Thanksgiving Family Games

A cornucopia of multiplayer treats, from LEGO Horizon Adventures to Jackbox Survey Scramble!

I always gobble up games over the holidays — but I delight most in conscripting family into multiplayer experiments. Here are some Thanksgiving observations:

LEGO Horizon Adventures

A linear but nonetheless clever distillation of Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Adventures also runs well on the Switch — unlike the cumbersome LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. My nephew and I marveled at the game’s commitment to using LEGO for absolutely everything — from snowy terrain to shimmering rivers to robot dinos. Sony even enlisted the original voice cast and I’ll admit I like Ashly Burch’s Aloy here better than her morose performance in Forbidden West.

Monkey Palace

Sticking with LEGO, but shifting to board games. You’d think a competitive brick-building game would come naturally to the company, but Monkey Palace falters. Firstly, take the 10+ age suggestion on the box seriously: it’s too complicated for the young kids that’d be most attracted to its playful theme. Secondly, its pieces don’t snap together as consistently as you’d hope. We knocked over more leafy “decorations” than I could count in the process of building skyscraping towers. My 4-year-old and 8-year-old nephews clearly enjoyed making their own structures out of the game’s pieces more than they actually enjoyed playing by the rules.

Rivals of Aether 2

So self-consciously a Smash Bros clone that one of its publishers is literally named Offbrand Games, Rivals of Aether 2 surprised my brothers-in-law and me with intriguing innovations. Characters play like pastiches of Melee fighters (a bit of Kirby here, a bit of a Captain Falcon there), but then they’ll whip out new abilities. A beetle can suddenly erect an earthen pillar. A hyena can go invisible in dust clouds he can summon. A racoon can tether opponents and then snap to them with ropes. The game lacks both the depth and variety of series it clearly emulates, but it’s impressive work from an indie team.

Jackbox Survey Scramble

Party game purveyor Jackbox has had an unusual year. The company released a slimmer, adults-only collection instead of the regular, annual sequel. Then it followed that up with the $10 Survey Scramble, a morsel that must have been orphaned from typical party pack inclusion because it couldn’t fit this year’s Cards Against Humanity tone. Odd as its origins may be, the new game is one of Jackbox’s best: a unique spin on family feud based on survey data constantly updated by its global player base. While the game’s “Hilo” mode outshines the other four, Survey Scramble entertained us so thoroughly that we persevered through Steam Deck tech problems to show it off to family across the country.

For the record, I also played plenty of Super Mario Party Jamboree, which I’m cooling on (its minigames are wearing thin, and some of its boards are excruciating). I downloaded Pokémon TCG Pocket, which I mostly used to distract my littlest nephew from his constant demands that he watch me play Kirby and the Forgotten Land. I also finished up an Arcs campaign with my longsuffering wife and her brother — I’ll discuss that board game sensation more next month.

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