Junior Variant

You can probably guess which is which.

The Junior Variant of a board game is a variant created for young children. These variants are often rethemes of the board games that they are based on but the rules may also be streamlined to be more accessible to their target audiences, notably kids. The main motive for making these games could be for different reasons:

1. To get kids involved in the board game hobby.
2. Money, Dear Boy
3. Allow children to play with other children to better socialise with each other.
4. The original game may have rules that are too complex for 10-year-olds and below to understand and teach.
5. To make a game that is usually for an older audience more appropriate for kids.

Generally, the theme may be Lighter and Softer for children, especially with stuff like murder mysteries or war being changed to something more suitable for the target demographic, with some starring younger versions of the characters and an Art Shift coming naturally as well. If it's a trivia game, for instance, the topics covered will be changed to better suit their knowledge level.

Compare with Abridged for Children.

Please note: When adding an example, you need to state not only what makes a game a junior variant, but why a particular change was made in order to prevent zero context examples as these examples don't have their own pages.

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Examples:

Puzzle Games

• Some easier Sudoku variants aimed at younger audiences have 6 or even 4 squares instead of the conventional 9, and may even have pictures of pop culture characters instead of numbers.

Tabletop Games

• 7 Wonders has a simplified, more family-friendly variant in 7 Wonders Architects. Changes include removing the three-age structure in favor of playing a single round, making every building free to take (meaning resources are only spent on Wonder stages), making the non-wildcard resources largely interchangeable^note The costs to build Wonder stages are stuff like "2 resources of the same type" or "3 different resources". In contrast, costs in the original game require specific resources, with different types being favoured by different strategies. and simplifying decisions by only giving you 2-3 simple cards to choose from. Another clear sign that this was made for kids is that the manual tells you to make a horn sound when you take a red card with 1 or 2 horn icons on it and have to flip over that number of conflict tokens.
• Apples to Apples Junior uses more simple topics than its counterpart.
• Betrayal at Mystery Manor: A Scooby-Doo retheme of the original Betrayal with rewritten rules for the traitor, new haunts, and, ironically, no Betrayal.
• Cards Against Humanity released a print-and-play version that tones down the crass nature of the game with new black and white cards that are more family-friendly. It eventually got a physical release as Cards Against Humanity: Family Edition.
• Catan Junior removes the colonialism themes replacing it with a pirate theme and a non-modular board that is easier to set up.
• Clue Junior moves over the murder mystery theme to mysteries like The Case of the Missing Cake to The Case of the Broken Toy. This is achieved by the bases (replacing the clue cards) you snap onto the characters which have times on the bottom, and also furniture that details what they had.
• Cranium Junior is a Themed Stock Board Game themed after Spongebob Squarepants.
• Game of Life Junior is all about adventure and going to places such as going to a zoo, or the beach. The main goal is to be the first player to collect 10 stars and has a smaller dial.
• Krosmaster Junior features a streamlined system, with each player controlling a single character instead of a team, a smaller board, and a simplified combat system.
• Monopoly Junior features anthropomorphised versions of the Monopoly playing pieces from whichever year it was released as well as a smaller board meaning fewer properties and a shorter playtime. The board itself is amusement park-themed and has much smaller money denominations to make it easier for kids to count.
• My First Bananagrams has a reduced number of tiles due to the combo tiles that have two letters instead of one. This makes it less likely to lose tiles.
• My First Carcassonne has larger tiles and meeples for smaller hands than its grown-up counterpart. Further, tiles have roads in all-directions, meaning they connect to all pre-existing tiles, and scoring is simplified to "first to complete 8 roads".
• My Lil' Everdell removes the seasons from its older counterpart, toning down the complexity of the rules and number of components. The theme is also shifted from actual construction to role-play with the kids of Everdell building a make-play town.
• Junior Colourbrain has questions relating to colour geared more toward kids and a smaller box.
• Mysterium Kids: Captain Echo's Treasure has players try to figure out picture cards using a tambourine to make sounds that the players need to use to guess where the titular ghost's treasures are in a mansion.
• My First Operation switches the subject to a pig named Roly (who has a tummy ache to sort out) with larger pieces to take out.
• Pictionary Junior uses a more colourful board than its grown-up variant.
• Risk Junior shifts the theme of war and conquest to a pirate theme which also cuts down on the playtime. The main goal is to have the most points by collecting treasure
• Scattergories Junior: Shortened and simplified with a 20-sided die to determine a "key" letter and then players have limited time to think of unique words that start with the letter and have to do with the topic but players can also score without using the target letter.
• Scotland Yard Junior: The art is noticeably much brighter and the component count is reduced to reduce the complexity of set-up and packing away. The rules have been changed to accommodate the target demographic as well.
• Scrabble Junior features a double sided game board. One for the standard game, and one for a special crossword spelling game. It also has scoring tokens to track the player's scores.
• Scruples for Kids was a version of the popular "A Question of Scruples" game with more kid-friendly moral dilemmas.
• My Little Scythe: This variant started off as a fan-made variant by a daughter and father based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic with streamlined and simplified rules because they struggled to teach other kids the rules of the original game. This then got an official publication by Stonemaier Games, the publisher that published the original Scythe, with its own original branding.
• Spot It!/Dobble Kids has many different variants and themes such as the alphabet, numbers and shapes as well as animals, which are typical themes that the demographic is mostly known for.
• Taboo Junior uses simpler words for players to guess all around.
• Ticket to Ride First Journey: These games come in both USA and Europe flavours like their older cousins. Both have scaled-down boards and reduced play times.
• Tiddlywinks: Inverted. Most people, at least in the USA, are only familiar with the kids' version, which is why the game tends to be considered a silly or wimpy activity. But the "adult" version of Tiddlywinks uses higher-end game pieces and more complex rules, making it a serious competitive game, especially in the U.K. (Note that there is no difference in the names for the adult and child versions of the game, apart from the kid-oriented artwork on the box.)
• Trivial Pursuit for Kids features more kid-friendly topics that are more suitable for this demographic.
• Uno Junior: Slightly lighter rules for children to learn and a smaller deck so that cards are less likely to be lost.
• Yahtzee Junior is a variant that replaces the numbers on the dice with popular characters (or various animals for non-licensed versions), with one in particular counting as the player's choice. The scoring sheet also has five of each character in a row, and color-coded tokens are placed on each tile based on what the player rolled.

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