After Playing Hundreds of Games, We Think These Are the Best

James Austin is a writer covering games and hobbies, which means he is in a constant cycle of learning board games and teaching them to people.

There is no best board game for most people.

Tabletop games encompass a vast variety of mechanics, themes, visual designs, and rules, and each combination can appeal to a different type of person. Luckily, players today are spoiled for choice.

We’ve spent years researching, learning, teaching, and playing more than 150 games to find the best options for different players and situations. We’ve collected the best of the best here, which makes this a perfect place to start if you’re looking for a new game.

If you want to go deeper, consult our guides to games for just two players, for kids and families, for beginners, and for those seeking more-challenging games.

We spoke with expertsWe’ve spoken to 11 experts over the years including academics, game store owners, and game designers.

We’ve spoken to 11 experts over the years including academics, game store owners, and game designers.

We read games forumsWe keep track of popular forums like BoardGameGeek and r/boardgames to discover new games.

We keep track of popular forums like BoardGameGeek and r/boardgames to discover new games.

We’ve visited conventionsThrough Gen Con and PAX Unplugged we get to try new games and talk with fans to track new trends emerging in gaming.

Through Gen Con and PAX Unplugged we get to try new games and talk with fans to track new trends emerging in gaming.

We played a lot of gamesWe’ve played over 150 games in three years with more than 20 people to see which were the best for different situations.

We’ve played over 150 games in three years with more than 20 people to see which were the best for different situations.

Best for beginners: Splendor and 7 Wonders

While new tabletop gamers can start anywhere — especially if they have a friend who can show them the ropes — it can be intimidating to jump into the deep end of the gaming hobby. To help with that, we’ve collected the best board games for beginners.

In addition to being fun games, these picks help new gamers learn some of the more common mechanics or genres that they’ll come across, easing them into the hobby.

Fast-paced gem collecting: Splendor

A game about rocks that rocks

This gem-collecting game is easy to learn but requires enough strategy that it keeps players enthralled over multiple rounds.

How it’s played: Splendor is a Renaissance-themed engine-building game. Players act as gem merchants, using tokens to purchase gem cards and to attract the attention of nobles later in the game to gain even more points.

On their turn, each player chooses between drawing gem tokens, buying a card, or reserving a card for later purchase and taking a gold token. As players stockpile gem cards, they get discounts on other card purchases. The first player with 15 prestige points (earned by purchasing higher-level gem cards and winning over nobles) wins the game.

Why it’s great: Learning Splendor’s rules takes only about 15 minutes, which means you have more time to play several rounds — and you’ll want to. After we played Splendor with three new gamers, everyone requested it again.

Splendor isn’t as interactive as some of the other games we played, because players don’t share a board or have to barter with one another. But it was simple enough that we could chat with friends while playing and still pay attention to other people’s actions.

It has eye-catching gem coins and cards, and it’s easily portable for game nights or trips.

Players: two to four

Digital version: Board Game Arena

A fast and fun civilization-building game: 7 Wonders

Build a civilization without ruining your friendships

This game challenges players to use multiple advanced strategies to build an ancient civilization over three fast-paced rounds.

How it’s played: 7 Wonders is a civilization-building card-drafting game. Players randomly draw an ancient city, and they have three Ages — a total of 18 turns — to develop their civilization and earn points. Cities can produce resources, which give discounts on future purchases (similar to the engine-building that Splendor employs) and can be traded with neighbors (without the tense negotiations of a game like Catan).

Using those resources, players can also build their civilizations’ might by earning coins, expanding their military, building Wonders of the Ancient World, exploring science, creating guilds, and building civilian and commercial structures. The player with the most points at the end of the three Ages wins.

Why it’s great: With a high strategy level, this game can take a few rounds to master, but the rules are easy to grasp, and the rounds don’t drag on — with only 18 turns, the game remains true to its 30-minute estimate. We thought 7 Wonders was fun with the maximum number of players (seven) as well as with four players. It adapts for two players, too, but we prefer the two-player-specific version, 7 Wonders: Duel, for head-to-head contests.

