold up the strips and put them in a bowl. Each round, one player pulls 5 strips from the bowl (they may end up with one or more of their own submissions, which is fine). That player has to think silently about how they'd order those 5 words from most to least favorite. The other players work together to try to order the five words in the way that the "head" player would want them ordered. There's no real winning or losing, but it's a lot of fun and funny to consider the head player's preferences. As the head player it's fun to hear other people negotiating random words that they think you like or dislike.

So I might pull Chocolate, Smelly Feet, Warm Towel, Dragons, Toilet Paper. In my head, my preferred order would be Toilet Paper (can't live without!), Chocolate, Warm Towel, Dragons, Smelly Feet. But the group might put toilet towards the bottom or whatever, or debate whether I like warm towels more than chocolate, etc etc. And if my son and pulled those I'd probably put dragons towards the top, and smelly feet at the top, because aren't smelly feet hilarious.

Same concept as Apples to Apples just slightly different play.

We like Uno and Charades.

Any card game (Uno, Rummy, etc )

Most games have too much packaging anyway. We've grabbed the cards and timer-thingy from the box to pack for games like 5 Second Rule and Throw Throw Burrito

cards, bananagrams

Apples to Apples. If you don’t want to bring the box, put the cards in a plastic baggie. Charades means nothing to pack.

Looking for recommendations on easy to pack games that would be fun for playing as a family (ages range from 7 to 79). What are some favorites?