Picture a room in a youth hostel in Valletta. Five countries are represented around a table: a Pole, two Germans, a Portuguese student, and someone from Lithuania. None of them speak the others' native languages. But they've been playing the same game for two hours, and the conversation — in a mixture of English, gestures, and laughter — is flowing freely.
This isn't an unusual scene in European youth exchanges. Board games have quietly become one of the most effective non-formal education tools in the Erasmus toolbox — and the reasons why are worth understanding, both for youth workers and for the backpackers and exchange students who encounter them.
What Makes Board Games Uniquely Effective for Mixed Groups
The specific value of board games in international youth settings comes down to a few structural properties that digital games and passive activities lack.
They create a level playing field
In a youth exchange group, participants arrive with very different social comfort levels. Some are extroverts who've done ten exchanges; others are nervous first-timers who barely spoke on the flight over. A well-chosen board game — particularly one with simple rules and lots of interaction — gives everyone a role and a reason to engage from the first turn. You don't need confidence or fluent English to play. The game provides the structure.
They make language barriers irrelevant (or educational)
Many modern board games use iconography and simple symbols rather than language-heavy rules. And even the ones that do require explanation create a situation where someone needs to teach another person — one of the most effective cross-cultural bonding activities that exists. Explaining a game mechanic to someone in a shared second language builds empathy, patience, and genuine connection faster than most icebreaker activities.
They reveal personality and build trust
How someone plays a game — whether they're strategic, impulsive, collaborative, competitive, gracious in defeat — reveals character in a low-stakes setting. Over a few hours around a board game, a group of strangers learns more about each other than they might in days of structured workshops. This is gold in a youth exchange context, where building trust quickly is essential for the group to work effectively together.
The GameOn Project: Board Games as a Policy Instrument
That board games work socially is something anyone who's spent time in a hostel common room already knows. What's more interesting is the way they're now being used structurally within Erasmus+ funded projects — and the GameOn project is a good example of what this looks like in practice.
GameOn is an Erasmus+ initiative based in Malta that takes the social value of board games seriously enough to have built an entire programme around it. The core of the project is a board game library — a curated collection that youth organisations can subscribe to and borrow sets from for their events, exchanges, and youth nights.
The library model is smart. Most youth organisations don't have the budget to build a decent board game collection from scratch, and one good game can cost €40–80. A subscription model that lets organisations rotate through different games — appropriate for different age groups, group sizes, and learning objectives — makes high-quality game-based programming accessible to organisations that couldn't otherwise afford it.
Beyond lending: designing original games
The part of GameOn that goes furthest beyond simple leisure is its entrepreneurship education strand. The project guides young people through the process of designing their own board games from scratch — not just as a craft activity, but as a structured exercise in:
- Design thinking: What problem does your game solve? What experience does it create? Who is it for?
- Iterative prototyping: Building a rough version, testing it, getting feedback, revising. The same cycle that underlies product development in any industry.
- Working with AI tools: GameOn incorporates guidance on using AI to generate game mechanics, balance rules, create artwork, and develop backstory — practical AI literacy framed around a creative task young people actually enjoy.
- Entrepreneurial thinking: How would you bring this game to market? What would it cost? Who would buy it? What makes it different from what exists?
It's a surprisingly comprehensive entrepreneurship education framework delivered through something that doesn't feel like a classroom activity. That's the point.
Board Games in the Broader Non-Formal Education Context
Non-formal education — learning that happens outside of traditional academic settings, through experience, reflection, and peer learning — is at the heart of how Erasmus+ youth exchanges work. The programme explicitly values it alongside formal qualifications.
The challenge for youth workers is always finding activities that achieve learning objectives without feeling like school. Board games sit in an ideal position: they're genuinely engaging, create the conditions for the interpersonal learning that youth exchanges aim for, and can be debriefed — reflected on explicitly — in ways that make the learning visible.
A game about resource management, for instance, naturally generates a conversation about fairness, competition, and collaboration. A negotiation game exposes assumptions about communication styles across cultures. A cooperative game that requires the group to win together creates both the experience of teamwork and the raw material for a conversation about what made it work — or fail.
For Youth Workers: How to Use This in Practice
If you're a youth worker, Erasmus coordinator, or hostel community manager thinking about integrating board games into your programming, a few practical suggestions:
- Match game complexity to the group stage. In the first day of an exchange, simple, quick games work best — something everyone can understand in five minutes. Save the heavier, more complex games for when the group knows each other.
- Choose games that reward different skills. Games that let strategic players and more intuitive players both succeed avoid the dynamic where one person dominates every session.
- Debrief intentionally. The game itself is the experience; the conversation after is where the learning is consolidated. Ask: What did you notice? What surprised you? What would you do differently?
- Consider a game library subscription. If you run a youth organisation in or connected to Malta, the GameOn project's board game library is worth exploring. Access to a rotating set of quality games is more practical than buying and storing everything yourself.
Interested in the GameOn project?
The GameOn board game library, lending programme, and entrepreneurship curriculum is available to youth organisations across Malta. Find out how to get involved.
For Backpackers and Hostel Travellers
If you're reading this as a backpacker rather than a youth worker, here's the simpler version: pack a board game. A compact, well-chosen game — something like Dobble, Codenames, Skull, or a card game with simple rules — is one of the best social investments you can make for hostel travel.
Common rooms come alive around a game in a way they don't around a TV. People who'd never talk to each other join a table because the game provides permission and structure. Some of the most memorable hostel conversations start with "anyone want to play something?"
It's also — as Erasmus participants who've done ten exchanges will tell you — one of the fastest ways to meet people you'll actually stay in touch with.