Even though 7 Wonders is competitive, it’s not divisive: “The rules encourage you to scuttle cards that your neighbors might want, but they won’t know you’ve done it, so it doesn’t encourage board-game-night fights,” says writer Kimber Streams. And while trading can get heated in Catan, neighbors cannot refuse a trade in 7 Wonders, and it doesn’t consume their resources — both parties benefit.

Scoring can be tricky, but as one tester notes, “The game includes some handy scorecards for the purpose, and a step-by-step guide in the rulebook.” They said they frequently referred to the guide and the smaller cheat sheet when playing.

Players: two to seven

Apps: Android (mobile game), iOS (mobile game)

Best for two players: Hive and Star Realms

Getting a big group of friends together is one of the best things about tabletop gaming. But it can be difficult to coordinate the schedules of multiple adults, especially once marriage and kids enter the picture.

Two-player games are a great alternative, crystalizing the table dynamic in its purest form: one-on-one. To read more, check out our guide to the best two-player board games.

A chess-like game that’s fun to play: Hive

A chess-like game — featuring bugs!

In this quick tile-laying game, you attempt to surround your opponent’s queen. It scratches the chess itch without actually requiring you to play chess.

How it’s played: Hive is a game of placing and moving bugs, represented by tiles, in order to surround your opponent’s queen bee.

On each turn, players either place a new piece from their collection onto the table or move one that they placed in a previous turn. Each piece — a beetle, ant, or grasshopper — has a unique way to move on the table, and when a piece moves, it must not leave any other pieces stranded from the group (“breaking the hive”).

Once a player’s queen is surrounded — whether by their opponent’s pieces, their own pieces, or a combination — that player loses.

Why it’s great: Hive has all the tactical depth of chess but none of that game’s cultural expectations. This is a deeply strategic game that is simple to learn and play — on any one turn you can take just one of two possible actions — but it’s still deep enough to keep revealing new strategies, even after you’ve played dozens of games.

It also takes no time to set up. There’s no board to assemble or deck of cards to shuffle — just tiles in a bag — so you can jump right into playing.

Digital version: Board Game Arena

The platonic ideal of a deck-building card game: Star Realms

Build an armada to blow up your opponent

A big game in a small package, this is a wonderful deck builder that plays quickly and invites replays.

How it’s played: Like the popular Dominion, Star Realms is a deck-building game. Players “buy” cards from a shared market to power up their decks, deal damage, and eventually eliminate their opponent.

It grafts that basic system onto a wonderfully robust and interconnected world that rewards replays and accumulated game experience.

You start out with a small deck of generic economic and martial ships, but you can quickly build a fleet of bases and ships from four different factions. When you play cards from the same faction together, they gain extra power. And because you and your opponent buy all of the available ships from a common market, you can keep track of what cards the other player picks up and try to foil their strategy.

Why it’s great: After a slow first couple of rounds, the game quickly ramps up. About 10 minutes in, you’ll suddenly find yourself buying space stations the size of planets and delivering haymakers as you and your opponent slug it out with your increasingly powerful decks. It’s competitive, too: Every game I’ve played has been a close match.

Digital versions: Steam, Mac App Store, iOS App Store, Google Play

The best card games: Cat in the Box and Skull

Today’s card games look beyond the traditional 52-card deck, adding creative artwork, new game mechanics, and shifting strategies to create unique experiences.

Compared with the other picks in this guide, these card games also have the advantage of being much more portable. That means you can bring them with you virtually anywhere. To read more, check out our guide to the best card games.

The best trick-taking game: Cat in the Box

A surprising spin on a classic genre

Cat in the Box

This game has a ton of opportunities to make players feel smart, and the mix of creative cardplay and risky bidding that it encourages makes for surprisingly fun rounds.

How it’s played: Cat in the Box mostly plays like any other trick-taking game — think Hearts, Oh Hell, Spades, and Bridge.

