The Best Board Games with Hippos 2026

Beasty Bar takes the party to the animal kingdom with a twist on the classic card game format. Picture this: animals decked out in their finest, queuing up to get into the exclusive Beasty Bar nightclub. But not all will make it past the bouncer. In this competitive and cheeky game, players use their animal cards, each boasting unique abilities to shuffle the queue's order. Your goal? Outwit your opponents to get your animals through the door, with a mix of strategy and luck determining who gets to dance the night away and who's left out in the cold.

Animals on Board is an accessible and clever game featuring a two-tier cardboard tray that holds each player's animal tiles. Players draw three animal tiles at the start, choose one to place face down on their ark, and form a collective of remaining tiles in the center.

"Children's Sequence" is a kid-friendly version of the popular board game Sequence. It features a smaller game board and cards with various animals instead of a standard deck, and players need to align only four in a row to win.

Ecos: First Continent offers players the unique power to shape a new Earth. As forces of nature, you'll compete to form landscapes, habitats, and species according to your vision. The game's beauty lies in its simultaneous play, where each round unfolds with the revelation of element tokens. These tokens enable players to activate cards in their tableau, directly influencing the creation and modification of diverse environments like mountains, jungles, rivers, and savannas, each teeming with life.

Nelly the hippo lives in a small lake in Africa with her friends, the little turtles and a heron. Players try to place their wooden turtles on Nelly's rounded back while avoiding the heron and the pesky crabs that nip at Nelly's nose. Players can either place a turtle, feed Nelly with a water plant, or move the heron. If Nelly accidentally eats a plant with a crab underneath, she dives underwater, causing some turtles to fall off and requiring players to reposition them. The first player to successfully place all their turtles wins.

Players answer questions, perform charades, or sculpt objects from clay in this party game. The first hippo to cross the finish line wins, encountering funny tasks and crazy events along the way. A standard game lasts about an hour, but rules for a 30-minute version are also included.

Players answer questions, act them out, or draw objects with a "floppy" pen in this party game. They move one of two hippo figures along a figure-eight track, with task cards determining their challenges. Players earn points by completing activities like drawing, gargling words, or reacting quickly in group games, while the first to reach 100 points wins.

Hungry Hungry Hippos is a vibrant and engaging children's game that doubles as an entertaining toy, offering fast-paced, marble-chomping action that captivates players of all ages. The game is centered around a colorful plastic arena, with each player controlling a hungry hippo positioned at the edge of the play area.

Schwarzer Peter is a traditional children's game played with a deck of cards. Players discard all but one queen and then deal the remaining cards. During the game, players take turns drawing cards from others, aiming to form pairs; the player holding the last queen, known as the "Old Maid," loses, while everyone else wins. The game's humor often comes from the reactions of players, especially children, when the Old Maid is drawn from their hand.

A battery-operated motor is placed in the center of the table, spinning an arm with four hippos. Radial arms extend to each player's stalls. When the hippo of your color passes and opens its mouth, you must use a small lever to toss the melon into its mouth. The first player to chomp down on 5 melons wins.