Budget friendly ways to enjoy playing and discovering new games

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Playing games is a great way to relax and enjoy spending your free time, but it’s easy to find yourself getting bored of playing the same games all the time, or not having enough people to play them with. 

The other problem is that most of us are on a tight budget at the moment, so we don’t have a lot of disposable income to spend on leisure time.

We’re going to look at a few wallet friendly ways to play and discover new games when you’re on a budget, ranging from popular on demand games to a Kickstarter For Board Games.

Board game cafes

This is one of my favourite ideas! A couple of these have popped up in my town recently and it’s such a good way to spend a free afternoon, with family or friends.

A board game cafe is basically a cafe where they provide a large collection of board games that you can take to your table and play while enjoying a coffee or cake with others. It’s a good way of being able to try out new games you’ve not played before, without having to buy them and is quite a cheap but fun way to spend time, especially on a rainy day.

If you love board games but don’t have lots of friends that play too, a lot of board game cafes run board gaming evenings where you can just turn up and join with others to play games – a great way to meet new people and make new friends with similar interests.

It’s definitely worth checking our whether there are any board game cafes in your area.

Online games sites

If you prefer your games to be digital, then sites like Solitaire.org are a good option for playing games online. One of the main downsides of online games is how often they are full of in game ads, but a huge benefit to this particular site is that it’s completely ad free, so you can play uninterrupted.  

Like the name suggests, they offer lots of different variations of solitaire (personally I prefer the classic Klondike version) but they also have tons of other different types of game to try, such as Crosswords and Sudokus. 

My husband loves his daily Sudoku, but I enjoy the word and letter games, like the Letter Scramble one pictured above – word games suit my brain better than number games. The only problem is that it can be a bit addictive trying to beat your high score!

Free and cheap games for kids

If you’re looking for great free online games for kids to play, then you can’t go wrong with the CBBC kids games page. There are loads of different fun and educational games to choose from and you can sort by theme such as adventure or strategy.

Another way to find cheap games is to look in charity shops, they are often full of board games and puzzles, especially kids games. They usually cost just a couple of pounds – you can even donate them back when you’ve had enough and want to try something new.