You could settle for a plain old board game. You might cop out by giving the gift of a gift card. Or you could make someone say “WOW!” when they tear off the wrapping paper to find one of the best high tech gaming gifts for 2014.
Here’s the best part: you can order all of these from the comfort of your own home.
You don’t have to be Spock to enjoy a good game of chess – especially when your game glows in the dark. Lit up with LEDs and competitively priced with a decent traditional chess set, you’ll give a battery-free gift that will become one of those great novelty items that get pulled out to play when friends are over.
Or it might get stashed in the closet. It is chess, after all.
#2. The Keyboard Rubik’s Cube
Which method of solving the Rubik’s cube is smarter? Actually solving the puzzle… or peeling the stickers off of it so that they match? With the keyboard Rubik’s cube, it’s not so easy to fake it. Here’s the best part: you can recycle that old Rubik’s cube that has missing stickers on it with step-by-step instructions to make it yourself on Instructables.
The only thing that’s better than building a Jenga tower to topple down at some point is to fling random Angry Birds at the tower just for fun. By combing Angry Birds games and telepods, you can take the cars from Angry Birds Go, the sling shot from the Star Wars set, and the blocks from the Transformers set to have a great time. One warning: the cars fly far and leave marks on the forehead upon impact.
It doesn’t get more high tech than with this option. It’s fully open sourced, so you’ll be able to build it on your own and make a huge LED table to develop your own patterns of light. To be fair, it’s not technically a “game” more than a representation of cellular automation, but still… this would be cool to get as a gift. If nothing else, put the cat on the table and have it chase the lights.
#5. iPawn
It’s not the online pawn shop. It’s the game pieces that actually interact with the surface of your iPad or other compatible device. There are Android systems compatible too for certain smartphones. There are a number of games available for the system, but you’re going to have to import it if you’re not in Europe this year. The best game by far? Ice hockey. Stratego is a very close second.
#6. Doctor Who Risk
There might be a lot of technology inspired by Doctor Who, but this game that’s inspired by the BBC series takes you back to the old school days of staying up to 1am and pretending to be a DJ as you spun records. Take control of your Dalek army, fulfill missions to create bonus Daleks, but watch out for Clara because if the Doctor wins, everyone else loses.
