Family game night

The hard part of a family game night is rarely the game, it's the spread of ages. A game that suits a ten-year-old bores a grandparent, and one that suits a five-year-old gets a shrug from the teenagers. The trick is to pick by how much reading and rule-learning a game needs, not by how young or old it looks.

Memory Match (ages 5 and up, one to six players) and Snakes & Ladders (ages 5 and up, two to four) need nothing but looking and counting, so the smallest players can win them. Connect 4, Hangman and Word Scramble are all rated 6 and up and are ones most people already know. Ludo (6 and up) takes a little longer, twenty to forty minutes, so it suits a lazy Sunday better than a school night.

If you're not sure, start with Memory Match. It's the great equaliser: children are often better at it than adults, and it's over in a few minutes if attention drifts.

One person creates the room, on a laptop, a tablet or their own phone, and everyone else joins with the four-digit code or by scanning the QR code. Nobody needs an account. Players choose a nickname and an avatar, which younger children tend to enjoy more than the game itself.

If you can, put the host device on the TV or a big screen so the board is shared, like a physical game. If you can't, it works just as well with everyone on their own phone, which is also the way to play when family is in different houses. A video call running alongside covers the rest.

Most of the games can also fill empty seats with a computer player, so a two-person evening with a child still gets you a full table of Ludo or Snakes & Ladders.

The advantage over a physical game is that there's nothing to put back. Nobody loses a die, and the game is exactly as it was the last time. Keep one device as the permanent host, a tablet on the kitchen counter works well, and start a new room whenever you sit down.

Rounds are short, so you can stop when the youngest one's had enough without abandoning a half-finished board. Play again keeps the same room and players and just resets the game, and any of you can switch to a different game from the results screen.