The Butterfly Garden is a recent game I’ve been playing a lot of.
My suggestion for Betrayal is don’t play it for the competition. Depending on what the betrayal is and when it happens, the experience can be completely lopsided. It’s more fun to play for the story. Make sure you read all the flavor text on the cards out loud.
For co-op, I like Sentinels of the Multiverse, a cooperative superhero card game. Players control original characters, most of them reminiscent of well-known comic book heroes, in fighting an archvillain or (in later expansions) a team of supervillains run by a set of rules (not a player), in an environment that can help or hurt both sides. There is some stuff to keep track of, but the various hero and villain decks have a lot of flavor to them. Figuring out cool combinations is part of the fun.
A few recommendations off the top of my head:
Cooperative (players against the game): Flash Point
Relatively short (half hour or so) and simple: Spendor, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, Cartagena, Quirkle
Somewhat longer (1-2 hours) and somewhat more strategic: Stone Age, Caylus, Puerto Rico
We tend to play card games more than board games. For that:
One Night Ultimate Werewolf, a game of lying. Everyone gets a card with a role, and there are three cards in the middle. During the “night phase”, you’re given instructions for each role during the night (werewolves open their eyes to see each other, the Seer looks at a card, the Robber steals a card and leaves his own, the Troublemaker randomly swaps two cards, and so on). Then, everyone “wakes up” and discusses, honestly or not, what role everyone woke up with. The object for the villagers is to find a werewolf, and the object for werewolves is to survive, which usually involves lying or throwing suspicion onto someone else. Games are quick, so there’s no time for hard feelings to develop.
Piña Pirata, which is kinda young, but still fun. It plays a lot like Uno. Each card in the deck is unique, with either a picture of just one pirate animal, or two pirate animals. You play cards in the middle by matching a pirate (someone plays rat/walrus, you play walrus/octopus, next plays walrus/tiger, next plays tiger/parrot, you get it…). Where it gets complicated and fun is, after each hand, the winner picks three “tiles”. One he keeps (you need four to win), one he discards, and one he lays face-up, with a new rule for the game. Rules are like, “If you played a turtle, you can’t win until someone else plays a turtle”, or, “When a monkey is played, everyone passes their entire hand to the left.” When the new rules get stacked six or seven deep, it gets crazy.
Zombicide is a fantastic coop game. It’s the go-to game for my RPG gaming group when we’re taking a break from our usual campaign. With lots of characters to pick from and many scenarios you can have a lot of variety.
If you like word games I could recommend Upwords.
It’s similar to Scrabble but in this game you can actually stack letters on top of each other 5 tiles high.
Which gives it another dimension of strategy compared to scrabble, which it otherwise resembles.
Do they still make “Scotland Yard”? We played that a lot when the kids were younger. It’s a good 4-5 player cooperative game. Basically one player is on the run in London, and the rest are trying to close in, by using bus, taxi, and subway stops.
I’ll echo recommendations for Pandemic.
We’ve been playing Dominion a lot lately. To try out the base game for free, there is a web version where you can play each other (if you have multiple computers) or play against 1-3 bots.
I really like Dominion, and it does a great job of making every game feel different.
Some people in this thread aren’t paying attention to the fact that you have five players however, because I’m seeing suggestions that top out at 4 (Pandemic). I’d love to recommend Spirit Island, but it’s only up to 4 players without buying in for extras.
I’m going to come down on the opposite side of the fence on Betrayal At House on the Hill; I think the game is a waste of time. The first half (pre-betrayal) is basically a lengthy randomized setup period, since you are literally incapable of making informed decisions about anything since the game goals are basically undefined at that point, so all you’re doing is wandering around aimlessly. And after that the game can easily be unwinnable for one side or the other based on those non-decisions that you made in the first part of the game. It’s felt like an extremely unsatisfying experience every time, because it feels like there’s nothing to actually engage with. If I’m in it for the story, I’m going to play a story game, not a randomly selected blobs of pre-printed text game.
How about Munchkin?
It was created as a parody of D&D and has a lot of snark and comedy in it to keep everyone entertained. The game is technically competitive, but there’s a lot of teamwork in it as well since you can team up to take on monsters and each other and the like.
I was paying attention to the five, I just didn’t know Pandemic had a 4 person limit. We always play with 2! Sorry.
I think Scotland Yard is out of print, but it’s been rethemed as both Letters from Whitechapel (also OOP) and Fury of Dracula (recently printed, but maybe technically OOP recently).
SY is available as an app on phones and tablets, if that’s your cup of tea.
My favourite 5-player game at the moment is Scythe. We’ve played with as few as 3. It is so well balanced, fast-paced, and delightfully tactile (esp. if you replace the cardboard money with the metal coins you can buy separately). It took a while to learn, and I’ve got my explanation for new players down to 20 min. Without exception, every new player has said (by the end) they had a great time.
As for coop: I really enjoy Arkham Horror, which can have as many as 8 players, though I prefer 4-5. I’ve not had as much success recruiting new players, i.e. after playing many are likely not to play again. The learning curve was very steep. But for those handful of players who’ve played many times, it’s a lot of fun.
I love Scythe. It’s far more fiddley than the games mentioned in the OP (Catan is maybe getting into the fiddleynes range of Scythe, but still less so IMO). Still, I agree 100% with Nature’s Call about the balance and pace. After an initial learning curve (say, 1/2 a game or so to get the basic flow), it has a wonderful flow. Highly variable strategies are viable, and my only win comes from finishing the game with my second combat victory without ever putting a mech (units that are emblematic of an aggressive combat strategy) on the board. I’ve seen others win with highly aggressive play and with bunker tactics. It’s very much about assessing your particular setup of faction, board, and neighbors to put together a strategy. IMO, 4 or 6 players is best, 3 and 5 are solid setups as well.
I like Arkham Horror but I’ve come to prefer Mansions of Madness. It’s better at telling a story than Arkham Horror. AH too often feels like random monsters coming at you for random reasons while MoM is designed to tell more of a story. I haven’t played Eldritch Horror, but others have described it to me as a redesign of Arkham Horror with 10 years of game design improvements.
Risk? Axis And Allies?
I think you could easily mod the rules to play with more. There are more than 4 specialist roles, especially if you get some of the follow on versions. I think you could adjust difficulty accordingly and it would definitely be playable.
By Grabthar’s hammer, do not play Risk if you’ve got a competitive crowd. I just played it with my kids and I’m still not sure that one of them might not trash the other’s room or something in revenge. There were tears. I may burn the set to cleanse the house.
Thanks so much for all the recommendations!
I picked up Pandemic Legacy, and we’ve played a few games, but haven’t started the Legacy part. I’m excited to. Unfortunately, it hasn’t grabbed the girls imagination as much as I had hoped, and they’re still more inclined to want to play Mysterium or D&D so far. We’ll start the legacy part this weekend and see how it goes. I may check out a Coue other recommendations too. Thanks so much. Another reason to love the Dope.
I forgot to mention, Zombicide is 1-6 players. (Yes, you can play it by yourself if you really want to but that seems a bit sad to me.)
ugh, why would you inflict those games on people? x.x