Reindeer games: Hilarious, irresistible games you can play with family and friends over the holidays

Many family gatherings will soon be faced with the dilemma of what to do after eating a stupor-inducing holiday meal.

Should you make everyone go for a walk? Tune into a football game? Watch “Die Hard” for the 15th time?

Hey, how about if we all play a game?

To quell the chorus of objections, here’s a list of recommendations by game creators and sellers when we asked them to suggest some games that are easy to learn, irresistibly funny and can be enjoyed by all skill levels, and even by people who don’t like games.

After all, laughter is supposed to help with digestion. And anything is better than talking about politics.

You might want to try one of these recommendations even if you already have a game that you traditionally play with your family. Do you really want to be dominated by your smart aleck brother-in-law in Scrabble again this year?

boop.

Seppy Yoon, a Minneapolis game designer, recommends this two-person game published by Smirk & Dagger ($30). It’s sort of a variation of checkers or Chinese checkers, except the game pieces are cute cats and kittens and the game board is a cozy quilt on a miniature bed. The goal is to place your kitties on the bed and “boop” your opponent’s felines out of the winning positions or to force them to hop off the bed completely. Approachable but deceptively challenging, according to the publisher. Adorable, according to Yoon. There’s also a holiday version, boop the Halls!, where the cats are competing to knock ornaments off a Christmas tree.

Tinderblox

Charlie McCarron, a St. Paul game designer and composer, said his dad, who is not into games at all, asks him to bring Tinderblox (Alley Cat Games, $12.99) to family gatherings. It’s a dexterity or stacking game, in which you take turns drawing cards that direct you how to stack up a pile of firewood. You get eliminated if you knock the wood pile over. The twist is the pieces are teeny and you have to use a pair of tweezers to construct the campfire. The whole game fits in a compact metal container. These so-called mint tin games are designed to be small enough to slip into a purse or jacket pocket. This would be a good option to take to the bar for Drinksgiving.

Klask 4

Klask is a sort of tabletop hockey or soccer game in which you use a magnet held under the game board to move your player around and try to knock a little ball into an opponent’s goal. The original Klask was a two-player game, but McCarron likes the four-person version, where each person defends his or her own goal. That means people can shift alliances and gang up on each other. Made in Denmark, Klask 4 is a bit spendy ($90), but it was invented by a carpenter, and the big, sturdy wooden game board has a classy Scandinavian design aesthetic.

Telestrations

Telestrations by the Op Games ($32) is a sort of mashup of the drawing and word guessing game Pictionary and the classic children’s game Telephone. Players get cards assigning them a word or phrase to sketch — Frankenstein, porcupine, garbage truck, remote learning. The sketches get passed to neighboring players, who try to guess what was drawn, and then draw out their own version of that guess. Then you can see how the guesses were morphed and misinterpreted by the end of the round. “You go back and around and laugh at how ridiculous it is,” said Rae Kawalek, who does marketing and buying by Twin Cities game retailer Games by James.

Lumberjacks With Rocket Launchers

This is a funny little card game by Prolific Games ($13) that takes about 10 to 15 minutes to play, according to Kawalek. Three to eight players take turns playing one of the three cards in their hand, typically depicting a rocket launcher that you set on the table pointing at a neighboring player. Rounds continue until someone plays a “Rocket Time!” card. Players with three rockets pointed at them get blown up and are eliminated from the game. Last surviving unexploded lumberjack wins. “It’s very intuitive,” Kawalek said.

Kites: Time to Fly

In this cooperative game by Minnesota-based Floodgate Games ($20), all the players work together to keep a bunch of kites, represented by little hourglasses, up in the air. You play cards directing you to flip over the little timers. The aim is to play all the cards before the sands run out. It can be played with two to six players, and each game only takes about 10 minutes or less. A good game to involve people of different skill levels, because you’re all working together.

Everything Ever

Another Floodgate Games offering ($16), Everything Ever is a trivia-style party game in which players reveal cards with categories like “Everything that has a tail,” or “Every TV theme song with lyrics.” Players take turns naming a thing that fits each category. You take a penalty if you get stumped coming up with another answer to “Every character on ‘The Office.’” Then everyone has to start naming stuff in a new category like “Every Charles” or “Every famous car, truck or van.’”

Scribble Hips

This party game by Barry & Jason Games & Entertainment ($25) resembles Pictionary, only you can’t use your hands to draw a word or phrase for your teammates to guess. Instead, the game features a marker that you strap on pointing away from your pelvis and you draw on an easel by wiggling your hips. To add to the hilarity, you can strap the easel on the hips of another player. A deck of drawing prompts lets you choose between easy-to-draw clues (“sailboat”) to the more challenging (”Nicole Kidman”).

Okay, Genius...

In this guessing game by Play Monster ($25), players take turns being “the Genius” and secretly decide on an answer to a question chosen from a deck of cards that can range from profound to ridiculous: “How many days before you swap out your old toothbrush for a new one?” “What is the perfect number of members for a Book Club?” “How many alien dreams do you have before realizing that you were actually abducted?” Then the other players guess the number that the Genius came up with. The player who comes closest to the Genius’ answer scores a point. Game inventor Jason Lautenschleger said the fun factor of the game lies in trying to guess what your 6-year-old niece thinks is the right number of times you should wash your hands in a day or what your grandmother decides is the appropriate amount of time to wait in a delayed plane on the tarmac before chanting “Let us go! Let us go!”

Heads Up!

If you forgot to buy a game in time for your gathering, you can always do a last-minute download of a party game phone app like Heads Up! (Warner Bros., $2). In this game, you hold the phone up to your forehead facing your teammates. The phone flashes a series of words or phrases to the teammates in categories like pop culture or wild animals. You try to guess the word as your teammates act out the phrase or give verbal clues. You guess as many clues as possible in 60 seconds. The phone keeps score when you tilt it to get a new word. The app also lets you take a video of your teammates while playing to capture an instant replay of the competition.

ThanksGuessing

Our final game idea comes from Los Angeles-based game designer Jason Lautenschleger, and it just requires a pen and some slips of paper. When guests arrive, have each person anonymously write down on a slip of paper something they’re thankful for and put the slips in a basket or bowl. After dinner, everyone draws out one of the pieces of paper and tries to guess who is thankful for what. “No need to keep score because everyone wins!” Lautenschleger said. We’ll get you started: We’re thankful that you’re reading the Star Tribune.