Play progresses over a number of rounds (called tricks), and in each round a player starts by playing a card of a particular value and suit. Whoever plays the highest card in that suit wins the trick. If you don’t have a card in that suit, you may play other cards including a trump card — a special card that wins even if it isn’t the right suit.

The deliciously thematic twist in Cat in the Box — a play on the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment — is that the cards don’t have suits. Instead, players declare the suit the moment they play it. They also leave a token of their color on a game board that tracks which cards have been played, eliminating that suit and card combo from the round.

You get points for winning tricks, and if you bid correctly on how many tricks you’ll win, you get additional points for the longest continuous set of tokens you’ve placed on the board.

Why it’s great: Cat in the Box adds two extra layers of choice to the classic trick-taking format: suitless cards and the tracking board you place tokens on. The latter ensures you don’t accidentally play a card that has already been played, but it’s also a huge factor in how you earn points in the game since you need to think about setting up a big line of tokens in addition to winning tricks. But there’s a sting in the tail: If you don’t make your bid, the effort you put into the token line is worthless.

Balancing all of these choices is what makes this game work so well and helps it improve on the format by giving more opportunities for players to feel clever, which is where trick-taking really shines.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: The box packs a surprising amount of stuff into a svelte package, but people with larger hands may find the token organization finicky to impossible.

In addition, Cat in the Box isn’t great as a two-player game. If you’re looking for a better trick-taking duel, consider The Fox in the Forest, which is featured in our guide to two-player games.

Players: two to five (though we’d recommend at least three)

Duration: 15 to 30 minutes

Digital version: Board Game Arena

The best bluffing card game: Skull

Poker, without all the boring bits

This game delivers all the bluffing of poker, but with much simpler rules. It’s quick and easy to teach, and it’s a game that you’ll want to play again and again.

How it’s played: Skull is incredibly simple. Each player has just four cards: three roses and one skull.

At the start of each round, you choose one card to place face down. In subsequent rounds, you get to choose between putting another card on top of your last to form a stack or bidding on how many played cards you can flip over before you find a skull (beginning with your own stack, but from any other player’s stack after that).

If you win the bid and then succeed without finding a skull, you get a point and you’re halfway to winning the game. If you fail and flip over a skull, you lose one of your four cards (either chosen randomly by an opponent or one you choose yourself, depending on where you found the skull). If a player succeeds twice, or if only one player remains with a card, the game is over and that player wins.

Why it’s great: Poker has never given me the thrill it seems to give others, but Skull really delivers on its promise. The first time you play, you’re intent on trying to win bids so you can earn one of the two points needed to win. But soon, you’ll find how much fun it is to lay traps for friends, bidding early to convince them that you didn’t plant a skull at the top of your stack, then sitting back and waiting for them to flip it over.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: You can play this game without bluffing, but it would wring most of the fun out of it. If your gaming friend group isn’t into deceit, this probably isn’t the game for you.

Players: three to six

Duration: 10 to 20 minutes

Digital version: Board Game Arena

The best strategy games: Brass: Birmingham and Root

Tabletop gaming has a bit of a stigma. Those who don’t play tend to think of it as a bunch of nerds sitting around a basement table for hours putting way too much thought into moving particular pieces of cardboard around other pieces of cardboard.

While there are plenty of games (and gamers) that don’t fit this stereotype, these picks — table-filling, complex, and with a play time that can run up to several hours — are perfect for those who embrace the stereotype. Our guide to strategy games has seven standout options, but these are our two favorites.

An economic masterpiece: Brass: Birmingham

Be the best capitalist you can be

This game is a satisfyingly complex logistical puzzle of production and consumption.

How it’s played: In Brass: Birmingham, players take on the role of British capitalists during the Industrial Revolution. The game covers a 100-year span, divided into the Canal Era and the Rail Era, indicating which form of freight travel was more prominent at the time (did I mention this game was about economics?). Over this time, players establish supply networks and build factories. Some of these produce consumable resources, like coal, iron, and beer, while others pump out items the player can sell, such as textiles, manufactured goods, and pottery. Either way, making and getting rid of these items is what gets you points.

