All "Spiel des Jahres🇩🇪 2005" game award winners & nominees in comparison 2026

No Thanks! is a straightforward and captivating card game that offers a blend of strategy and luck. The game's simplicity makes it appealing and accessible to a wide range of players.

The board game known as Diamant or Incan Gold unfolds as an exhilarating press-your-luck experience, offering players a quick and enjoyable journey into mine shafts and jungle paths. As participants flip cards from a deck, the gems discovered are evenly distributed, creating a shared bounty. However, the decision to venture deeper comes with the risk of encountering hazards like scorpions, snakes, poison gas, explosions, and rockfalls.

Animal Upon Animal (original title: Tier auf Tier) is a delightful and family-friendly stacking game that challenges players to carefully balance wooden animal figures to create an ever-growing pyramid. The game is designed for all ages, showcasing both fun and skill in a simple yet engaging format.

Ribbit (formerly known as Schildkrötenrennen or "Turtle Race" in its original version) offers a delightful, strategic race experience suited for families and players of all ages. This game is built around the concept of racing turtles—or frogs, in the reprint—across a field to reach a tasty salad.

The title carries a hint of irony. Players can view the world in personal, social, or fantastical ways, guided by suggestions from others. Choosing among their friends’ differing opinions can be challenging, as every option carries significance. The game features 112 "My World" cards and 392 "IS cards," creating constantly changing combinations, requiring players to make serious choices amidst the humor of odd pairings in each round.

That's Life! (also known as Verflixxt!) revitalizes the traditional roll-and-move game genre with elements that give players more strategic control. In this game, players navigate a path laid out with tiles, aiming to collect as many positive tiles as possible while avoiding negative ones. The addition of guards and clovers introduces strategic depth, turning what could be a game of chance into one of tactical decision-making.

Many animals have gathered in the stadium clearing to participate in the 1111th Turtle Olympics. Famous characters like Henry the Hare, Rowdy Badger, Herbert Hedgehog, and Rosaly the Racing Caterpillar are already spotted. The game is actually a system of five games, including racing, skill, luck, bluffing, and even turtle soccer, all featuring clever wooden turtle figures that roll forward when their tops are rolled back.

Jambo is a strategic card game that immerses players in the role of traders in Central Africa, competing to become the most successful merchant through savvy buying and selling. Set before colonization, the game captures the essence of traditional trading practices and market competition, with players aiming to earn wealth by dealing in various goods.

Players take on the role of farm animals, making sounds and trying to outpace each other in this lively and hilarious game. Each player receives a plastic animal and hides it in their stable while trying to remember the sounds of the other players' animals. When cards are turned over and a match occurs, players race to mimic the sound of the other player's animal to win their cards. The first to collect all their cards wins.

A board game version of the card game 6 nimmt!, it presents a unique experience while building on the original concept. Players aim to place their cow tokens on grassy fields while avoiding bullhead spaces. The game includes various enhancements like double play spaces and happy cow fields, significantly boosting its dynamics and appeal.

Power Grid is a strategic board game that combines elements of network building and commodity trading. Players aim to supply power to the most cities as their networks expand.

Pedro is stuck on a sandbank in the middle of the Amazon. Every step is dangerous due to hungry piranhas lurking everywhere. Players must lay stones in front of him to prevent him from getting wet, but running out of stones puts him at risk of falling into the water, resulting in laughter from the other players.

The wicked witch has taken all the crystals from the wizard Mago Magino. Children must help him collect the crystals while avoiding being turned into little frogs by the witch, who appears as a spinner.

Boomtown combines the thrill of gold rush era mining with strategic gameplay elements, including auctions, dice-rolling, and tactical use of action cards. Players start as hopeful gold diggers and aim to rise to the status of wealthy tycoons by smartly acquiring mining concessions, becoming influential in local politics, and capitalizing on the economic opportunities of the era.

Kai Haferkamp has established himself as a specialist in transforming children's literature into games. Following "The Little Prince," he presents "The Little Ghost" based on Otfried Preussler's book. Players traverse the dark halls of Eulenstein Castle with the little ghost at midnight, searching for images revealed by the town hall clock, which they must find behind closed doors using a mysterious magnetic set of keys. Each successfully opened door earns shimmering cannonballs, with the number required for victory determined by a final skill game in the knight's hall.

Oh no! The polar bear cubs got splattered with paint while helping the Inuit paint their igloos. Daddy Cool is not pleased to see his mess of cubs. The first player to reach the washbasin with their cub wins. This children’s game, nominated for the Children's Game of the Year 2005, features daring mechanics similar to "Can't Stop" and is recommended for ages 5 and up.

Around the World in 80 Days transports players into the adventurous spirit of Phileas Fogg's epic journey, as immortalized in Jules Verne's classic novel. This board game, adorned with Victorian-era decorations, challenges players to circumnavigate the globe faster than their rivals, using strategy, planning, and a bit of luck to outmaneuver one another and claim victory in this race against time.

Niagara is a captivating board game that transports players to the perilous and competitive world of 18th-century waterfall expeditions. Set against the backdrop of rushing Niagara Falls, players take on the roles of adventurers, directed by the Shawnee and Iroquois Indians, to discover hidden jewels. The game combines strategic planning with an innovative movement mechanism, all brought to life through a stunning three-dimensional representation of the falls.

The Gardens of Alhambra is an abstract influence game where each player is represented by a specific color. Players place stones, which depict all four colors, on fixed locations on the board, aiming to surround and capture victory point markers. Careful placement of the stones is essential to maximize points while minimizing opponents' scores, as ties result in disqualification, awarding points to the next highest color sum. The player with the most victory points at the end wins.

As the chief of a high plateau tribe in the Himalayas, players lead their yak caravans from one village to another, navigating snowy peaks and risky paths to gather essential goods for their tribe's development. Players aim to increase their political, religious, and economic influence by collecting resources like salt, barley, tea, jade, and gold to make offers to monasteries, send delegations, or negotiate for livestock expansion. Unique scoring determines the winner based on religious, political, and economic influence, making it stand out from similar games.

Players search for cunning moles hiding in the grass. They dig around, peek out of their holes, and quickly disappear. By paying attention to the different mole colors, players can collect task cards and gather the most shovels.

Your monstrous self is infested with critters, and you want to get rid of them to find peace. In Krabbel-Trabbel, each player starts with up to ten critter tokens on their monster card while thirteen action chips are placed face down in a circle. On their turn, a player reveals an action chip and must perform the corresponding task, which may involve mimicking previous actions or completing challenges to remove critters and ultimately win the game.

Players have a set of frog cards representing how many frogs are trying to catch insects. At the start of each round, one player rolls the fly die to determine the number of insects, and then everyone races to match and catch the colored frogs. Speed is crucial, as other players may beat you to it!

Players bring farm animals into their barns and familiarize themselves with them.