The best board game

Better still, a s Cold War theme reinvigorates what is already one of the best board games - this version challenges you to stop Soviet spies and their bio-weapon. As the name would suggest, your team's commanding officer has bitten the dust, so you'll need to get your hands dirty with push-your-luck tower defence if you want to complete their mission. A horde of flesh-eating bugs is also on the way, so you'd better be ready by the time they arrive. The Jaws board game turns you into a cold-blooded monster - a "perfect engine and eating machine", in fact.

But you know what? When it's this fun, we're not complaining. Based on the classic movie, this adaptation casts you as the film's heroes or its peckish great white. The result is a tense and often brutal co-op experience that nails its inspiration's atmosphere. It's the end of the world, and transdimensional horrors like Cthulhu are about to arrive.

Basically, we're screwed - and you've only got an hour to stop the apocalypse. This sense of impending doom raises the stakes for Arkham Horror, leading to 60 minutes of hail Marys and thrilling last-ditch plans. When combined with the clever mechanics that set Final Hour apart, it's the perfect example of nail-biting co-op action. They don't make 'em how they used to, and although that's usually a good thing, you can't beat the all-time greats. The best classic board games have become a cultural phenomenon with countless editions under their belt, so revisiting those old favorites can do wonders.

We've collected our top picks here. Want to be an armchair detective? It doesn't get much better than Clue or Cluedo, if you're based in the UK. Allowing players to see if they have what it takes to rival the likes of Poirot or a certain Sherlock Holmes, it's still one of the best murder mystery board games even though it's been kicking about since Accessible, straightforward gameplay certainly helps.

Even though you're trying to track down a killer, Clue's methodical process of elimination no pun intended is easy to pick up. It's rather satisfying too, especially if you can crack the case before anyone else does.

Risk knows a thing or two about the best board games. Having been taking us all to school in warfare since , it's one of the most beloved tabletop experiences available right now thanks to easy-to-understand yet weighty tactics. Restricting battles to dice rolls helps keep things moving, too. This isn't a plodding exercise in tedium. There are plenty of alternate versions to try out as well if the original theme doesn't suit you; you can pick up everything from Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings alternatives.

It's impossible to discuss the best board games without Monopoly coming up at some point or another. Frequently seen as the most influential one of all time, it's often the first thing people think of when the medium is dropped into conversation.

There's a good reason for that; this has been a quintessential family pastime since the early s. Anyone can get involved, too. Brilliantly straightforward yet oddly satisfying, this property-wrangling game where you buy spaces on the board and charge rent whenever someone else lands there never loses its thrill of earning a big payout. While it has its problems, you've got to respect the hustle. Want more recommendations for games night?

Don't forget to check out the best party board games or the best card games. As for something a little more adventurous, be sure to drop in our our guides to the best tabletop RPGs and the best Dungeons and Dragons books. I've been writing about games in one form or another for almost a decade with bylines ranging from Metro. Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more! Best board games for adults Move over, Monopoly; the industry has grown way beyond those humble beginnings, and now it's awash with new ideas that will keep you playing for months.

Betrayal at House on the Hill. Reasons to avoid - Potential for uneven games. Reasons to avoid - Occasionally unfair. Reasons to avoid - Anxiety-inducing. Reasons to avoid - Tricky to master. Reasons to avoid - Expensive. Reasons to avoid - Complicated. Ticket to Ride. Reasons to avoid - Dry theme. Reasons to avoid - Can be frustrating. Reasons to avoid - Can drag. Reasons to avoid - Some won't like the pressure. Reasons to avoid - Potential for bickering.

Reasons to avoid - Luck of the draw. King of Tokyo. Reasons to avoid - Little strategy. Sushi Go! Reasons to avoid - Emphasis on chance. Spot It! Reasons to avoid - Gets repetitive. The Haunted Mansion: Call of the Spirits. Reasons to avoid - Duel mechanics need work. Rhino Hero. Reasons to avoid - Can be annoying. Zombie Kidz Evolution. Reasons to avoid - Components may not last.

Disney Villainous. Reasons to avoid - Hard to explain. Reasons to avoid - Can't scale for more players. Pandemic: Hot Zone - North America. Reasons to avoid - Can feel unfair. Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. Reasons to avoid - Really hard. Hocus Pocus: The Game. Reasons to avoid - A little TOO hard. Create a personalised ads profile.

Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. The 9 Best Board Games of Get ready for a fun night in with these top-rated picks. By Anne Fritz Anne Fritz. Anne Fritz is a product reviewer for The Spruce. With over 20 years of experience in publishing, Fritz's most recent roles include working as an editor at Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, and Reader's Digest.

Learn more about The Spruce's Editorial Process. Our Top Picks. Best Overall:. To win, this classic game requires both good sense and luck—making it fun for adults, but not too hard for kids to play, either.

