 Hey, everybody, welcome to The Wild Dog Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be the best two-player games. Now, maybe you are a homeschool mom like me who is homeschooling an only child, which means that you frequently find yourself in position where it is just you and your kiddo, and you need great games that play well with just two players. Or maybe you have two kids at home, and instead of having to always play a game with them, you want great two-player games so that they can play a game by themselves. Either way, I've got you covered with some of the best games for one and two players. Now, I said one or two players because some of my favorite games when it comes to homeschooling an only and two-player games are games that she can play by herself or games that we can easily play together. There's not a lot of them on the market, but when I find them, I immediately scoop them up because those are hands down my favorite. So the first one I have is Canoodle Gravity. This one is super simple. Basically, as a single-player game, she plays it like Tetris and just tries to get them all in here together. As a two-player game, we compete and we both put them in and whoever has something sticking out of the top is the loser or the other person, won. So I love that that game she can play individually or we can play it together. And I really like head-to-head games like that. Also along those same lines is Brain Waves. There are two or three different ones in this series. Here I have the Wise Whale and the Astute Goose. This one is one to four players. This one is one to five players. I love that they both play in about 10 to 15 minutes. Basically, they are kind of like memory-brain-exercise type of games where she can play by herself or we could play the two of us. And if Kevin's around, he can join us as well. So these are great games because like I said, you can play by yourself, get better at it, and then add in some more family members. Quick Pucks is another one that she can play by herself to get better at it. So a single-player game or you can play head-to-head and play two players. Basically, you are competing to scoot your pucks around on the board and whoever gets their pucks lined up to the card first rings the bell and the winner of that card. The Genius Square. This is one that we've absolutely loved. We've gotten a ton of play lately. This is one or two players. So basically what it is, is you roll these little number dice and you put the little wooden pegs wherever you're supposed to put them. Then when you start, you have all of these pre-made pieces that you have to make fit on the board. And they will always fit on the board perfectly. You just have to figure it out. So you can play it by yourself or you can play head-to-head and see who wins. Again, seriously, an amazing game. We've really enjoyed that one. And so along that same lines would be the Genius Star. So exact same concept, just a little bit more difficult because now instead of trying to get it in a square, you're trying to get it inside the shape of a star. And then the last game that I have that can be played single player or multiplayer is the five minute mystery. This can actually be played up to six players, so one to six. So it's another one that they can play by themselves or you can play two player or add an even more family members. And basically it's just you're trying to solve a mystery. Think of it kind of like a clue type of a game, play just a little bit different. Okay, now let's get into the specific two-player games or games that play really well as two-player. So the first one I have is Banana Graham's Dual. You will see in this stack that I'm gonna show you that I actually went out of my way to purchase a few like this where it's a very popular game that plays well with a lot of people, but they turned around and made a two-person version. And because there's only ever two or three of us, sometimes the versions like this fit our family dynamic better. So yes, we have regular Banana Graham's. Yes, if the three of us are playing, it works well. But if there's only two of us playing, this two-player head-to-head version is a lot better. And it's a little bit more fun because it's dice or cubes instead of tiles. So changes it up a little bit. We also have, sorry, some of these are a little loud, canoodle head-to-head. Basically, as you can see here in the picture, you have a card in the middle and it has a kind of starter puzzle on it, if you will. And then you have to race each other head-to-head to find out who can fit the rest of their pieces in. It's a very similar one to the Genius Square or Genius Star. But I mean, you could play it individually, but it's not set up for that. So you really need two players for this one. But that's one that's gotten a lot of love in this house too. A little wordy. This is one that in the last two years, we have really, really grown to love. It is a word game. Think of it kind of like a Wheel of Fortune, but with a word. So you pick a word and you have these little bonus cards that will cost you, but they will help you figure out what your opponent's word is. And you're playing head-to-head to see who can figure out the other person's word first. Now I will say when we first started playing this, because we were not on equal playing fields, it says 10 plus. We started playing when Emily was about eight. Her and Kevin would be on a team together. And the reason we did that is because it was easy for me to pick a five or six letter word out of the letters that I had, where Emily was only picking three or four letter word because her vocabulary just wasn't as large as mine. Kevin and her teaming up and playing this together for like a year to get used to it really helped. So if you wanna get this for a younger player, you may have to play like that for a little while until they're kind of on your level vocabulary wise or dumb your words down and be more fair. Next up, we have Patchwork Express. I really, really love this one. It's a two player game. It plays in under 10 minutes. So it's one of those that's a quick playing game and it's a tile laying game. So you're basically trying to lay down the tiles to make quilts. We also have Aquilin Skulled or Git Skulled. This is another tile laying game. You have all of these little ocean tiles that you're laying down and you're trying to create schools or your own groups of them or claim the groups for your own so you can have more than your opponent. Here we have Blockus Duo. So this is one that we're always talking about. We have original Blockus. We played original Blockus frequently, but when you're playing with two players, you each have to play two colors. If you play with three players, somebody has to play two colors. It just wasn't great and Kevin didn't love Blockus. So getting the Duo version allowed me and Emily to just play kind of at what I feel like is our full potential head to head, not having to try to split between two colors. It seems trivial, but it also made the game go a little bit faster, which means we could play it more often. So if you only have two players and you're trying to figure it out, Duo over the regular original, in my opinion. Okay, then we have the traditional battleship. Seriously, amazing two player game, head to head. I love that everything is contained in here. This is one that she also packs and takes to her. Nana's house when she goes over there because they love playing each other in battleship because it's one of those classic games everybody knows how to play. So it is an amazing one to have in your repertoire. And it really helps kind of like with coordinates and grids and plotting. So I have found that very