Back when I was in high school Euchre was all the rage. Every day the lunch room was filled with sets of kids playing card games. While Euchre is great, I’m happy there are now so many other choices for great portable games you can bring to school.
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The kind of games will kids want to bring to school
We knew we did something right when our oldest daughter was about a week into highschool when she came to me asking if I could help her with a problem. She needed something to do with her friends at lunch and sometimes during classes with a lot of downtime. She was looking for some games to bring to school.
The problem was that she has a rather large but also very full and very heavy backpack, that she totes around every day. So whatever she decided on had to be both small and light.
In addition to that she needed games with very short play times, as quick as 15 minutes for breaks and classes and shorter than 45 minutes for lunch.
Finally we had to make sure that the games would appeal to teenagers. To her this meant avoiding anything that looked like a kids game as well as anything too complicated.
Thinking about that first consideration, size and weight, the first thing you have to do is forget the box. A lot of games are in boxes that are far larger than they need to be. This is usually due to a mix of wanting a good shelf presence when on the game store shelf as well as making sure the components are kept safe while being shipped overseas.
Don’t be afraid to re-box a game to make it more portable. This could be as simple as taking the components out and tossing them into ziplock bags, or using the box from a smaller game to hold the game you want to bring, or using some other kind of box.
A great solution for this is the plastic Photo Cases you can buy pretty much everywhere. I mean the kind that is meant to hold old photos in small plastic cases, that often comes with a bigger case to hold a bunch of the smaller ones.
I have friends that have one of these Photo Cases that holds ten different games, which they toss in their trunk so they always have games with them. Now I doubt most highschoolers will want to carry a full case, but fitting a few of the smaller cases into a backpack can work great.
I know it’s a travesty for those who like to show off their shelfies, but you can even keep these smaller games in the case and that way the kid can grab different games from it on different days.
As for game weight and playtime your best resource for that is checking the stats for the game on Board Game Geek. Game time and weight there is determined by the community and I find, especially for the playtimes, it’s usually more accurate than the info put on the box by the publisher.
We actually covered this topic way back on Episode 153 of The Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast, Fast Times at Meeple High. Feel free to give that a listen when you have time.
Great board games to bring to high-school.
Normally when I create game recommendation lists like this I put the games in no particular order. That’s not true here. Here the games are listed (roughly) in order of box size and weight (a.k.a. how hard they will be to pack in a backpack). Note this isn’t taking into consideration the fact that many games can be re-boxed, as noted above.
Love Letter – One of the most portable games I own is Love Letter. While the version I have comes in a box, most versions of Love Letter consist of eighteen cards, rules, and some tokens in a soft drawstring bag.
Besides portability another great thing about Love Letter is that it is available in many different themes, some of which really change up the rules. Which means, you can pick up the version that most appeals to your kid and their friend group.
Playing Cards – There’s nothing wrong with going old school and bringing a deck of traditional playing cards to school. That’s how we did it when I was a kid. My high-school lunch room was always full of kids playing Euchre.
The one concern here is that some schools may ban playing cards because of their association with gambling, so you may want to check that first.
The best thing about playing cards is the sheer number of different games out there. You could probably play a new game each week, right through high-school and into your College or University years.
Hoyle’s Encyclopedia of Card Games is still one of the best places to look for various games that can be played with a deck of cards. I’ve also seen the Pengiun Book of Card Games recommended (and it may be a bit more up to date).
Hanabi – In this unique cooperative card game you don’t get to look at your own cards. Where this one shines as a highschool game is the way players are forced to work together while using limited communication. It’s great for getting to know other people by the way they play the game, and there’s no competition so less potential confrontation.
Note I said cards, but there are versions of this game that use tiles instead. The cards are more portable and a better choice for this article, but you may want the tiles for playing at home.
The Game – Sticking with cooperative card games, next I want to recommend The Game.
Despite the fact it has a terrible name and will lead to “You just lost.” jokes, this is a really solid cooperative card game that sounds super simple. You just have to play cards numbered one to one hundred by placing them into four piles. Two going up and two counting down.
The problem is you have a limited hand and are forced to play two cards a turn. This is not an easy game to win but it’s always close and tends to make people want to try again right after losing.
The Mind – It makes sense to list The Mind next as it’s considered a follow up to The Game.
Similar to The Game, this is another cooperative card game where the players are trying to play cards in numeric order. The trick in The Mind is that players can’t communicate with each other at all.
Each game starts with only one card, but as you finish each level you add another card. There’s a life system and a set of throwing stars you can use when you are stuck, but other than that it’s just a matter of trying to put down cards at the right time.
Roll For It – A great small box game that can be super quick to play is Roll For It. This is a push your luck dice game where players are trying to roll lots of dice to match scoring cards that are in play. The first player to fill a card gets to keep it and each card is worth points at the end of the game based on how hard it is to fill.
There are a few different editions of this game. Normally, I would recommend Roll For It Deluxe Edition, but it comes in a larger than needed tin that’s probably not great for a backpack. For bringing to school you would be better off with one of the smaller cardboard box versions. The colour you get doesn’t matter unless you are trying to get two sets to be able to play with more people.
Red 7 – The only rule in the game Red 7 is that by the end of your turn you must be winning the game.
The trick here is that there are a bunch of restrictions on what cards you can play and each time you play a card it changes the rules of the game. So it’s up to each player to play their cards in a way so that the rules match the cards they have played so that at the end of each turn they are winning.
While it may take a couple of rounds to fully understand, I think Red 7 is a fascinating game. One that I love coming back to again and again. To keep things fresh there is also a set of advanced rules with even more ways to manipulate the cards and scoring.