Best for Groups:. This social word game has a simple premise, but can be played over and over again without getting any less challenging and fun. Best for Two Players:. Combine Connect Four with poker and you get Sequence, a strategy game for players ages 7 and up.

Best for Families:. A strategy game that feels different each time you play it, this pick is a great distraction for competitive families. Best for Teens:. Best Collaborative:. One player is the ghost, while up to six others are psychics, all trying to guess the person, place, and weapon in a murder. Best for Adults:. A NSFW version of the original game from The Oatmeal, this game is for anyone who likes a ridiculous premise and fun artwork. Best for Art:.

Don't let the beautiful tiles fool you—this two to four person game can get pretty cutthroat as the board fills up. Best for Kids:. Introduce your children to the world of strategy games and work on their attention to detail with this recently updated classic. In This Article Expand. Our Picks. What to Look For in Board Games. Why Trust The Spruce. Best Overall: Monopoly Board Game.

Best for Groups: Czech Games Codenames. Codenames Game Review. Best for Two Players: Jax Sequence. Jax Sequence Game Review. View On Target. Catan Review. The 11 Best Family Board Games of View On Amazon. Best Collaborative: Mysterium Board Game. Azul is an easy-to-learn game where you collect tiles based on azulejos , a type of Portuguese tile used as decoration in buildings.

The game's premise is that you're an artist decorating the walls of the Portuguese king's palace, but you're competing against other players to complete a full row of tiles on your player board first.

To do this, players take turns drafting tiles from the center of the table, placing them in a repository on the left side of your board. At the end of a round, you'll move one tile from your repository onto the corresponding row on your wall in a colored space that matches the tile. After someone completes a full row and the game ends, players can earn bonus points for their number of horizontal and vertical lines and for filling all tiles of a certain color, so there are multiple scoring conditions to keep in mind beyond just filling a single row.

Wingspan is a newer board game released in , but it's become an instant hit, winning the Kennerspiel des Jahres award and selling out at launch. In Wingspan, you play as bird-watchers looking to bring the best birds to your different habitats.

To add a bird card to one of your four habitats, you have to pay various costs, but it pays off--the more birds you add to a certain habitat, the more powerful your actions will become. You'll also get special abilities and perks from the birds you have in play, which adds to the fun problems that test your problem-solving skills.

At the end of the game, you'll win if you have the most points--these come from completing end-of-round goals, played bird cards, eggs, secret bonus cards, and more. The art style is absolutely gorgeous, and the cards also include fun facts about each species at the bottom, making it one of the better family board games out there if your kid is interested in learning about birds as they play. However, Wingspan is also one of the best board games for adults as it has a lot of depth and strategy to it, and it now comes with the Swift-Start Promo Pack, which offers a quick tutorial to help you learn the game and start playing fast.

An official digital version is also out now on Steam and the Nintendo eShop. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is one of the most fun social deception games we've ever played, and it's a great choice for big groups as well, as you can play it with up to 12 people. In Deception, you play as a team of investigators who are interpreting clues to solve a murder, with one person playing as a forensic scientist, who has the knowledge needed to convict the murderer but can only express that through their analysis of the murder scene for example, facts about how the victim was killed, the setting, the time of day, etc.

Each investigator has their own set of weapons and evidence that everyone else in the group can see, and the team must work together to identify which person is the secret murderer within the group, based on items and evidence that could match the forensic scientist's analysis.

Basically, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is like Werewolf or Mafia meets Clue, and with each playthrough lasting only 15 to 30 minutes, you can easily play several rounds with people taking turns in different roles. Coup is a card game about bluffing and bribing your way to power, so get ready to put on your poker face before challenging your friends. In Coup, you're the head of a power-hungry family in an Italian city-state, manipulating your way to the top of a corrupt court.

Here's how it works: A card deck in the middle of the table players draw from contains multiples of five different characters, each of whom has a unique ability, and each player starts with two face-down character cards. Because no one knows which cards you have, you can bluff and use a character's unique ability, like stealing from the treasury or attempting an assassination, even if you don't have that card in your hand.

At any time, another player can challenge whether you actually have that card. If you do have the card in your hand and choose to prove it, they'll have to lose one of their cards. On the other hand, if you're bluffing or choose not to reveal the card in your hand, you'll lose one of your own cards, turning it face-up on the table.

If both of your characters get turned face-up, you're out of the game. Coup is easy to learn, and rounds will only take you about 15 minutes to play, making it a great card game to whip out at parties.