Why it’s great: An engrossing economic puzzle that will have you thinking about building canal networks in your sleep, Brass is a gold mine for folks who obsess over finding efficiencies and advantages over other players.

You have to keep track of many things in a game of Brass — resources to be gathered, networks to build, and goods to be sold. But all of these are created and fought over by the players at the table. If you want to build a pottery factory, you’re gonna need iron. If you want to produce iron, you’re gonna need coal. If you want to eventually sell that pottery, you’ll need beer. And to get any of that, you’re gonna need a network to move it all around.

What makes Brass stand out is that you don’t necessarily need to produce all of that stuff by yourself. If another player has an iron foundry, you can use some of their iron. But the more iron — or beer or coal — you take from others, the more points they rack up for themselves.

This dance of producing and consuming and networking is the core mechanic that drives Brass — and, you know, capitalism — like the pistons of a coal-fired freight engine. And trying to figure out how to navigate this dense thicket of incentives better than the other players is what makes it so satisfying to puzzle out.

The game is also just beautifully produced. The art is evocative and moody, the box is slim, and the player boards convey a surprising amount of information quickly and effectively — once you learn how to read them.

Players: two to four

Duration: 60 to 120 minutes

A complex game of woodland war: Root

Four factions fighting in the forest

This asymmetric war game provides immense strategic depth and a delightful theme, once you learn how it all works.

How it’s played: Root is a devilishly tough and layered asymmetric war game disguised as a fairytale romp. It pairs an intricate ecosystem of mechanics, strategic decisions, and narrative with great artwork, featuring adorably anthropomorphized woodland creatures.

Players assume the role of one of four factions — each with unique abilities, restrictions, and goals — in an attempt to rule the woodland map they share. For instance, the Marquise de Cat wants to build and defend as many outposts as possible, expanding and building rapidly throughout the forest. Meanwhile, the Woodland Alliance’s mice spread sympathy among the residents of the forest, fomenting uprisings that burn down the Marquise de Cat’s industries and sabotaging the other players whenever possible.

The factions compete to control the different clearings in the forest, earning points by fulfilling their individual goals. The game continues until one player reaches 30 points or completes the demands of a dominance card — essentially a unique victory condition that asks the player to gain and retain control of a number of specific forest clearings.

Why it’s great: Root offers a unique ecosystem of conflicting and contrasting goals, powers, and win conditions. That makes it different from similar war games like Risk or Small World, which are more straightforward to learn and play but provide fewer opportunities for alliances of convenience and surprising play. Because its factions’ abilities and goals are so distinct, playing and teaching a game of Root can feel a bit like playing and teaching four separate games.

But the game design’s genius is in what happens when you throw these disparate factions together on the cramped game board. Due to the opaqueness of the other factions’ motivations, you spend less time trying to stymie the other players and more time focused on how you can expand your domain and gain points — leading to consistently surprising interactions and interesting clashes over the course of a game.

This deep strategy is paired with gorgeous, playful art that reinforces the fictional world, which feels like a gritty remake of the Redwall books. And all of this comes in a well-organized box that is surprisingly compact, considering the complexity of the game.

Players: two to four

Duration: 60 to 90 minutes

Best for kids and families: Boop and Sushi Go

Children’s games have come a long way from Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land. Although they may not be as complicated as games we’d recommend for older players, our guide to children and family games has options for multiple ages. They’re simple enough for young ones to play, but adults who play with them will find plenty to enjoy as well.

Next level tic-tac-toe, with kittens: Boop

Herding cats: the board game

A cute and easy-to-learn abstract game about lining up cats.

How you play: Boop is a game about kittens and cats fighting for space on a bed. To win, players have to line up three cats in a row before their opponent does. The catch is that every time a piece is placed, that cat (or kitten) “boops” any adjacent pieces (even the player’s own) one space away. Manipulating the finer rules of when boops happen and maneuvering your opponent’s pieces without ruining your game plan makes this game surprisingly tricky.

