The best board games of the 2020s 2025

The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition revitalizes Stefan Feld's classic strategy game for 1-4 players, where participants embody aristocrats managing their princedoms. This special edition, a collaboration between Ravensburger and Awaken Realms, elevates the game with a full art redesign, premium materials, and enhanced components, offering a luxurious playing experience as players build their settlements, castles, and engage in trade.

So Clover! is a cooperative word-association game that challenges players to think creatively and work together. The essence of the game is to generate and guess keywords based on shared features, aiming to achieve the highest possible team score.

MicroMacro: Crime City is a unique detective game that immerses players into a detailed and expansive cityscape to solve intriguing crimes. The game centers around a large, detailed map of a city where various crimes have occurred. Players become detectives tasked with unraveling these mysteries using the clues scattered across the city.

A dark rumor arises from Mordor, and the time has come for the Fellowship to unite once more. Players can choose to defend the free peoples as the Fellowship of the Ring or pursue Frodo and Sam as Sauron, deploying their hordes at enemy city gates. The fate of Middle-earth rests in your hands as you navigate the three chapters of the game, strengthening your skills and gathering resources to achieve one of the victory conditions.

With HITSTER, the ultimate music card game, you can instantly throw a party! Listen to over 100 years of fantastic hits, arrange them chronologically on your music timeline, and relive unforgettable memories. The first player to collect 10 hits is crowned the HITSTER.

Players take on the roles of a pilot and a co-pilot in a cooperative game for two. The objective is to work together to land your airplane at various airports around the world. Successful landing requires silently coordinating dice placement in your cockpit to balance the aircraft, control speed, deploy flaps, and even brew coffee to enhance focus. Each airport presents unique challenges, so stay alert for turbulence—it could be a bumpy ride!

MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House is a captivating detective game that expands upon the original MicroMacro: Crime City. Players become sleuths, examining a giant city map (75 x 110 cm) filled with intricate details to solve various crimes. This edition includes 16 new cases, each offering a unique story and set of challenges that require players to scrutinize the map to uncover hidden information and trace suspects' movements.

Cascadia is a tile-laying and token-drafting board game that features the rich habitats and diverse wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. It combines strategic tile placement with wildlife conservation themes.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a cooperative trick-taking card game that embarks players on an underwater expedition to discover the lost continent of Mu. Building on the foundations of its predecessor, The Crew, this game combines the familiar mechanics of trick-taking with unique cooperative elements and a compelling thematic narrative.

Trio is a card game where players search for triplets. The deck consists of 36 cards, numbered from 1 to 12 three times. Players sort their hands from low to high and take turns revealing cards, aiming to collect sets of three matching cards.

Players and their friends head to the races to cheer and bet on their favorite horses, with outcomes determined by dice rolls. The game is played over four rounds, each consisting of a race followed by a betting resolution. Players can place their betting tokens freely on the board during the race and earn money based on their bets, with a chance to gain a VIP club card for greater winnings in subsequent races. The player with the most money after four rounds wins.

Top Ten is a lively party game that challenges players to creatively rank responses based on humorous or bizarre scenarios. Each player’s task is to align their answer with a secret number they are assigned, ranging from worst (1) to best (10), according to the theme provided by the round's chief. The game combines elements of comedy, strategy, and social deduction as players try to guess and assign the correct rankings to each other's answers.

Players build landscapes by placing colored tiles to create habitats for their animals. To score the most points and win, they must cleverly integrate these habitats into their landscapes and attract as many animals as possible.

MicroMacro: Crime City – All In is the latest installment in the MicroMacro: Crime City series, offering players a new district of the black-and-white, crime-ridden metropolis known as Crime City to explore. This edition comes with a fresh, large city map that connects seamlessly with the maps from previous games, presenting 16 new and more complex crime cases for players to solve.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal is a dynamic and strategic racing board game that simulates the thrill and intricacies of car racing. It offers players a chance to experience the excitement of racing while managing crucial elements like speed, car upgrades, and varying track conditions.

