Game night is on in Zeeland — and no, it doesn’t involved high school football, watching the Detroit Lions or the Detroit Tigers.

It involves good, old-fashioned board games — although several new names have squeezed their way into the picture.

The renewed popularity of board games has led owners of toy and game store Out of the Box, which offers weekly game nights that are drawing sizable crowds, to expand into a new, 4,000-square foot space this summer.

“We’ll get up to 60 people — from whole families to individual gamers — coming in to play,” said store owner Jeff Rietveld.

“Some nights, the games go on until 2 in the morning.”

Rietveld and his wife, Hillary, longtime gamers, turned their hobby into a business. And, with the help of dozens of customer volunteers, they moved their game store from a Zeeland side street to the new store at 137 E. Main St. to accommodate more merchandize and create a 1,600-square-foot game room.

The Rietvelds offer about 300 board games to play, ranging from “Merchants and Marauders,” a pirate vs. merchant strategy game, to the “1889” game series of train and railroad building games.

The games also are going home with customers such as Rob and Nancy Richardson.

The Richardsons like to have games on hand when they invite friends and their kids over for a potluck dinner and three hours or more of playing games such as 7 Wonders and TransAmerica.

“It’s a fun family night for the adults and kids,” said Rob Richardson, 42. “And the nice thing about playing the board games is the interaction you have with others that you don’t get with video games.

The Richardsons and their two children — Megan, 13, and David, 11, — took to family gaming a few years ago.

The family hosts 12 to 16 friends every five or six weeks at their Zeeland home.

“We had 36 people over on New Year’s Eve to play games,” Rob Richardson said.

New players are into strategy and adventure games, such as Ticket to Ride, or civilization building games, such as Settlers of Catan, which is played with a variety of specially designed card decks, dice, game boards and pieces.

“My grandparents started me playing board games like Risk when I was kid,” said Portage resident John Weldy, 32, who runs the Kalamazoo Area Board Gamers club and participates in group board games at least once a week. “Then, I graduated to hobby games in high school like Magic: The Gathering and, in 2003 or so, I became a boarder.”

“I’ve got a collection of 150 games at home. When people hear that, they go “Wow,’ but that’s not a lot of games. I have friends who have 1,000 (game) titles,” said Weldy, who is an information technology worker attending Western Michigan University for an education degree.

He plays board games two or three times a week, including traveling to Zeeland for games night at Out of the Box.

For gamers

Most popular board games of all time

• Monopoly, more than 200 million

• Scrabble, more than 120 million

• Trivial Pursuit, more than 100 million

Five hot-selling games

• Settlers of Catan, civilization building

• Ticket to Ride, railway building game

• Puerto Rico, agriculture/capital building

• 7 Wonders, a multi-dimension civilization building theme

• Mystery of the Abbey, a whudonit

Gaming resource

Boardgamegeek.com offers reviews, news and reports on more than 45,000 games.

Out of the Box owner Rietveld has seen an upsurge in the popularity of board games since he and his wife first opened their store in 2009.

“People have discovered there are so many more games out there than just Monopoly. We carry about 1,200 games, everything from stacking and counting games for 2-year-olds on up to hundreds and hundreds of games for players from 12 years old to 88,” he said.

Prices range from $10 to $20 for kids games, with most adult board games averaging $30 to $40, although some sell for more than $100.

“What makes a lot of today’s board games popular is that you can learn them quickly and play a game in a half-hour to an hour,” said Rietveld, who got into board games with Settlers of Catan when it was released in 1995.

In the game, which is part of the Catan series that has sold more 15 million games, settlers on the island of Catan develop towns by trading and acquiring resources. While there is a winner at the end, no one is eliminated during the game, and players can be successful by setting and reaching their goals.

“I like board games like Zooloretto and 7 Wonders because I have to figure out my strategy and watch how other people are planning their moves,” said Megan Richardson, an eighth-grader at Creekside Middle School in Zeeland.

In Zooloretto, players have to acquire exotic animals for their zoo, attract visitors and build up the number of animals without overcrowding to score points. A card-based civilization game, 7 Wonders is for two to seven players, who resolve wars and score points on the development of civic, scientific and commercial achievement.

“The goal of a game is to win, but it’s the game playing that is important,” said Aaron Cizonri, 44, a Hope College math professor.

Cizonri has been an avid gamer since 1979, when he got into the World War II-based strategy game Axis and Allies. He has more than 230 board games in his collection.

For the past seven years, Cizonri has run a marathon 36-hour games weekend at Hope College in March that attracts up to 200 gamers.

“The attraction of board games is the mental challenge involved, the competition and also the fun of face-to-face social interaction that goes on during play,” Cizonri said.

He also thinks the rise in the popularity of board games is related to the downturn in the economy.

“If two or three people go to a movie for a couple hours, it costs $50. For $50, you can buy one or two games that will give you ... fun and entertainment for years to come.”

E-mail the author of this story: yourlife@grpress.com