The age on the box is the single most useful thing on it. It tells you whether a game needs reading, how long the turns are, and how much patience it expects. A great game at the wrong age is a frustrating one. Here are our picks for each age group, all in stock now at Cartell Games, DFO Jindalee. Every age below is the one printed on the box.
Buying for Christmas? Order online by Friday 18 December for delivery before Christmas, or use Click and Collect from our DFO Jindalee store until 6pm on Thursday 24 December. For gifts for the rest of the family, see our Christmas 2026 gift guide.
Jump to: Ages 3+ · Ages 4+ · Ages 5+ · Ages 6+ · Ages 7 and 8+ · Ages 10+ · Co-operative games · Bluey games
Best Board Games for 3 Year Olds
At three, a good game is short, has no reading, and has something to do with your hands every turn.
Count Your Chickens Deluxe Edition — $29.99 — Ages 3+
Mother Hen has lost her chicks and everyone helps bring them home. Spin, move, and count the chicks you collect along the way. There's no loser: everyone wins or loses together, which at three is the whole point.
Color Scramble with Cora — $34.99 — Ages 3+
Cora the talking crocodile calls out a colour and you run to find the matching nest. It involves actual running, which is how it holds a three-year-old's attention. Batteries included.
UNO Junior: Bluey — $9.99 — Ages 3+
A first card game with Bluey, Bingo, Bandit and Chilli on the cards. Three levels of play: start with simple matching, then add the action cards as they get the hang of it.
Best Board Games for 4 Year Olds
Four is when real turn-taking starts to stick, and when a small amount of strategy becomes fun rather than confusing.
My First Carcassonne — $59.99 — Ages 4+
Draw a tile and fit it into a growing town to round up the escaped sheep, hens and cows. It keeps the best part of the grown-up game and drops the scoring that sends four-year-olds wandering off.
My First Castle Panic — $49.99 — Ages 4+
Monsters come out of the forest and everyone works together to stop them. It all runs on colour and shape matching, so there's no reading anywhere, and nobody is knocked out.
Hurry Up Chicken Butt — $39.99 — Ages 4+
Hot potato with a clucking chicken. Shake it, do something silly, pass it on before it goes off. The timer runs for a different length every round, so nobody can game it.
Best Board Games for 5 Year Olds
At five, children can handle a few rules and start making real choices, and the games get noticeably better for the adults playing along.
Rhino Hero — $29.99 — Ages 5+
Build a wobbly tower of cards and move a superhero rhino up it. Loud, fast and very good at teaching children to lose gracefully.
Dragomino — $29.99 — Ages 5+
Kingdomino rebuilt for five-year-olds: match terrain tiles and peek under dragon eggs to find baby dragons. It won the Kinderspiel des Jahres, Germany's children's game of the year, in 2021.
Outfoxed! — $49.99 — Ages 5+
A fox has stolen Mrs Plumpert's pot pie. Work together to gather clues and use the evidence scanner to rule out suspects before the guilty fox escapes. A first detective game.
Azul Kids: My Little Mosaic Workshop — $49.99 — Ages 5+
The lovely tiles and colours of Azul, without the scoring maths. Each child fills their own mosaic board a piece at a time.
Best Board Games for 6 Year Olds
Six is where junior versions of the big family games start to work, and where many children are ready for their first proper strategy.
CATAN Junior — $59.99 — Ages 6+
Catan with pirates, goats and molasses, simpler trading and no one knocked out. It keeps the lesson that matters: dice produce resources for whoever is next to them, so where you build counts.
Cascadia Junior — $69.99 — Ages 6+
A junior version of the Spiel des Jahres winner. Draft habitat tiles, collect wildlife, and build your own picture of the Cascadian wilderness.
Go Go Gelato! — $49.99 — Ages 6+
Match the order on the card by tipping gelato scoops between cones, without your hands ever touching the scoops. Looks like a toy, plays like a proper dexterity puzzle, and adults get hooked too.
A Fistful of Daisies — $49.99 — Ages 6+
You're an alpine cow collecting the flowers on your own board and racing back to the cowshed, with a surprising amount of shoving along the way. From Space Cow, the children's label of Space Cowboys.
Best Board Games for 7 and 8 Year Olds
By seven and eight, children can handle hidden information, a bit of arithmetic and games that change as you play them.
Zombie Kidz Evolution — $39.99 — Ages 7+
A co-operative legacy game for kids. Zombies are attacking the school, and as you play you unlock stickers, secret envelopes and new rules, so the game changes over time.
Sleeping Queens — $28.99 — Ages 8+
Invented by a six-year-old, and it shows in the best way. Play kings to wake the sleeping queens, knights to steal other people's, and dodge the dragons. There's a little arithmetic hidden in it too.
Zeus on the Loose — $34.99 — Ages 8+
Mental arithmetic dressed up as Greek mythology. Add cards to a running total, and whoever hits a multiple of ten grabs the little Zeus figure. Hold him when the total reaches 100 to win.
Flippin' Ninjas — $49.99 — Ages 8+
A two-player game of memory and bluffing. Capture your opponent's Daimyo, except your own ninjas are hidden so well that even you don't know which piece is which.
Best Board Games for 10 Year Olds and Up
From around ten, most children can play the same games as the adults. That opens up the whole shop.
Wrath of Fire Mountain — $64.99 — Ages 10+
Dinosaurs, cave people and a volcano, on a board that keeps shifting. Roll dice Yahtzee-style and use the results to claim territory. Designed by Eric M. Lang and Phil Walker-Harding, it plays in under an hour.
For more at this age, browse Family Board Games, see the teens section of our Christmas gift guide, or start with What Are the Best Board Games for Beginners?
Co-operative Games for Kids Who Hate Losing
In a co-operative game, everyone plays on the same team against the game, so the whole table wins or loses together. They're the best fix we know for the child who ends every game in tears. They also let an older and a younger sibling play together without one of them being flattened. Our favourites:
- Count Your Chickens (3+)
- My First Castle Panic (4+)
- Outfoxed! (5+)
- Race to the Treasure! (5+): build a path to the treasure before the ogre gets there
- The Encyclopedia of Monsters (6+): a co-operative memory game that travels the world in search of monsters
- Zombie Kidz Evolution (7+)
More on how they work: What Is a Cooperative Game?
Bluey Games
For Bluey fans, we stock a whole shelf of games based on the show, including UNO Junior: Bluey, Bluey Guess Who? and Chutes and Ladders Bluey, plus Moose Toys games based on individual episodes. See them all in Kids Games.
Getting Started
New to games with your kids? Our parent's guide to getting started with board games covers how to choose, how to teach, and how to survive the first few losses. Prefer puzzles? Browse kids puzzles and floor puzzles. Or come into Cartell Games at DFO Jindalee, tell us the age and what they're into, and we'll help you pick. We also run regular game nights in store, so check the events page.