Why it’s great: First of all, it’s adorable. That isn’t unique among kids games, but what makes Boop stand out is that its cuddly aesthetic disguises a surprisingly interesting two-player game — one in which a bunch of simple decisions lead to complicated long-term plays. Its core concept is one that anyone familiar with tic-tac-toe can grasp, but it provides strategic depth that the classic game just can’t match.

Digital version: Board Game Arena

A fast “pick and pass” card game: Sushi Go

This quick-paced “pick and pass” card game is simple enough for kids as young as 5 to master but tricky enough for older kids and adults to enjoy.

How you play: Sushi Go is a rapid-fire “pick and pass” card game. In the same genre as classic games such as Spoons and Pig, each round players select a single card from their hand before passing the rest to the next player. The cards are sushi themed, with cartoon illustrations of sashimi, nigiri, dumplings, and other delicacies. Players try to build various sets of cards to earn points. Similar to a kaiten (conveyor-belt) sushi joint, the trick is to select the dishes you want (or want to keep out of the hands of your competitors) before they pass by.

Why it’s great: The fast-paced game is popular on Amazon, with nearly 3,000 five-star reviews. Brian Mayer, a gaming and library technology specialist in New York who we talked to for our guide to kid’s games, said Sushi Go is great for families because the game, which doesn’t require reading or number recognition, is accessible for younger kids while remaining fun for older kids and adults. (Mayer pointed out that kids younger than 8 or so may need some help remembering how many points the cards and combinations are worth.)

Players: two to four

Digital version: Board Game Arena

A great cooperative game: Pandemic

Competing with and occasionally beating your friends is a crucial part of any game night. But if (like me) you end up on the losing side more often than not, it’s nice to put the competitiveness aside for a moment or two and jointly strive to best a common enemy: the game itself.

A cooperative game you won’t get sick of

This game challenges players to work together — and keep their cool — as they attempt to save the world from disease.

How it’s played: In Pandemic, players collaborate to save the world from four rapidly spreading deadly diseases. Players draw cards and use four actions per turn to help stop the diseases by building research stations, treating diseases, sharing knowledge, or discovering a cure.

However, hidden throughout the deck are epidemic cards, which increase the speed and scope of disease proliferation. By curing the diseases, players win. They lose if they can’t contain the diseases, namely by allowing too many outbreaks, running out of cards in the player deck, or running out of disease cubes to put on the board.

Why it’s great: Pandemic is an intense cooperative game that challenges players’ thinking. One tester summed it up: “Three ways to lose, one way to win.” It’s a highly interactive game because players work together to choose actions. And you can increase the game’s difficulty — the rulebook lays out Introductory, Standard, and Heroic modes, with the harder modes adding extra epidemic cards — so you can grow with the game as you master it.

Players: two to four

Digital version: Board Game Arena

The best party games: A Fake Artist Goes to New York and Wavelength

Party games eschew the complex rules of other tabletop games and instead focus on the social interaction between players. They set up loose structures for people to play in and tend to be more welcoming to larger groups than other games.

Fool your friends with dubious drawings: A Fake Artist Goes to New York

A game of lines and lies

A Fake Artist Goes to New York

Full of subtle signaling and suspicious sketches, this game delivers a top-tier social-deduction experience while also prompting you and your friends to produce unhinged artwork.

How it’s played: At the beginning of every round, a clue giver secretly writes a subject on small dry-erase rectangles and passes them out to the players. On one of the rectangles, instead of the subject, the clue giver writes an X. Whoever gets the X will be the fake artist of that round and won’t know what the group is collectively trying to draw.

Then, each player in turn (aside from the clue giver) draws one continuous line. Their goal is to signal to the other players that they know what the subject is, while also trying to avoid being so obvious that the fake artist catches on. The game continues this way until each player has drawn two lines, at which point the players all simultaneously vote on who they think the fake is.

If a majority of the group correctly identifies the fake, the impostor gets one chance to guess what the subject was. If they’re correct (or if the group doesn’t identify the fake artist), then the fake and the clue giver get a point. The clue giver role passes to the next player, and the game continues until everyone has taken a turn as the clue giver.

