Some board games are about strategy. Others are about trivia, luck, or figuring out how to hit certain numbers or collect the right cards. Creative games are different. Instead of relying on book smarts or planning, they ask players to lean into their artsy side. Games nights are spent drawing, inventing, describing, imagining, or being downright unique. You definitely do not have to be an artist to enjoy them, either. In fact, a table full of spectacularly noncreative people can actually lead to the most laughs. These eight games bring out everyone’s creative side.
1. Dixit
Dixit is one of the most beautiful board games ever made, with strange illustrations everywhere you look. Each player has cards covered in weird, dreamlike artwork. The storyteller chooses one and offers the group a clue inspired by the image. It can be a word, phrase, quote, song lyric, or anything else. The trick is coming up with a clue that some players will understand without making the answer obvious to everyone. Everyone turns in a card they think fits the clue, and then players try to pick the storyteller’s original card out of the pile.
2. Telestrations
Telestrations is essentially a cross between the childhood game Telephone and the old-school game Pictionary. As you can imagine, things go wrong really fast in this one. Each player starts with a secret word, draws it, and passes the drawing to the next person, who guesses what it is supposed to be. That person writes out their guess and passes it to someone else, who has to draw it again. By the time the word makes its way back to the beginning of the circle, “snowman” may have somehow become “moldy potato.”
3. Pictionary
Sometimes a classic has stayed popular for so long for very good reason: it really is one of the best. In Pictionary, players are given a word or phrase. Then they have to communicate it by drawing while their teammates shout out guesses. You cannot use letters or numbers, and you definitely cannot speak or use hand motions. The game has been around for decades because the fun is endless. It can be shockingly difficult to draw something like “tax return.”
4. Concept
In Concept, players communicate without speaking, drawing, or acting anything out. Instead, players set markers on a board covered with symbols. Each symbol represents basic categories like colors, shapes, people, locations, actions, and emotions. To get people to guess Titanic, for example, you might place markers on symbols depicting movie, transportation, cold, and water. Working out the clues can be surprisingly complex and fascinating as people come up with clever ways to communicate.
5. A Fake Artist Goes to New York
The premise of this one is incredible: everyone at the table is creating one drawing together, except one person has no idea what they are supposed to be drawing. Players take turns adding a single line to the picture. When it’s time for the “fake artist” to make their mark, they have to try to blend in and look like they know what they’re doing. The dynamic here is interesting: everyone who knows the answer wants to contribute enough to show they aren’t the fake artist, but they also want to avoid making the drawing obvious enough for the fake to catch on. The creativity comes from deciding what your one line will reveal.
6. Pictures
Pictures makes everyone recreate an image, but each player has drastically different tools for making their picture. Examples include colored cubes, wooden blocks, shoelaces, sticks and stones, or a deck of symbol cards. Using only those materials, you have to represent one photograph from multiple options. Everyone else has to try to figure it out. A picture that is incredibly easy to communicate with one material can be close to impossible with another. It’s the kind of game that forces you to get inventive with regular objects.
7. Rory’s Story Cubes
This game is truly wonderful for anyone with a wild imagination. Rory’s Story Cubes is built around nine dice covered in tiny pictures. Players roll the dice and use the face-up images to make up a story. Random objects like a key, alien, lightning bolt, and sheep are all forced into one story, making for very ridiculous adventures. There are no wrong answers, and players can make the stories as elaborate, funny, or oddball as they want. It shows which member of your family has an unexpectedly bizarre imagination.
8. Cranium
Cranium is a longtime game-night staple. It is based on many kinds of creativity, and where you land on the board will determine which crazy creative task you must accomplish. Players might have to sculpt something from clay, draw a picture with their eyes closed, or act out a scene. No one form of creativity dominates, as those with musical skill might be able to hum a tune but be awful at drawing blind. Everyone eventually has to do something they are bad at, and that is usually when Cranium is at its best.