Sea Salt & Paper is a set collection card game that combines strategic decision-making with the excitement of timing your moves just right. Similar to Rummy in gameplay, it involves collecting sets of cards to score points, while also navigating the timing of when to end the round for optimal advantage.

Splendor Duel is an intriguing two-player game that builds upon the foundation of its predecessor, Splendor, enhancing it with new layers of strategy and competitiveness. Designed specifically for two players, this standalone game maintains the core elements of Splendor while introducing novel twists and mechanics, making it more dynamic and interactive.

Showdown is the fourth and final installment of the MicroMacro: Crime City series, featuring a new city map and brand-new criminal cases. The 16 cases included can be played independently of the previous games. Players work together to solve tricky cases, investigate motives, find evidence, and catch the culprits, relying on sharp observation and creative deduction skills.

Unmatched: Cobble & Fog is a captivating expansion to the Unmatched system, featuring a quartet of iconic characters drawn from literary lore, each with their unique playstyle and abilities. This expansion introduces the Invisible Man, Sherlock Holmes with Dr. Watson, Dracula along with the sisters, and the duo of Jekyll & Hyde, all brought to life in a highly asymmetrical miniature fighting game.

Dorfromantik: The Board Game transitions the charming and strategic essence of the beloved video game into a tactile family board game experience. Designed by Michael Palm and Lukas Zach, this game invites up to six players to collaboratively construct a picturesque landscape using hexagonal tiles. Players aim to satisfy community demands while strategically extending rivers and tracks, and optimizing points through clever area enclosure with flags.

Stella: Dixit Universe offers a fresh and competitive twist to the beloved Dixit game, inviting players to dive into a world where interpretation and intuition meet under the stars. As Starseekers, players will explore thematic imagery on Dixit cards, using a shared clue to guide their choices and strategically score points by aligning their interpretations with those of others.

Players embark on twelve journeys through North America as 19th-century pioneers. Starting on the East Coast, they face challenges while aiming to complete ticket objectives and develop new skills to overcome unexpected events and rivals. As the campaign progresses, players unlock new rules and content, creating a uniquely tailored experience that evolves with their choices, resulting in a game that can be enjoyed for a lifetime.

Project L is a dynamic and visually appealing board game that combines tile-matching with engine-building elements. It's designed to challenge players with its strategic depth, encapsulated within an elegant and simple design. The game features unique triple-layer 3D puzzles and attractive acrylic pieces, making it not only a test of intellect but also a delight to play.

King of Tokyo: Dark Edition is a limited collector's edition of the popular game King of Tokyo. Set in an alternative, darker version of Tokyo, this edition brings a new level of intensity to the battle for control of the city.

Grove is a citrus-themed sequel to the award-winning 9-card solitaire game Orchard. It features orange, lemon, and lime trees, as well as a new "wildcard" element—glades—that enhance gameplay by offering more opportunities to boost your harvest. The game also includes recipe challenges on the back of the cards, providing alternative winning conditions for added variety.

Next Station: London invites players to take on the role of project managers tasked with the ambitious job of redesigning London's iconic underground network. The game challenges players to strategically optimize connections, incorporate as many of the city's landmarks as possible, and efficiently use the tunnels under the Thames, all while adhering to the city's specific requirements.

Marvel United: X-Men is an expansion to the cooperative board game Marvel United, focusing on the beloved X-Men universe. This game invites players to embody iconic Marvel heroes, joining forces to thwart the nefarious schemes of a villain who is orchestrating their master plan behind the scenes. With a mix of strategy, collaboration, and superhero flair, this game brings the X-Men's battles and stories to life on the tabletop.

Can you remember a few things? It sounds simple, but it’s a challenge! Players give each other gifts and try to recall who gave them what and which gift they have in front of them. If they can’t remember, they must bluff to avoid a penalty point.

Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game brings the epic conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance to your tabletop. This two-player game captures the essence of the Star Wars universe, offering a dynamic and strategic experience where players build their decks and battle to destroy each other's bases.