Why it’s great: A great social-deduction game, like any great mystery or whodunit, thrives when everyone involved gets a steady stream of ambiguous information. Too direct, and the drama ends too quickly; too obtuse, and the reader (or the player, in this case) gives up trying. A Fake Artist Goes to New York walks that line exceptionally well. In our testing, it was one of the most raucous games we tried. We recommend it for any type of high-energy gathering, especially if people in the group don’t know one another particularly well.

Duration: 30 to 60 minutes

Player range: five to 10

Digital version: Switch, PlayStation, Steam, iOS, Android

A game of degrees: Wavelength

Dial in on your friends' opinions

This game revolves around guessing your friends’ opinions, which naturally leads to fun (and sometimes controversial) revelations that change what you thought you knew about them.

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How it’s played: Players are split into two teams, and in each round one team is tasked with moving a dial so that the needle is in the center of a funnel-like target. The closer to the center you get, the more points you score.

It’s trickier than it sounds because the player can’t see the target while they move the needle. Instead, a member of their team acts as the “psychic,” who tries to get them to guess the correct position. The psychic takes a look at the position of the target and draws a card indicating two ends of a scale — such as loud to quiet, good idea to bad idea, and so on.

Next, they give their team a word or phrase that suggests where on that scale the target is. For example, on a wet-to-dry scale, the psychic might say “spaghetti” to indicate the target is smack-dab in the middle. The other players try to interpret the clue and position the dial’s needle accordingly, which is when debates tend to erupt.

Why it’s great: A good party game is one where, by the end, players have lost all track of the score and are just invested in playing. Wavelength does that as well as any game we’ve tested.

Like the best communication games (including our picks for beginners, Codenames and Dixit), it also plays with how people convey ideas and concepts to others. But whereas Codenames and Dixit focus on communicating ideas by association, Wavelength asks players to communicate via opinions.

Where, on the scale of wet to dry, is spaghetti? Is seeing a scary movie a terrible date idea or a great one? How morally correct was the Jedi order? Those are just a few of the hundreds of potential discussions (and arguments) that Wavelength can spark, leading to enlightening conversations about how your friends view the world.

The game shines on an aesthetic level, too. The dial is chunky and satisfyingly tactile, and the box is colorful and attention-grabbing. It’s the total package.

Duration: 30 to 60 minutes

Player range: four to 14

Digital version: iOS, Android

The best solo games: Final Girl and Legacy of Yu

Board games aren’t usually thought of as solo activities. But for more-hardcore fans of tabletop gaming, there are few greater pleasures than setting up a game, getting yourself a nice snack or beverage, and settling down to enjoy a game all by yourself. Like puzzles or other high-focus analog activities, solo board gaming is a great way to get into a flow state and pass the time.

Slay the slasher: Final Girl

A solo horror simulator

Final Girl: Starter Set

This tense and exciting solo game keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s also beautifully produced and has lots of optional expansion packs.

How it’s played: Final Girl is a card-driven hand-management game that positions you as the titular final girl in a slasher movie. You have to achieve an objective (usually saving other victims or collecting items) before the villain can polish you off.

Over the course of the game, you use power cards from your deck to attempt to execute actions, and a dice roll — the number of dice dictated by how far along the game is — tells you whether your action worked.

All the while, the killer creeps closer, using a different card each turn to inflict horror on you — and the world of the game.

Why it’s great: Final Girl is a tense and meticulously themed puzzle that immerses you in the schlocky world of an ’80s slasher movie.

Its tricky gameplay features cards that cost in-game time to acquire and execute, as well as dice that you roll to affect the world. The combination leads to an experience that’s equal parts assertive moves and desperate Hail Mary attempts. In other words, you end up behaving a lot like a victim in a Jason or Freddy movie.

Final Girl is gorgeously produced, with a slightly cartoonish art style. The game is played with the base box of cards, plus VHS-inspired module boxes that the publisher calls “feature films.”

At this writing, 20 feature films are available — we recommend buying the starter set, which comes with the base box and one feature film. After that, you can purchase the other feature films separately to swap in a new villain and unique game mechanics. Each VHS box unfolds and detaches to form two boards: one presenting the killer’s stats and the other being the map you play on.

