Some of the best game nights we’ve seen at Draughts haven’t been groups of adults locked in tense four-hour strategy marathons. They’ve been families, parents and kids losing it over Ghost Blitz. A seven-year-old demolishing the table at Ticket to Ride. A teenager who arrived sulking because they’d been dragged out on a bank holiday, only to be the last to leave because they couldn’t stop playing Exploding Kittens.
That leads us to Best Board Games to Play with Kids… Board games and kids just work, there’s no screen, no algorithm, no passive scrolling. Just faces around a table, someone explaining the rules, and genuine laughing-until-your-sides-hurt fun you can’t get from an iPad.
The trick is picking the right game for the right age. A five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old need very different things from a board game. Getting it wrong means someone’s bored, someone’s frustrated, and everyone’s looking at their phones within ten minutes. Getting it right, that’s when the magic happens.
We’ve got over 1,000 games across our two venues – Draughts Stratford inside Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Draughts Waterloo in the Leake Street Arches – and our staff know every single one. But if you want a head start before you arrive, here’s our guide to the best games for every age group, all available in our library.
Ages 4-6: Keep It Simple
The biggest mistake with very young players is giving them a game that’s too complicated and then wondering why it falls apart. Four- to six-year-olds need games that are quick, visual, physical, and fun, ideally with rules you can explain in about 30 seconds.
CLACK! is perfect for this age group. It’s a pile of magnetic discs with different colours and symbols. You roll the dice, which show a colour and symbol, and everyone races to grab the right disc. When you grab one, it CLACKs onto the stack with a satisfying magnetic snap. It’s fast, loud, competitive in a way four-year-olds love, and a round takes about five minutes.
Cheese Thief is another brilliant one for little ones. Players are either sleepyheads dreaming about cheese or a thief trying to steal it, with dice combinations creating different scenarios each time. It’s simple enough for a four-year-old to understand and replayable enough that they’ll want to go again immediately.
Dobble Connect takes the classic spot-the-symbol Dobble concept and adds a competitive twist – teams race to connect four cards of their colour in a row by finding the matching symbol fastest. Everyone plays at the same time, which means no waiting for turns (a dealbreaker at this age), and it’s brilliantly chaotic with young kids.
At this age, it’s not about strategy. It’s about excitement, laughing, and that moment when a five-year-old beats a grown-up fair and square and won’t let anyone forget it.
Ages 7-9: The Sweet Spot
This is where things get really good. Seven to nine-year-olds can handle more complex rules, think a couple of moves ahead, and have the attention span for a 30-minute game. This is the sweet spot for family gaming, everyone at the table is genuinely playing, not just being helped.
Ticket to Ride: London is our top recommendation for this age group. It’s a streamlined version of the classic Ticket to Ride formula: collect cards, claim bus routes across London, and complete destination tickets for bonus points. The London edition plays in about 15 minutes, perfect for this age. There’s something brilliant about a seven-year-old building a route from Brixton to Camden and looking genuinely proud. If they love it, graduate to Ticket to Ride: Europe for a longer, deeper experience.
Ghost Blitz 2 is pure chaos in the best way. Five wooden objects sit on the table: a white ghost, green frog, grey bathtub, blue hairbrush, and red bath towel. Someone flips a card, everyone simultaneously figures out which object to grab based on the colours shown, and hands fly across the table. It’s a reflex game kids are genuinely better at than adults, making it one of the most satisfying games for this age group. Kids beating parents, they’ll want to play it forever.
Catan: Junior introduces the trading and building concepts from the legendary Catan series in a way that works for players as young as six. Instead of building settlements and roads, players build hideouts and discover islands, encountering the mysterious Spooky Island and its Ghost Captain along the way. It’s colourful, thematic and a perfect gateway to the bigger Catan games they’ll be ready for in a couple of years.
Ages 10-12: Ready for Real Strategy
Ten to twelve-year-olds are ready for the good stuff. They can handle games with multiple mechanics, enjoy planning ahead, and are old enough to lose gracefully sometimes. This is when board games stop being something you play with kids and start being something you play alongside them.
7 Wonders: Architects is a fantastic entry point to the 7 Wonders family. Each player races to complete an architectural wonder of the ancient world, choosing cards that give them resources, military strength or scientific knowledge. It plays 2 to 7 players, takes about 25 minutes, and has that perfect balance of simplicity and depth that makes a ten-year-old feel like they’re playing a proper grown-up game. Because they are.
