Board Games We Remember
These are some of the Board Games we remember playing and enjoying.
They're classics, but there may be others you remember playing. Tell me about them and why you enjoyed them. Perhaps you didn't enjoy these games so tell me which ones did you hate?
Use the "Email My Games" link on the Wet Weekend Page.
Below you'll find a brief description of the games, what made them fun etc.
- Sorry!
- Although this game is just an elaborate take on Ludo, it came with a really cool circular board and rather than having a dice, it had a stack of "action cards".
each player in turn takes a card from the stack and has to follow the instructions to make their move.
It was great fun, knocking out the other players pieces in a mad rush to get your own team home!
Why is it that no one ever wanted to be the yellow team?
- Escape From Colditz
- My parents bought me this game for Christmas 1975!
It took an age to set up. Carefully placing the pieces on the largest game board you've seen!
The board was a plan of the Castle and grounds divided into circles to move in rather than squares.
1 player took the role of the German guards and the others played the nationalities of the prisoners; British, French, Poles etc
During the game, the prisoners gathered together the items needed to make their escape attempt, while the guards tried to hamper and stop them.
I remember that there were very few successful escapes! The person playing the Guards would cheer when they drew the card that allowed them to "shoot to kill!"
My friend, Ian, presented me with a replacement set of Colditz for a birthday present a couple of years back, but I haven't found time yet to play again.
- Spy Ring
- For the life of me, I can't remember how you win this game or it's purpose!
However, I do remember the set up.
The board was the same as a Cludo board, but instead of rooms within a mansion, the board was supposed to represent a capital city, with a number of Embassies on it.
Players took on the nationality of one of the embassies and had 2 playing pieces; an agent and a controller.
I vaguely remember having to move around the board collecting "secrets" but not much more than this.
The reason the game stands out in my memory is that in order to communicate between your controller and agent, you had to stick an ariel in the head of the agent! Represented by a pin, the ariels were the first pieces to go missing from the set.
- Risk
- Risk must be the only board game that we bought as adults.
My brother Derek bought this years back. It's a classic strategy game in which you build and position your armies to gain or consolidate your command of areas of the globe.
A game to pander to your inner Dictator!
- Totopoly!
- This is the only board game I've known that you play on both sides of the board.
The aim of the game is to train your own race horses for the big race.
On the first side is a simple circuit which players move around by throws of the dice.
The squares you land on direct you to pay feed bills, call out the vet, charge your owners training fees etc
You continue round the circuit building up your cash untill you have sufficient money to enter your horse into the race.
Then you turn the board over to play the Race part of the game.
This is a simple steeple-chase!
Though staying in the saddle and seeing off the opposition is all in the luck of the dice.
- Ker Plunk
- Do you remember this game.
It's a really simple concept, a see-through plastic cylinder with a hole in the top and a corresponding hole at the bottom.
Half way down the cylinder are a number of small holes through which you thread plastic sticks. Once all the sticks are in place, you fill the top half of the cylinder with marbles, that sit, suspended on the sticks.
The idea is to take it in turns to remove the sticks, trying not to drop any marbles into the lower half of the cylinder!
The person who causes the most marbles to drop is the loser.
- Stay Alive
- Stay Alive is a really simple game also , but a little difficult to describe, so stay with me here.
The game board is a square plastic tray with moving slots. The sliders create opposing levers so that players sitting opposite one another move the same levers.
In the tray, there is a grid of circles on to which the players coloured marbles are placed, filling the grid.
As the players take it in turn to move one of their levers, holes in the grid appear and disappear.
The aim is to open a hole under your apponants marbels letting them drop into the bottom of the tray.
Obviously, the aim is to "stay alive" and the winner is the last player with a surviving marble.
- FollyFoot Farm
- Based on the TV show, this game is a bit "girly!" but we did play it quite a lot.
- Mousetrap
- This classic game had you scurrying around the board in an effort to build the most ridiculous mousetrap ever!
I seem to recall it involved a ballbearing rattling down a zigzag staircase, a figurine of a diver who plunges head first into a bath having first been kicked by a swinging boot.
Eventually a cage is dropped which hopefully catches an opponants mouse!
Not a practical game in a house with pets!
Having spent an age setting up this elaborate kit, a passing wagging tail can wreck it in an instant!
The real problem with this game is that lose just one small part of the trap and the games worthless!
- Frustration
- Another take on Ludo. Get your pieces out of home and around the board to your finishing point before the other players and without being sent home to start again.
The cool feature with Frustration is the Dome for the dice in the centre of the board.
The dome sits on a bent metal plate upon which rests the dice. Pushing the dome down and releasing it triggers the plate to compress and then expand, firing the dice into the under-side of the dome. No shaking the dice and watching it roll off the table, under the fridge, with this game. And a satisfying pop noise too!
- Haunted House
- Much like the fairground attraction, this board game is set up to represent an old haunted house, complete with traps, creaking stairs, cobwebs etc.
This is another of those games that took longer setting up than actually playing the game!
Not just subject to destruction by passing pets, but a strong breeze could blow this one apart!
- Flightdeck
- I can't leave this page without mentioning Flightdeck, possibly the most exciting game I've ever owned, but definitely the most frustrating!
- The idea is really simple, as are all the best ideas. The game is a skills test.
You need a long clear space to play. Pet free!
On the floor you place the Flightdeck, a representation of an Aircraft Carriers flightdeck and you attach a pulley to a door frame or the like at one end of the room.
At the other end of the room you situate your flight deck control joystick.
Suspended from the wire that connects flightdeck, pulley and controller, is a model of the famous Harrier Jump Jet.
Set the Harrier sliding down the cable from the door frame and using the control joystick, try to land the plane on the flightdeck!
No problem you cry! However, nothing is ever that simple!
I spent many a frustrated hour untangling the wires, re-threading pulley's etc.
I don't think I managed to land it correctly more than a couple of times and resetting the kit after each attempt took a life time!
- Other Games worth a brief mention
- remember, Downfall, Connect4, Battleships with lights and sound effects, Airport and so many more.
- Monopoly
- You wouldn't expect me to leave this page without mentioning Monopoly.
Of course we played this all the time, arguing over who was going to be banker.
This game is so famous that you can buy lots of different versions these days, including ones based on your local town.
My brother Derek, combined two of his favourite entertainments by buying the Star Wars Edition.!
One Christmas we even bought him a version where all the playing pieces and cards were made from Chocolate!
Why not try some of these games yourself, many are still available from bigger toy stores.
Try looking for them at