Amazon Echo Buttons, ROXI smart karaoke, and the hi-tech party games you need for Christmas

Most family Christmases exist as a set of aggressively policed traditions: presents are exchanged in a highly specific, arcane way that baffles outsiders, yuletide TV specials must be kept on even if no one is actually watching them, and unseemly adult tantrums are thrown if some mid-tier trimming is accidentally left out of dinner. It is, in a way, the true spirit of the festive season.

But this year, one seasonal mainstay — the annual game of charades or run at a careworn Game of Life box — is getting something of a tech-assisted overhaul. Prepare to grapple with Bluetooth buzzers, trivia-spouting speakers and augmented reality stacking blocks — family parlour games are being dragged into the future.

It makes sense that Amazon — which scored such an enormous Christmas hit in the UK last year with its first batch of mega-selling smart speakers — should be leading this new wave. Announced in September, the revamped version of their voice assistant, the Alexa-enabled Echo, now works with Echo Buttons (£19.99 for two, amazon.co.uk/alexagadgets), a set of light-up game show-style buzzers.

Compatible with a range of Alexa “skills” (movie quotes, a “guess the intro” music game and a forthcoming version of Trivial Pursuit), Buttons smartly bolsters Echo’s popular trivia-based Easter egg phrases.

And it’s not the only example of virtual assistants showing off their playful side. Google Home (from £49, store.google.com/home) — the search giant’s smart speaker — now boasts a call-and-response feature called Mystery Animal where you essentially engage in a game of 20 questions with your disembodied robot butler.

What’s more, Home also comes loaded with more than 50 family-themed features including space trivia quizzes and an automated version of musical chairs to save the pause fingers of weary parents.

Music is at the heart of ROXI (£199, electricjukebox.com) too: a TV-based song-streaming service that also comes with voice control, its own trivia games and — the clincher — a smart karaoke function. If a music library that plugs into your flat- screen and enables you to tunelessly belt out Stay Another Day alongside a family member sounds almost quaintly old-fashioned then, well, that’s kind of the point.

“I talk forever about the annual game of charades I have with my kids at Christmas, and technology is just allowing these games to be made even more accessible to different generations,” says Paul Johnson, chief marketing officer of Electric Jukebox, the Farringdon-based company behind ROXI. “We’re trying to move this a step further by playing these experiences out via a TV, which is the one bit of tech that every family has.”

As well as targeting consumers that, as Johnson kindly terms it, “aren’t keen on complicated tech”, ROXI is a bid to lure children from the glow of their personal screens. “We’ve conducted our own research and kids in the UK are spending 23 hours a week on personal devices,” says Johnson. “That’s double the amount of time they spend talking to the rest of the family. So families want to find ways to have fun in the limited time they have together.” This idea, the paradox of using smart innovations as a catalyst for traditional family interaction, chimes with a pervading mood in the tech world. It’s evident in Amazon Echo and Google Home turning quizmaster or entertaining stray kids. But it’s also present in other updated games that blur the line between the digital and the physical.

Stack AR (free, iOS, ketchapp studio.com) uses Apple’s new augmented reality capability to concoct a simple, fiendishly addictive game that allows you to build a teetering tower of virtual blocks. Beasts of Balance (£69, beastsofbalance.com) takes the futuristic Jenga concept even further with a hybrid, app-connected board game that asks players to stack brightly coloured animal pieces onto a battery-powered base that brings them to life on a tablet, TV or smartphone screen.

Recoil (around £130, theworldis nowgame.com) puts Call Of Duty-fans in its crosshairs with an updated home version of laser tag, complete with vibrating plastic blasters a mini router that tracks each player with GPS and a connected app that — among other things — finally lets you send virtual airstrikes in the vague direction of the sofa.

So don’t be surprised if that ancient, largely incomplete Ludo box stays firmly on the shelf this Christmas. Or there are fewer rows about unscrupulous Monopoly bankers. Tech has embraced, adapted and ruthlessly modernised tradition. Festive diversions have seriously upped their game.

Follow Jimi Famurewa on Twitter: @jimfam