useful in our home school. Then we have Hive, which is kind of a chess version of bugs. So you have all of these different insects or bugs, if you will, and they can all move in different ways. So obviously your B is your queen B. They have different ways they can move and it's just head to head, one of you is black, one of you is white, and you're trying to compete to not get surrounded, so not get checkmated. It's very, very fun though. This has been one we got to go with our mini beast unit study, but it has been one that we really, really liked and loved because Emily loves chess. Next up, we have war. Now, this could be any kind of war. These just happen to be math wars that I have recently purchased. In the past, we have had addition war, multiplication war. This is decimal war and fraction war. Really, you can just use a deck of cards. War is a great head to head game. So you're always, it plays well with just two players. I really, really like throwing in the math twist to it because, well, I will take any extra chance I can to do some extra math work. You can also use a regular deck of cards and flip up two cards at a time and add them or subtract them or multiply them. It doesn't really work well with division, but that way you can kind of do basic math functions with just a deck of cards. Still play war, still a great two player game, and you don't have to buy a specific deck of cards. You could do something similar with fractions and decimal. You can make your own. I just love that these were made for me. They work well with two players and again, it sneaks in a little bit of extra math practice. Word on the street. We had word on the street, junior for years. Now, technically, this game can be played with two to eight players, but really it's a head to head type of game. And so even if you have more than two players, you just have two teams. So it really works well for two players because you're just playing head to head. Basically, you have a street with letters on it you pull random cards that have categories. You come up with a word that fits that category and you drag the little letter tiles back and forth on the street, whoever gets certain amount that's different in junior and the original off of the street onto their side first wins. When Emily was really young, we would play instead of with the category cards on the junior version, we would play with like sight word cards like flash cards that I had made. Then as she got older, again, her and Kevin would be on a team together against me. Now she kicks my butt with no extra help because her vocabulary and spelling is rival's mind. But it's amazing. You can get junior or the original. The only difference in the junior is some of the letters that are not shown here are on the junior. This one makes it a little more difficult. You don't have the entire alphabet and the categories are a little more hard. So either one is a great, it just depends on where your kids are age level, but they both work really well for two players. It's also a great way to sneak in some vocabulary and spelling into your home school as well. Mancala, this is probably one, if not the most played two player game in our house because it is such a quick play game. I don't know if they tell you how long but we typically play it in less than 10 minutes. It doesn't take much to set up. It doesn't take much to learn it or remember it because sometimes we have to refresh our memory on playing games. It is meant to be a two player game. There's no reading, there's no math. Like literally it says six plus. I think you could probably even teach a four or five year old to play it. You are essentially just picking up the rocks from one cup and dropping one at a time around. There is some challenging to it because there are certain things like if you drop it in the end, you get to go again if you drop it across from an empty one you get the stones from the opposite side. You're trying to collect the most stones but theoretically it doesn't require math. It doesn't require reading. Almost any age can play and you as an adult are not at a disadvantage or an advantage when you're playing against a younger kid. So it's one of those that we've played for years. It's one of the easiest ones that kept us on the same level and I love it for that reason. Mastermind. This is a code breaking game. Basically one of you is a code maker while the other one is the code breaker. There is a kid version of this too. The kids has little animals. We have both of them. But basically one player is making a code with these little colors while the other one is trying to guess the code. That's another great head to head game. And then we have really any version of chess. Our personal favorite version happens to be no stress chess. I love that it came with the cards that it helped us learn how to play chess and that then we could just flip the board over and play chess regularly. If we're not in the mood for like a full blown chess game or head to head, whatever, we can go back to playing with the cards. We can change it up a little bit. But essentially any version of checkers or chess obviously is a great two player game. This, like I said, just happens to be our favorite one. And if you're not sure what I'm talking about when you first start playing it, basically you have this deck of cards and you each take turns drawing a card. And that is the piece you have to move and it tells you on the card how to move that piece, like what it can and can't do. So it kind of restricts you because you can only move the piece that you flipped but it also teaches you how those pieces move. So like I said, we go back and forth. Sometimes we play with the card, sometimes we play without them. Just depends on what mood we're in. Okay, and then last I have two games that can be played with two to eight players but they play really well with two players because they're super fast paced. And it's, I find easier to play really fast paced games with less people because you don't have like the cards flying all over. The first one is spotted next to mancala. This is actually no, not even next to mancala. This is hands down the most played game in our house. We have every version of spotted ever created. The holiday versions, the themed versions. One lives in our car, one lives in my purse. It's one of those that takes up very little room. At restaurants, we play it. When we're waiting on anything, we play it because it is just a picture matching game. You're just trying to match the pictures. There's always one in common. It's another one that you don't have to have math or reading skills. It puts you on an even playing field. She takes this one too. My mom's house frequently to play with her. She has done it. I don't know. We've probably played spotted since she was three or four. It's just one of those games. They have ABC versions. They have one, two, three versions. They have Star Wars, Harry Potter, whatever your kid is into, get them one because it's a great game. And it's really, really great for like visual discrimination too. And then the last one I have is word around. This is a fast paced game where you are racing to try to unravel a word on this circle. And whoever says it first gets the card. It's a fast paced game. It can be played with up to eight players. I think two players is perfect because any more players in your, like I said, throwing cards and not everybody can see it. Two players plays this game really, really well. So I really love this as a two player game. Now I would absolutely love it if you would leave me your favorite one to two player games in the comments because I'm always looking to add new games to our game school shelves.