Dixit: Disney Edition is a creative storytelling game that works beautifully at this age. One player picks a card – illustrated with scenes from Disney and Pixar films from Steamboat Willie to Turning Red – and says a word or phrase about it. Everyone else plays a card from their hand that could match, all the cards are shuffled and revealed, and everyone guesses which one was the original. It rewards imagination and lateral thinking over raw strategy, and the Disney artwork means even the most reluctant pre-teen gets drawn in.
Exploding Kittens is a card game that does exactly what it says. Players draw cards until someone draws an Exploding Kitten and is eliminated – unless they’ve got a Defuse card to save themselves. The deck is full of attack cards, skip cards, and ridiculous illustrations that ten-year-olds find genuinely hilarious. Games take about 15 minutes, and the “just one more round” factor is enormous.
Jungle Speed is another brilliant pick for this age. A wooden totem sits in the middle of the table, players flip cards, and when two cards match, those players race to grab the totem. The first player to get rid of all their cards wins. It’s fast, it’s physical, and it rewards the kind of lightning-quick pattern recognition that kids this age have in spades.
Teenagers: Games They’ll Actually Want to Play
Here’s the big one. How do you get a teenager to put down their phone, sit at a table with their family, and enjoy themselves? You give them a game that’s genuinely good, not a kids’ game dressed up, but something with real depth, decisions, and atmosphere.
7 Wonders (the original) is one of the most awarded board games on the planet – over 30 international awards and more than a million copies sold. Players simultaneously draft cards to develop their ancient civilisation, building commercial routes, gathering resources and creating military dominance. It plays up to 7 people, takes about 30 minutes, and the simultaneous play means there’s zero downtime. Teenagers love it because it feels sophisticated. Parents love it because everyone’s playing at the same time and nobody’s on their phone.
For a head-to-head with a competitive teen, 7 Wonders Duel is outstanding. It’s the two-player version, with three possible victory conditions: military dominance (reaching your opponent’s capital), scientific supremacy (collecting six of seven different scientific symbols) or the most points at the end. It’s tense, strategic and takes about 30 minutes.
Exploding Kittens works brilliantly with teenagers too – the humour is pitched perfectly for the 13-16 age group, and the quick rounds mean it works as a warm-up game before something bigger.
Hues and Cues is a colour guessing game that’s surprisingly addictive for teens. One player gives a one or two-word clue about a specific colour on a huge board of colour gradients, and everyone else places markers where they think that colour is. Simple concept, but the debates it generates are enormous. “That is NOT teal.” “It’s obviously teal.” You’ll hear these arguments for days.
Wits & Wagers Family takes the original Wits & Wagers party game and makes it accessible for mixed-age groups. Players answer trivia questions by writing down their best guess, then everyone bets on which answer they think is closest. The family edition has questions appropriate for all ages and removes the gambling element – it’s trivia meets bluffing meets laughing at how wrong everyone is about everything.
All-Ages: Games the Whole Family Plays Together
Some games don’t fit neatly into age brackets because they work brilliantly for everyone from seven to seventy. These are the games we recommend when a family with kids of different ages says “we need something everyone can play.”
Crokinole is the greatest game most people have never played. It’s a dexterity game on a beautiful circular wooden board. Players flick wooden discs, trying to land them in the high-scoring centre while knocking opponents’ discs out of play. It’s like curling on a tabletop. Anyone can play it, everyone improves quickly, and the tension of a crucial final shot is electric. Families go mad for it. We’ve seen eight-year-olds win. We’ve seen grandparents win. We’ve seen grown adults shout at a wooden disc.
Ticket to Ride: Europe is the longer, deeper version of the London edition and works beautifully with mixed-age families. Build train routes across the continent from Edinburgh to Constantinople. The basic mechanics are simple enough for a seven-year-old, but the route-planning strategy keeps adults engaged. It plays in about 45 minutes to an hour, long enough to feel substantial and short enough that nobody loses focus.
Monopoly Deal is a fast, card-based version of Monopoly that strips away everything frustrating about the original and keeps everything fun. Collect properties, charge rent, steal from other players. A game takes about 15 minutes and is brilliantly cutthroat. Ages 8 and up, 2 to 5 players, and it’s one of the most-played games in our library.
Skull is a bluffing game for ages 10+ but works with younger players who can keep a straight face. Each player has four cards: three flowers and one skull. You stack cards face down, then players take turns adding a card or challenging someone to flip cards without hitting a skull. It’s pure psychology, and kids who bluff well clean up. Rounds last about five minutes and the “just one more” factor is off the charts.
Why Board Games Are Brilliant for Kids
We’re not parenting experts, but we’ve watched thousands of families play games at Draughts over the years and noticed a few things.