In our group testing, this game tended to overwhelm casual players or those new to board games. If you’re interested but fear a similar learning curve, we advise watching a rule tutorial on YouTube before your first game.

Duration: 45 to 90 minutes

Building canals in ancient China: Legacy of Yu

A thrilling campaign game about water management

Combining tricky deck-building and worker placement in a self-balancing campaign game, this one keeps players on the edge of their seat.

How it’s played: Legacy of Yu is an engaging mix of a worker-placement game and a deck-builder. You play as Yu, an engineer in ancient China tasked with building canals to divert a flooding river.

To do so, you use townsfolk cards from a deck to gather material and recruit workers. Then, you can use the material and workers to build canals, construct buildings, and fight off invading barbarians.

You can also get new townsfolk cards to add to your deck, which can come into play after you’ve reshuffled. Just be careful, because every time you reshuffle your deck of townsfolk cards, gaining access to those cards you recruited, the flood moves farther down the river.

If the flood ever hits an undeveloped canal or progresses off the side of the board, you lose. You also lose if barbarians take over the townsfolk cards at the top of the board, or if you run out of townsfolk cards.

In addition, certain cards add story elements when you play them, throwing new wrinkles into the game. This ensures that the game feels a little different each time you play. The campaign also adjusts difficulty automatically, depending on how well (or poorly) you’re doing, with a story card at the end of each game.

Why it’s great: This game is a slow burn; as a playthrough progresses, the tension ratchets up exponentially.

In any deck-building game, you’re incentivized to burn through your deck fairly quickly — after all, it’s the only way to get to the new cards you’ve purchased and added to your deck. But in this game, every time you make the choice to refresh your deck, you bring the flood closer to your doorstep.

Pair that devilish twist with the ever-escalating cost of canal-building materials and the looming barbarian threat, and you always feel like you’re on a knife’s edge between triumph and failure. And the dynamic story components introduce new complications, keeping the game interesting through multiple playthroughs.

Duration: about 45 minutes

The best outdoor games: Ladder toss and Lacuna

Gamers have a reputation for being indoor kids — a stereotype that isn’t completely untrue. But good news, my vitamin-D-deficient comrades: Gamers who do venture outdoors don’t have to leave the games behind.

Our guide to outdoor games collects both more-active games and tabletop games that travel well and are easy to play on a picnic table or even on the grass.

A straightforward yet tricky throwing game: Ladder toss

EastPoint Sports Steel Ladderball Set

You can choose from many versions of this popular throwing game, but in our testing, this set provided the best mix of challenge and accessibility for our testers.

Ever since humans have had things to throw and targets to throw them at, they’ve made games about being the best thrower of things. From horseshoes to axe throwing to the rise of the American Cornhole League, these games have become so oversaturated that you’d think they’d be played out by now. That’s why it’s nice to play games that apply the same general principle with just enough variation to keep it interesting.

How it’s played: Ladder toss does this by using bolas — two weighted balls tied together with a string — and setting up the target vertically instead of on the ground, like most other throwing games. The tricky physics of the bolas can throw even the most seasoned beanbag tossers for a loop, but the concept is simple enough that anyone can learn in a couple minutes.

Ladder toss has several variations of rules and scoring, but the goal is straightforward regardless of which version you play: Land as many bolas on the crossbars as possible to earn more points than your opponents, with the ultimate goal of being first to exactly 21 points.

Why it’s great: Of the outdoor games we tested, this one was easiest for newbies to grasp. This meant that more of our testers felt like they had a chance at winning right off the bat, but more-experienced players were still able to enjoy the challenge of mastering the whirling bolas.

The weird physics keeps the game tense and exciting. Since you’re never quite sure how the bolas will react to the ladder — whether they will twist off a rung, wrap around it, or somehow spin right through the rungs without touching any — you’re almost always surprised by the result of a throw. And no one throwing technique reigns supreme, so every throw has a bit of drama to it.

