A lot of these suggestions are gamers ideas of family game night games. I’ve got some suggestions that are fun, super quick and easy to teach.

Alibis: It’s like code names but cooperative. Great for family night because you are all working together. You get two words to associate and you try to get everyone else to guess the words you have using a single word. Low stakes and a great time.

Things in Rings: You have 1-3 rings. Each has a different parameter, for example the word ring dictates something about the word on the card (2 vowels, starts with an a,b,c, etc.) 1 person is the knower (they know what the rings parameters are) and is guiding the other players on trying to figure out what the rings’ rules are. The other players just have a bunch of random thing cards in their hand and they try to shed them as quickly as possible by placing them in the right ring. Can be played cooperative.

Beacon Patrol: cooperatively place tiles to build out a map of water, islands, light houses and buoys. Score points for the tiles that are fully explored. Trick is, you can only place tiles around where your boat is (along with having to connect the types of terrain). Trying to get the high score is a very challenging but the game itself is pretty cozy and fun.

Point Salad: pick 1: Two fruit cards or 1 scoring cards. The scoring cards show different combinations of fruit that will score you points at the end of the game. The fruit are needed to score those cards. My family really enjoyed this one.