Kids who play board games learn to lose. Not in a “character building” gritted-teeth way, but naturally, from losing a quick game and immediately wanting another go. When a round of Ghost Blitz takes three minutes, losing isn’t a disaster. It’s a reason to shuffle the cards and go again.
They learn to negotiate. Trading resources in Catan: Junior teaches kids more about persuasion, fairness, and compromise than most classroom lessons. “I’ll give you two goats for your wood” is a genuine negotiation, and kids take it seriously.
They learn to pay attention. In a world that fragments concentration, sitting at a table for 30 minutes focusing on a single game is valuable. Because the game is fun, it doesn’t feel like concentration. It just feels like playing.
And they put their phones down. We’ve seen it happen alot, a teenager arrives looking at their screen, sits down reluctantly, plays one round, and the phone goes in the pocket and doesn’t come out for two hours. That’s not us being preachy. That’s what happens when the game is good enough.
The Food That Makes It a Great Day Out
Here’s the thing the blog posts about board games never mention: the food matters. You can have the best game in the world on the table, but if the kids are hungry and there’s nothing decent to eat, the whole thing falls apart. That’s why we put as much thought into what’s on the plates as what’s on the shelves.
The kids’ menu is £11 and gets them a drink, a main, a side and a dessert – proper food, not an afterthought. Mains include a beef burger, fish goujons, chicken goujons or mac and cheese, with chips or carrot sticks on the side. Dessert is a scoop of vanilla ice cream or small churros with chocolate dip.
Drinks cover all the usual suspects – apple juice, orange juice, lemonade, cola, milk. It’s a genuine meal, not a token gesture, and at £11 for the lot it’s hard to beat anywhere in London. And here’s the bit parents really like: ages 12 and under play free. The kids’ menu plus free gaming makes Draughts one of the best-value family days out in east London or on the South Bank.
For the grown-ups, the main menu is just as appetising. The Korean fried chicken is one of our most popular dishes – three strips in sticky soy and gochujang glaze with crispy onions, coriander and toasted sesame. The short rib birria tacos are brilliant – rare breed beef slow cooked in a chilli and lime broth with queso, crema and pickled onions.
If burgers are more your thing, the double smashed cheese burger is two rib steak patties with double American cheese, comeback sauce and crispy onions, and the hot honey chicken bao is shredded fried chicken with gochujang mayo on steamed buns. There’s a Beyond Meat burger and a portobello stack for vegetarians, and the nachos grande is big enough to share across the whole table – which, when you’re mid-game and everyone’s reaching across the board, is exactly what you want.
The mac and cheese works for adults and kids alike, the halloumi fries are dangerously good with their preserved lemon and chilli jam, and if you want to start with something simple, the hummus and flatbread or blistered padron peppers are perfect for picking at while someone explains the rules.
For dessert, the churros with chocolate dipping sauce are on both the kids’ and main menus for good reason – they disappear fast. The burnt basque cheesecake with raspberry sorbet is the grown-up choice, and the chocolate brownie served warm with vanilla ice cream is the kind of thing that makes a ten-year-old’s entire day.
Drinks-wise, the bar covers everything from milkshakes (vanilla, strawberry and chocolate) to a full cocktail list for the adults. The espresso martini is a Draughts classic, and if you’re there with a group, the margarita pitcher is perfect for the table while the kids work through their juice and lemonade.
Playing at Draughts: What Families Need to Know
Both our venues are family-friendly, and we see families every single day – especially on weekends and bank holidays. Here’s what to expect.
The library. Over 1,000 games across both venues, organised and maintained by our games team. You don’t need to bring anything – just tell our staff the ages of your group and what kind of experience you’re after, and they’ll pick something perfect. That’s their job, and they’re ridiculously good at it.
The food. We’re a proper bar, board game kitchen and lounge with a full food menu. Kids eat here all the time – this isn’t a dusty games cafe with a sad selection of crisps. We serve real food, and the menu is designed to eat while you play (no one wants sauce on the game cards).
The atmosphere. Daytime at Draughts, especially on weekends, has a brilliant family energy. Tables of kids, tables of couples, tables of friends, everyone playing something different. It’s lively without being rowdy, and the staff are great with kids of all ages.
Draughts Stratford is at 5 Aquatics Walk, inside Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, E20 2AS. Perfect if you’re combining a game with a trip to the park – the playgrounds, the Orbit, the open spaces are all on the doorstep.