Kiss the Goblin – If your kid, or their friends, are into Dungeons & Dragons, Kiss the Goblin is a fantastic choice to bring to school. Even if they don’t know D&D, but are familiar with the nine-alignment meme, this game will go over great.
Each turn a player gets a random alignment and then must answer a question as a character with that alignment. All of the other players then vote on which alignment they think the player has, points are awarded for correct guesses and the game continues.
My daughter brings this one with her to school all the time, though sometimes she just brings a small stack of the cards instead of the full game as the box is a bit thick.
Learn more about this great alignment based party game in our Kiss The Goblin Review.
Skull – As long as you don’t let the teachers know that Skull is based on a biker drinking game, it makes a great choice to pack for some highschool gaming.
This is a bluffing game that uses coaster-like cards and plays up to six players. You can play with even more if you have more than one set. At one point there was a second game in the series called Roses which was specifically created for playing with up to twelve players, but that seems to be have been discontinued. There’s still no reason two sets of Skull wouldn’t work though.
Each round players bid how many coasters they can flip without revealing a skull. If they manage to pull it off they win the round. If they fail, they lose a coaster. Two successful flips wins the game, but losing all of your coasters knocks you out.
Skull King – Talking about Skull reminded me of Skull King. Skull King is a bidding based, trick-taker that features four suits, one of which is always trump, plus a number of special cards.
Escape cards will never win a trick, mermaids defeat all numbered cards, pirates defeat mermaids and all numbered cards, the Skull King defeats all pirates and numbered cards but is wooed away by the mermaids, etc. All of this is combined with a bid based scoring system.
Normally this game is played for ten rounds and each round your hand size grows by one. This can take quite a long time to play through, so when bringing it to school you might want to use one of the quicker variant round rules.
Rumble in the Dungeon – Sometimes, on a school day, you want to play a game but you don’t want to actually think too hard. That’s where Rumble in the Dungeon (or the alternative Rumble in the House) comes in.
Build a dungeon out of tiles. Place a character in each room and a chest in the room furthest from the door. Each turn players can move one character or when there is more than one character in a room they can eliminate one of them. The trick is that no one knows which character everyone else is playing.
Score points based on the order you are eliminated in, with bonus points for if someone escapes with the treasure.
Rumble in the House is the same game without the fantasy theme. Technically you can combine the two versions, though I’ve never tried it.
Smug Owls – The 2024 Origins Award winning Best Party Game, Smug Owls is a great small box game that takes only seconds to learn and plays in about fifteen to twenty minutes.
First you randomly generate a riddle, then it’s up to the players to come up with an answer to that riddle. The last player to come up with an answer becomes the Smug Owl and gets to award points based on their opinion of the other players’ answers.
This can be a great get to know you game as each round tends to organically end up in conversations about why certain answers were given.
Sushi Go! – Both of my kids love eating sushi, so of course a great game for them to bring to school is Sushi Go!
This is a quick playing drafting card game where you get a hand of cards, pick one to keep and then pass the rest on to the next player. The cards you keep form a tableau with each different type of sushi in the game scoring differently. It’s super simple to learn but even after your first play you will see the depth here as you know exactly what cards you just passed and can expect some of those cards to come back around.
If your kid has a bit more room in their backpack I actually recommend Sushi Go Party! as it includes more sushi varieties and other rule tweaks. However, it does come in a larger tin instead of a card pack.
The Deadlies – Many kids grow up playing UNO. Well we like to call The Deadlies “UNO but for hobby gamers”. This is a hand shedding card game with a ton of take that elements.
Your goal is to void your hand by playing sets of cards from seven suits, one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins (don’t worry, the art is a cutesy, animal based, family friendly version of the sins). Each suit does something different. For example Greed lets you steal another players card, you get penalized for having Sloth cards in play for too long, and if you don’t have too much Envy you can swap hands with another player.
Normally you start with a hand of six cards and when you void your hand the first time you drop to four, and then two, winning if you void your hand a third time. If you are short on time you could always start with less cards.
Check out our The Deadlies Review for more information on this chaotic card game.
Point Salad – As an example of a game that comes in a big box that can really be shrunk down, I offer you Point Salad. This amusingly named point salad game is all about collecting sets of veggies and scoring those sets at the end of the game.
Each turn you either take a plate (a.k.a. a point scoring card) or you two face up veggies. Later if those plates don’t work out for you, you can flip them to turn them into veggies. Once all the cards are drafted, you compare your collected veggies to your scoring plates, add it up and see who wins.
What I love about this game is that it plays just as well at all player counts and takes seconds to teach. It’s only once you’ve played a round that you really get what’s going on and then each play just gets better and better as you figure out both the game and your opponents.
Honourable Mention – Deck Construction Games:
Collectible Card Games and Living Card Games – There are a huge variety of both trading card games and non-collectible card games out there that can be perfect for playing at school.
What I’m looking at here are games where each player builds their own deck to play with between games. Then they just have to bring that deck (and maybe some tracking tokens and other accessories) with them to school to play with their friends.
Magic: The Gathering is of course the biggest one out there, along with Pokemon The Card Game. Recent popular entries into this field are Disney Lorcana and Star Wars Unlimited.
Along with the collectible games there are also a number of non-collectible deck construction games like The Lord of the Rings Card Game, Arkham Horror the Card Game, and Marvel Champions.
Along with playing, friends can also build their decks together, trade cards, etc. Just watch for the playtimes on some of these games as they may go longer than you expect.
There you have my list of great games that your kids can toss into a back pack and bring to school. What did I miss? What games would you put on this list? Let me know in the comments below or make a post over on The Tabletop Bellhop Discord.
