Best family games of 2024 –

As gamers get older and start families of their own, they naturally want to introduce their little ones to controllers, consoles and all the gaming memories they had when they were young. However, you can’t really give a baby a controller and tell him to steal a car or kill a terrorist, and so here we have the best family-friendly games that are great for youngsters or can be played with them.

5. The Brave Squire

First, we have an absolute visual delight in The Plucky Squire. Bringing a children’s book to life and letting his imagination run wild, the adventure title All Possible Futures is sure to put a smile on your face, no matter your age. It’s wonderfully simple set up and changes genre and even POVs so often that you’ll never get bored in the short time you spend completing The Plucky Squire. A fine adventure, and one that stands out as one of the best of the year.

4. Mouse and crane

This game targets a younger audience, as older kids may find the puzzles a bit easy, but Mouse & Crane is a great co-op puzzle game about three friends fixing machines. You turn clutter into useful tools and can only get through the game if you feel more confident. Otherwise, you can team up with a few friends, or tweak the settings, and enjoy a chilled-out puzzle game with some charming graphics.

3. Princess Peach: Showtime!

Once again, 2024 proved to be a great and surprising year for the Switch. Were there any real GOTY contenders in the hybrid console’s lineup? Maybe not, but this certainly wasn’t the drought year we thought it would be, and Princess Peach: Showtime! proved that early on. By giving Peach a solo adventure, where she transforms into different versions of herself based on her outfit, Nintendo delivered a great family-friendly experience where fun was once again at the forefront of the releases.

2. Astro Bot

Here it is, as you probably expected. Astro Bot’s quick timing requirements might make Sony’s GOTY winner a little more suitable for older kids, or for youngsters to watch a parent play, but the colorful and adorable platform game will have kids reminiscing about their childhood 20 years from now in the same way Mario, Pokémon and more defined our childhood decades ago. The only reason it is not number one is because it only allows one player, which means it cannot exactly bring the family together.

1. Super Mario Party Jamboree

Speaking of bringing the family together (or maybe tearing it apart), nothing is more family-friendly than a virtual board game. With simple rules and just enough randomness to give grandma even a chance to win, Super Mario Party Jamboree meets all the requirements to be both a very good game and a very good family game. If you want to spend what’s left of the holidays playing something with the family, there are few things we can recommend better than Super Mario Jamboree.