Draughts Waterloo is at Arch 16, Leake Street, SE1 7NN – right inside the famous graffiti tunnel beneath Waterloo station. Walking through 300 metres of constantly changing street art to get to the venue is an experience in itself for kids. Call us on 020 7450 5339.
Book a table at draughtslondon.com – bank holidays are our busiest days for families, so booking ahead is a very good idea. We’d hate for you to show up with excited kids and find there’s a wait.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Best Board Games to Play with Kids
What are the best board games for kids aged 4-6?
For very young players, look for games that are quick, visual and physical. At Draughts, we recommend CLACK! (a magnetic disc-grabbing race), Cheese Thief (dice-based fun with simple rules) and Dobble Connect (fast-paced symbol matching). All three can be learned in under a minute and played in five minutes, which is the sweet spot for this age group.
What board games should I play with 7-9 year olds?
This is the best age for family gaming. Ticket to Ride: London is our top pick – it’s simple to learn, plays in 15 minutes and kids love building routes. Ghost Blitz 2 is a reflex game where kids genuinely beat adults. Catan: Junior introduces trading and building strategy in a colourful, accessible way. All available in the Draughts library at both venues.
What board games do teenagers actually enjoy?
Teenagers need games with genuine depth and atmosphere. 7 Wonders (over 30 international awards) works brilliantly for mixed-age groups with simultaneous play. Exploding Kittens has the right humour for 13-16 year olds. Hues and Cues generates hilarious debates about colour. For competitive one-on-one play, 7 Wonders Duel is outstanding.
Is Draughts suitable for families with kids?
Yes – both Draughts Stratford and Draughts Waterloo are family-friendly venues that welcome children every day. We have over 1,000 games including a large selection suitable for children from age 4 upwards. Our staff will recommend the perfect game for your family’s ages and group size. We serve a full food menu designed for eating while you play.
Where is Draughts Stratford?
Draughts Stratford is at 5 Aquatics Walk, inside Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London E20 2AS. It’s a short walk from Stratford station (served by Central, Jubilee and Elizabeth Lines, DLR and National Rail) and surrounded by the park’s playgrounds, green spaces and attractions. Book at draughtslondon.com.
Where is Draughts Waterloo?
Draughts Waterloo is at Arch 16, Leake Street, London SE1 7NN – inside the Leake Street graffiti tunnel beneath Waterloo station. It’s about three minutes’ walk from the main station concourse. The walk through 300 metres of street art is a brilliant experience for kids. Call 020 7450 5339 or book at draughtslondon.com.
What is a board game cafe?
A board game cafe is a venue where you can eat, drink and play board games from a shared library. Draughts is London’s original board game cafe – now a bar, board game kitchen and lounge with over 1,000 games across two venues. You don’t need to bring your own games or know the rules – our staff will teach you everything you need to know.
Can I visit Draughts with a baby or toddler?
Yes, families with babies and toddlers are welcome at Draughts. We’d recommend visiting during daytime on weekdays for a quieter experience, or weekend mornings before the lunchtime rush. Our staff can suggest games suitable for mixed ages if you have older children as well.
What are indoor activities for kids in London?
Draughts is one of the best indoor family activities in London – over 1,000 board games, a full food menu and a welcoming atmosphere at both our Stratford and Waterloo venues. It’s the perfect wet-weather plan or bank holiday activity for families who want to do something together without staring at screens.
How much does it cost to play at Draughts?
Check draughtslondon.com for current pricing and booking. There’s a cover charge per person that gives you unlimited access to the games library for your session. Food and drinks are ordered separately from the menu. Booking in advance is recommended, especially for bank holidays and weekends.
What board games can the whole family play together?
For mixed-age families, Crokinole (disc-flicking on a wooden board, anyone can win), Ticket to Ride: Europe (build train routes, simple rules but real strategy), Monopoly Deal (15-minute card game version of Monopoly) and Skull (a bluffing game that kids who can keep a straight face will love) are all brilliant choices available at Draughts.
Are board games good for children’s development?
Board games help children develop social skills (turn-taking, negotiation, losing gracefully), cognitive skills (planning, pattern recognition, strategic thinking) and concentration. At Draughts, we regularly see children aged 4 and up engaged in games for extended periods – building focus and social confidence in a way that feels like pure fun rather than learning.
What should I do on a bank holiday with kids in London?
Draughts is one of the best bank holiday activities for families in London. Combine a trip to our Stratford venue with Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s playgrounds and open spaces, or visit our Waterloo venue and explore the Leake Street graffiti tunnel, the South Bank and nearby museums. Book ahead at draughtslondon.com – bank holidays are our busiest family days.
