Every parent should have at least one day of the year when they’re celebrated. Whether it’s for making the best cakes in the land or for acting as the middle-of-the-night taxi driver, mums and dads deserve a day of rest, relaxation and…board games!
We’re looking at eight of the best board games for Father’s Day here and we can guarantee your dad will have a blast playing some or all of these games.
Our selection includes Father’s Day board games that Dad can play with younger children or grandchildren, with older kids and adults and even one game he can play on his own in his mancave…
If you’re planning to make your dad’s special day extra special with a game or two, you can’t go wrong with these eight Father’s Day board games.
Number of players: 2 to 6
Age: 12+ (10+ for experienced young gamers)
Duration: 60 minutes
Evolution is a fairly simple game - you adapt your species to survive and thrive in a challenging ecosystem, grabbing food and dodging predators as you develop.
You can develop traits like Hard Shell and Long Neck to offer protection against predators or to reach more food and this game offers you more than 4,000 ways in which to evolve your animals, making each game very different.
Evolution is great fun for dads to play with younger kids because lots of children like to play with the predatory creatures and mess their dad’s game right up by eating his critters. Others prefer to plough their own furrow and just make sure they have enough to eat - it’s a game which is determined by the personalities of the players as well as by the process of evolution.
Number of players: 1 to 4
Age: 8+
Duration: 90 to 120 minutes
In Dinosaur Island you have your own theme park and you have to research and collect dinosaur DNA in order to bring various long-extinct species back to life. You and your opponents are all trying to have the most exciting theme park and to attract the most visitors each season - you also have to make sure most visitors make it back out…
Dinosaur Island demands a careful balance of thrills and danger. The velociraptor packs will certainly bring the punters in, but if you don’t have a large enough enclosure or enough security, your visitors won’t be leaving.
Alternatively, you could grow a load of cute herbivores, but you’ll have to add a rollercoaster to provide the thrill factor and bring in the numbers.
Dinosaur Island also has a solo play mode so Dad can live his fantasy of owning his very own dinopark without competition from his progeny.
Number of players: 1 to 5
Age: 13+
Duration: 40 to 70 minutes
In Mind MGMT, one player is pitted against all the other players in this exciting hidden movement game. Mind MGMT used to be an organisation which used psychics to prevent global catastrophes but now it’s turned to the dark side and has rather more evil aims. In order to fulfill these aims, Mind MGMT is recruiting new, but corrupt, psychics and seems like an unstoppable force of chaos.
A few members have found out about Mind MGMT’s evil plans and have decided to defeat the agency to prevent a huge crisis. One player plays a Mind MGMT recruiter who must collect 12 recruits or go undetected for 16 turns.
The other players have to find the rogue recruiter and put a stop to their plans. The recruiter moves around a secret map to visit various locations drawn from the deck of cards and they can use items to help them to stay hidden.
The “good” agents try to work out the recruiter’s location by asking questions and making notes to use as the game intensifies. The goodies can only win if they determine the recruiter’s exact location.
Mind MGMT is a fast-moving game and it also has a solo mode which Dad can play via the game’s app.
Number of players: 2 to 5
Age: 7+
Duration: 20 minutes
There’s nothing selfish about wanting to play a fun board game on Father’s Day but having a massive selfish streak might help you to win this one!
You and your opponents are on a beleaguered spaceship and there’s only enough oxygen for one astronaut to get home. What’s even worse is that you all have to battle asteroids, wormholes and laser blasts, as well as each other!
You all start off with five cards which feature a mixture of oxygen and actions. When it’s your turn you pick another card from the pile and your action cards let you attack other players by stealing their oxygen, moving them backwards or shielding yourself from others’ attacks. Your oxygen cards let you move forwards, but every move reveals a space card which will either help or harm you.
It’s a fast-paced game and the first player home wins - as long as they have enough oxygen!
Number of players: 4+
Age: 8+
Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
If playing Selfish: Space Edition has whetted your appetite for a faster family game, then Bangarang might appeal to you and your dad too.
In Bangarang, players join together to help the guesser to work out what the mystery word on the card is. The twist is, however, that helpers can only use a single word, a sound, a mime action, a drawing or (when things get really tough) make letters with their bodies.
It’s a high-energy game and even though it’s not strictly played on a board, we’ve included it because it’ll get the whole family working together, using their wits, to reveal the hidden words.
Bangarang can get quite lively, so be ready for lots of shouting and waving and shape-throwing whenever you bring it into the family mix!
Number of players: 1 to 4
Age: 13+
Duration: 90 to 120 minutes
Although up to four players can enjoy this game, ISS Vanguard is, according to reviews, best with just one or two players, making it an ideal Father’s Day game.
It’s a cooperative campaign game and you’ll find yourself right in the middle of a huge sci-fi adventure. You’ll be playing as four sections - security, recon, science and engineering - all onboard the first ship bound for outer space.
ISS Vanguard has a unique and compelling storyline which confronts players with hard choices and lots of twists. The game also comes with more than 100 different crew members, each one with different characteristics and talents.
The gameplay is divided into two stages - on the spaceship and landing on the planets and you’ll manage your ship via your various decisions, as well as prep your crew for landing. Your crew members will take on various missions and you’ll use your logbook to follow different storylines, which guide this absorbing game.
Number of players: 1 to 4
Age: 14+
Duration: 50 to 60 minutes
The Spill is a cooperative campaign game and you’re the response team tasked with averting ecological disaster!
An offshore rig, DeepWell 4, has blown and the rupture is spilling crude oil into the ocean. You have to work together, combining your talents, to prevent the spill from destroying the ecosystem and killing off marine life.
You have to stem the flow of oil, remove as much spilled oil from the water as possible and rescue the animals. The Spill has an interesting mechanism - a four-way dice tower (the oil rig), which drops oil dice into four board quadrants on the game board.
You and your team have to contain the oil and remove the dice (oil) from the water as quickly as possible.
There are also weather dice which can add challenges to your operation, such as restricting your movement or making everything more expensive. You all need to cooperate to win and you win the game by accomplishing your winning objectives and remedying any losing conditions.
If you either exhaust all the dice or you can’t remedy a losing condition, the game ends in defeat.
Ages: 10+
Number of players: 1 to 5
Duration: 40 to 70 minutes
Wingspan isn’t a million miles away from Evolution in that you’re building up animals - in this case birds - to fulfill objectives. It’s a brilliant Father’s Day game for anyone who loves nature and involves some amazing artwork.
You and the other players are bird enthusiasts who are enticing more birds into your aviaries. With 170 different bird species to choose from, there’s a lot of replay potential in Wingspan.
The game features three different habitats and five different foods and when your turn comes you can choose one of four actions - gather food, lay eggs, draw more bird cards from the pile or play a bird.
When it comes to playing your birds, you have several personal scoring objectives and some public objectives. These aims change each time you play, which makes every game different.
With every bird you gather, your strength increases so you gather more food, lay more eggs and gather special abilities.
Wingspan might have up to five players but there’s no skullduggery or rivalry, which makes it a very calm game. It’s ideal for dads and older children or partners as there’s a lot of complex strategies involved.
Now you have eight great Father’s Day board games, all you have to do now is to make some time to play with your dad or make sure he has a bit of time to fly solo for a couple of hours - it’s the least he deserves, after all.