If you love playing Tetris, you'll probably enjoy Patchwork, a two-player game where you place Tetris-like tiles on a 9x9 board of squares to slowly assemble a quilt. Each player has a stash of buttons, which you use to purchase tiles for your quilt, and you'll also keep track of your progress on a separate time board, which will net you more buttons and tiles as you progress. By the end of the game, you'll be scored based on how many buttons you have left, subtracting 2 points for each empty tile still left on your board.

Patchwork is a relaxing game to play--there's something satisfying about fitting tiles together and searching for the perfect piece to fill space on your board, even when there's no hand-eye coordination involved. Two-player board games like Patchwork are also nice to have around if you live with just one other person, as you'll always have a game you can play together.

It's available on Steam too. Even those who don't play board games have probably heard of Catan, a classic board game that focuses on resource-gathering and settlement-building that's simple to learn and addictingly fun. The gameplay of this family board game involves creating settlements adjacent to tiles that each have a number and resource on it.

Each time that number is rolled, anyone with a settlement adjacent to that tile will get resources, and you can build new roads and settlements using the resources you gather. The goal is to be the first to get 10 points, which you can achieve by building settlements, having the longest road, and more. If you try out this German-style board game and enjoy the basic gameplay, there are numerous expansions and themed editions available to spice things up.

I recently tried out the Game of Thrones edition of Catan , which adds the Wall and a northern area with White Walkers that will try to break through it. This can completely change your strategy and requires you to consider wall defense on top of managing your resources and settlements. Modern board games have certainly introduced some new ideas to the genre, but you can't deny the simple magic of one of the best turn-based games out there.

Another classic game, Ticket to Ride is incredibly simple to learn, but it also maintains enough tension to keep things interesting. In Ticket to Ride, players collect cards of various train types, which you'll use to claim railroad routes across America. To claim a single route, you need the required number and type of cards in your hands at once.

Once you claim a route, it's yours for the rest of the game, and you'll earn points based on how long the route is. From the start of the game, you'll also have destination cards giving you specific goals connecting Chicago to Houston, for example , which will give you bonus points at the end of the game; however, you'll also lose points for not completing your destination ticket.

The simple but satisfying gameplay of Ticket to Ride has made it a long-standing favorite in the board game community, and it's received multiple follow-up versions and expansion packs to extend your weekly game night sessions. Skull is the ultimate bluffing game, and the best part is that it's incredibly easy to teach to new players.

To get started with a game of Skull, you pass around a stack of cards to each player, with each stack including three rose cards and one skull card. Each player goes around placing card of their choice, and at any point, a player can use their turn to starting calling out numbers--the number indicates how many cards you think you can turn over without seeing a skull.

There are plenty of different strategies you can employ here, but to win a game of Skull, you just have to successfully flip cards without seeing a skull twice. That's way easier said than done, as Skull is a game where everyone will be doing plenty of lying, bluffing, and risking their own cards just to mess up others. Because of how easy it is to learn and how few pieces there are to set up, Skull is an awesome game to break out at parties, and it's pretty much a guaranteed hit with any crowd.

Despite their similar names, Mansions of Madness has nothing to do with another game on this list, Mountains of Madness, although both are inspired by the works of H. Instead, the premise of Mansions of Madness is much more similar to Betrayal at House on the Hill--you and your group will enter an eerie mansion, explore its hallways and rooms, find items, and encounter horrors that will test your sanity.

In Mansions, however, you can see the full layout of the board from the start, including the location of clues, and the scenario for a playthrough is in effect from the beginning. While the first edition of Mansions required one player to take the antagonistic role of Keeper, who actively works against the other players, the second edition introduced a free companion app that absorbs this role and allows the game to be completely co-op or even single-player.

The second edition's base game comes with four different scenarios, with more available through paid DLC. However, this is a high-quality board game with detailed miniatures and tiles made to last, and its thrilling scenarios require deep strategy and cooperation that will keep your team fully engaged over the course of a two-to-three-hour playthrough.

Another two-player board game, Fog of Love is a romantic drama played out in tabletop form. In this game, you and the other player will play as two characters who meet, fall in love, and navigate the ups and downs of a modern relationship. You'll have awkward encounters, funny moments, and painful situations to work through, and the decisions you each make in these moments will affect your character's satisfaction and traits, which in turn affect whether you achieve your long-term goals.

There's also a possibility for one or both players to have hidden secrets, which will be revealed at the end and may affect the outcome. Like any relationship, your characters may find true love or end up heartbroken at the end, but the act of playing out this story together makes Fog of Love a truly unique and compelling experience. Codenames is a ridiculously fun turn-based game that works with a larger group or even just two people ideally, you'd have at least four.

In Codenames, you have two rival spymasters, each of whom knows the identities of 25 secret agents, which are reflected by their codenames on a 5x5 grid. Each spymaster's teammates are trying to make contact with all of their agents before the other team.