The Easter holiday, much like the Christmas holiday, is a time for slowing down a bit and spending time with your loved ones. It’s also about eating masses of chocolate and enjoying what the spring weather has in store for you.
If it’s cold or raining then you might want to bust out an Easter-themed board game until the sun shines again and you can finally set up that egg hunt (if you haven’t already eaten them all, that is…).
Easter board games should be all about inclusivity, so we’ve gathered together a bundle of fun which has something for everyone to enjoy.
From starter board games for young children to play with their grandparents to more complex strategic games for teens and adults to mull over, our collection is non-stop Easter-themed gaming action!
Age: 8-12 and up
Number of players: 3 to 6
Duration: 30 to 40 minutes
Easter and bunnies go together and nothing says Easter more than a bunch of rabbits hopping merrily around a meadow. The scoreboard in Dixit is the meadow and you make the bunnies hop around by taking your turn to invent imaginative clues so your fellow players can identify the cards you’re holding.
With each round of Dixit, one player is the storyteller and they have to come up with the smartest and most cryptic clue relating to one of the cards they’re holding. These clues can be a phrase, a song or even a poem or single word and the other players look at their cards and choose the one which most closely matches the clue.
All the cards are gathered together and the other players try to guess which card the storyteller has, while the storyteller wants at least some of the other players to get it wrong. With each round, the bunnies hop around the track on the meadow according to the points each player scores, occasionally jumping over each other.
Dixit is an ideal game for Easter gatherings because it works well for people of all ages and abilities, with players often asking to play it again even if they’re not big gamers.
A similar, but faster-paced, game is Bangarang, in which players also have to come up with off-the-wall clues in front of a baying crowd. Bangarang is a bit more lively than Dixit and might be suitable for slightly younger players too.
This award-winning game features beautiful artwork and is a huge favourite among bird fans in particular, as well as anyone who has a love of nature.
In Wingspan, you play bird enthusiasts who are trying to entice more birds into your aviaries. There are a total of 170 bird species to choose from in the basic game, which lends a lot of replay value to it.
There are three different habitats and five different food types to work with and when it’s your turn you choose one of four different actions. You can gather food, play a bird, lay some eggs or draw some more bird cards from the pile.
You play your birds according to personal (hidden) scoring objectives and some public objectives, with these objectives changing every time you play to add variety.
The more birds you gather, the stronger your actions become - more food, more eggs, more cards and your birds also give you special abilities to make things even more exciting.
Even though there are up to five players in Wingspan, there’s no sabotage or rivalry and it’s a very calm and thoughtful game. You can even play a solo mode if you fancy a bit of me time. For a game with a simple premise, Wingspan has some very complex strategies, which makes this absorbing game more suitable for older children and adults.
Number of players: 1 to 4
Age: 11+
Duration: 90 minutes+
Ahhhh. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. It’s what many of us think about when we hear the word “Easter”. The good news is that you don’t have to limit yourself to eating lots of chocolate over the Easter weekend - you can think about it and play at being a chocolate magnate!
Chocolate Factory might have a delicious theme, but it’s actually a game you can really - ahem - get your teeth into. It’s a very strategic game and while the components, including a moveable conveyor belt and wooden chocolates are engaging, you’ll soon be immersed in a complex and challenging world.
Players need to actually build their machines before they can start churning out the sweet stuff and Chocolate Factory offers players a longer game that’s ideal for a lazy, chocolate-filled weekend.
The game is best for more experienced board game fans as there’s a lot of mechanics and engine building involved, but after all the machinations and planning, the player with the biggest heap of choccy wins.
Number of players: 2 to 4
Age: 3+
Duration: 10 to 15 minutes
Forty naughty chicks have escaped their coop and you have to round them all up and get them safely home before the hungry fox picks them all off!
To play this fun game, you scatter the 40 chicks all over the board and place the somewhat worried Mother Hen on the start square. Then you take turns to spin the spinner and pick up as many chicks as the spinner tells you to, hopefully rescuing all the chicks before Mother Hen reaches the end of the board.
Beware, though, the spinner might land on the hungry fox, in which case, you remove a chick from the coop! Count Your Chickens is a great cooperative game and it encourages younger children to count together in order to grab as many chicks as possible.
Number of players: 2 to 8
Age: 12+
Duration: 45 minutes
Not for the faint-hearted, Killer Bunnies and the Magic Carrot is a fast-paced game with players keeping as many of their own bunnies alive as possible while taking out as many of their opponents’ as possible.
This would be quite simple if the other players weren’t armed to the teeth with various weapons - everything from a kitchen whisk to a nuclear warhead - and driven by the same dastardly purpose. All this and the search for the Magic Carrot…
Killer Bunnies and the Magic Carrot is noisy, messy, sneaky and brilliant fun. The game also has a few expansion packs available for when flamethrowers and magic spatulas aren’t quite enough anymore!
