Festive top fives for 2025: Crowd Pleasers

Welcome to our series of top five games for 2025! It’s been a few years since we put together a Christmas games guide, so we thought it was time for a refresh. To kick things off, here are five games that you simply can't go wrong with if you're wanting something to entertain almost any group over the festive season. Presenting... our top five crowd pleasers!

It's very possible that Hues & Cues is the most popular game in the Treehouse library: our copy seems to be in use almost all the time! In this engaging party game, one player attempts to direct the rest towards a specific space in a vast grid of colours using one- or two-word clues, with points for guessers who get within reach of the correct answer. It's a simple but highly effective formula, offering a great time for 3-10 players aged 7 and up... as long as they don't suffer from colour-blindness, which would be a major barrier for enjoyment in this one, just to mention.

Wandering Towers is a touch more complex than the other games in this section, but it's totally worth the effort, we promise! In this chaotic racing game, each player takes charge of a team of student wizards who are trying to reach the Ravenskeep to take their potions exam. Everyone is late and no one has prepared, but worse still, the towers on the way keep being shifted around by other students keen to entrap the competition and steal their magical powers! Can you keep track of your team and get them safely to their destination? Ideal for 3-6 players (it can be played with two but it's better with more) aged 8+.

So Clover! is a long-term favourite at The Treehouse, perfect who like their games relaxed and puzzley. In this cooperative word game, each player creates a word puzzle for the others to solve by coming up with clues that link the two words positioned around the edge of their clover board, before the word cards on the board are removed and shuffled. The challenge for the other players is that to recreate the starting card arrangement from the linking clues. Full of creativity and lateral thinking, So Clover is so addictive that you might just play it all afternoon! It technically only goes up to four players, but more people can join in with the guessing, or for larger groups try Just One, which has a similar vibe but works best with 5 - 7 players.

Six Second Scribbles is a delightful small-box drawing game from  independent, UK-based publisher Gamely. In this game of frantic scribbling, players get a list of 10 things in a particular category (e.g. "stuff you'd take camping", or "things that are yellow"), and try to draw as many as they can in just one minute. The extreme time limit has the great side-effect of levelling the playing field between the competent artists and everyone else - no one can draw a great backpack in six seconds! Everyone draws the stuff on their own card at the same time, then passes their drawings to another player to decipher when the time is up. Both the guesser and the artist get points for correct guesses. With simple rules, a flexible player-count and plenty of guaranteed hilarity, this is a perfect Christmas-crowd-pleaser.

If your family love a trivia game at Christmas, then C.D.S.K. is the perfect option to get you out of a Trivial Pursuit rut. The name is a little unmemorable, but the game design is rock-solid: on their turn, players (or teams) are given a category, say 'Lord of the Rings' or 'Christmas movies', and say how knowledgeable they are on that subect out of ten. They the get a question of the corresponding level of difficulty, and if they get it right, can move forward that number of spaces along a track towards the finish line. We love the combination of racing, push-your-luck and quality question-writing, which combine to give a fresh, fun and tension-packed take on this much-loved genre. 

Thanks for reading our top five crowd pleasers. We’ll be back soon with the next instalment in our top 5 series: stocking fillers!