It’s well built and portable. The set we tested folds down into flat squares for transport and storage. We liked the solid metal construction and sand-filled bolas. You can find sets made of flimsy PVC that are a bit lighter and might be cheaper, but the step up to a metal or wood set is worth the investment.

A perfect game for a picnic (blanket included): Lacuna

A travel-friendly tube that holds a charming two-person game

This game packs a quick area-control game into a compact package with premium metal pieces and a rollable playmat.

Few things are more pleasant than lounging on a blanket, surrounded by grass and bathing in sunshine. Add a straightforward game and I’m really in my happy place. And this combo is exactly what Lacuna excels at.

How it’s played: Lacuna is a two-player area-control game that sets up in seconds. Just unroll the play mat, give each player their metal pieces, shake the tube over the mat, and watch as little wooden flowers scatter out like confetti. Then, each player alternates placing their gold or silver piece onto the playmat between two identical flowers, collecting them to score points at the end of the game.

Once all the pieces are placed, players collect all additional flowers that are closest to the pieces they’ve already placed. At the end of the game, each player counts the number of identical flowers they’ve collected. Whoever gets the most of each color wins a point, and whoever has the most points wins.

Why it’s great: Lacuna is sumptuous and leisurely, in a way that’s unique among games I’ve played. Its focus on uncomplicated enjoyment, from the gameplay to the lovely materials it’s made of, makes it feel almost luxurious.

This game isn’t tiny. But the cylindrical shape that makes it a tough fit on a shelf conversely means it fits very well into a backpack side pocket or a camping kit.

The best murder mystery game: Mysterious Package Company

Getting anything in the mail that isn’t a bill is a thrill in and of itself, but a mystery that arrives in your mailbox? That’s something special.

Mystery boxes boomed during the pandemic, delivering engaging mysteries that made our world feel bigger than it was. Today, they continue to create unique and immersive experiences that can be savored time and again.

Solve crimes in Victorian London: Mysterious Package Company Post Mortem: The Ghost In The Machine

An open-world noir mystery

Mysterious Package Company Post Mortem: The Ghost In The Machine

This free-flowing mystery game gives you the freedom to chase down clues in whatever order you choose.

How it’s played: Like the classic noir pulp novels it emulates, Mysterious Package Company’s Post Mortem: The Ghost In the Machine is a mystery that immerses the player in Victorian London and gives them a murder to solve. It focuses on the killing of a factory owner and one of the workers.

Inside the folder that arrives in your mailbox, you’ll find a number of items you’ll use to solve the case, including the main story book, a copy of that day’s London Standard newspaper, a directory of London, the rules of the game, and a number of brown paper bags marked as holding evidence and sealed with a lettered sticker.

It’s a lot to sift through, but once you’ve unpacked it all, the game throws you right into the action. In the story book, written in the style of the pulp mystery novels that the game cribs its tone from, you get a three-page introduction to the case and the murder scene, and then it’s up to you to choose where to go and who to talk to in order to solve whodunit.

Why it’s great: The freedom to set your own story pace and follow whichever leads interest you at the time makes the game feel wide open. Your investigation takes you to various places in the directory, which correspond with entries in the novel. At these locations, in addition to getting little nuggets of information about the murder you’re trying to solve, you’ll also sometimes be instructed to open one of the evidence bags, which contain physical items that you “find” as you explore the city.

This inclusion of physical clues made my own playthrough seem that much more real, elevating the experience in a way that merely reading about the case couldn’t — it made me feel like a keen-eyed detective, able to find things that others overlooked.

Another thing that contributes to the immersion is the control you have over the narrative, choosing where to go and who to talk to instead of being forced down a linear path, as in some other mystery boxes. This feeling of agency lends a fantastic power to the reveals in the game.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

James Austin is a staff writer currently covering games and hobbies, but he’s also worked on just about everything Wirecutter covers—from board games to umbrellas—and after being here for a few years he has gained approximate knowledge of many things. In his free time he enjoys taking photos, running D&D, and volunteering for a youth robotics competition.

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