The best games from Matt Leacock 🇺🇸👨 2025

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 offers an extraordinary gaming experience as a cooperative campaign game, immersing players in an overarching story-arc that unfolds over 12-24 gripping sessions. The duration depends on your group's performance and the fate of the world. Here's an overview of this thrilling journey:

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.

Pandemic: Iberia is a historical variant of the popular Pandemic series, set in the Iberian Peninsula during the year 1848. This version of the game introduces unique roles and challenges as players work together to combat historical diseases like malaria, typhus, yellow fever, and cholera.

Pandemic is a highly acclaimed cooperative board game where players take on the roles of disease-fighting specialists. Their mission is to contain and cure four deadly diseases that have broken out across the globe. The game is set on a board depicting major world population centers and requires players to strategize and work together to manage the outbreaks and develop cures before the diseases spiral out of control.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 transports you to 1962, at the height of the Cold War, where a mysterious Soviet bioweapon called "Project MEDUSA" threatens global safety. As newly recruited CIA agents and medical graduates, you and your team are tasked with a critical mission: investigate and halt the development of this deadly pathogen. This game stands alone as a thrilling prequel to the earlier seasons of Pandemic Legacy, immersing players in a tense world of espionage and covert operations.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu is a thrilling adaptation of the classic Pandemic game, infused with a chilling Lovecraftian theme. Players take on the roles of investigators, tasked with a daunting mission to prevent the awakening of ancient evils, known as Old Ones, from their cosmic prison.

Pandemic: The Cure is a dice-based adaptation of the popular Pandemic board game. It offers a quicker setup and playtime while retaining the core theme of disease control and teamwork.

Forbidden Desert is a cooperative adventure game where players work together to recover a legendary flying machine from the ruins of an ancient desert city, while surviving extreme environmental challenges.

Pandemic: Fall of Rome is a unique cooperative board game that blends the classic gameplay of Pandemic with the historical setting of the Roman Empire's decline. In this game, players work together as citizens, soldiers, and allies of Rome, tasked with defending the empire against various barbarian tribes like the Anglo-Saxons, Goths, Vandals, and Huns. The game requires players to strategically recruit armies, fortify cities, and forge alliances to halt the onslaught of invaders.

Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age is a captivating dice game that immerses players in the task of building and advancing their civilizations. This game combines elements of luck, strategy, and resource management, making it an engaging experience for players who enjoy civilization-building themes.

Forbidden Island is a visually captivating cooperative board game that sets itself apart from traditional competitive games. In this thrilling adventure, players must join forces and collaborate to achieve victory instead of competing against each other. The goal is clear: work together as a team to secure a win.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 is an epic, cooperative board game that continues the narrative and innovative gameplay of its predecessor. This game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity struggles to survive after a devastating plague. It offers a unique gaming experience, where players' decisions and actions have long-lasting consequences, making each playthrough distinct.

Players take on the role of mole rats in a research station overrun by snakes. They must collect their equipment and escape before getting bitten or running out of time. Players follow instructions on cards, which may involve moving themselves or their teammates, relocating snakes, or adding new ones to the board. Being bitten sends players back to their starting point, and two bites result in death. The game also includes a card mechanic that increases the challenge after certain successes.

Pandemic: Hot Zone – North America is a streamlined, cooperative board game that condenses the thrilling experience of the classic Pandemic into a quicker and more portable format. In this version, players unite to combat the spread of three deadly diseases across North America, racing against time to prevent outbreaks and find cures.

Era: Medieval Age positions itself as a groundbreaking evolution in the realm of roll-and-build board games, inheriting the legacy of Roll Through The Ages but carving out its own niche with a unique build mechanic. Players are transported to the medieval era, tasked with rolling dice to assemble a flourishing city using tangible, 3D components such as walls, keeps, and farms, making each cityscape a distinct creation by the game's conclusion.

Pandemic: Rising Tide is a thematic and cooperative board game that immerses players in the historical context of the Netherlands during the Industrial Age. The game challenges players to manage and mitigate flooding from the North Sea using innovative hydraulic technologies, strategic planning, and teamwork.

Players take on the role of International Rescue, a secret organization dedicated to saving lives in a high-octane world filled with disasters. Set in 2065, they operate advanced vehicles designed to tackle various emergencies while thwarting the schemes of the villain "The Hood." Working together, players collaborate with iconic characters and machines to conduct rescue missions and save those in peril.

Pandemic: Hot Zone – Europe is a compact and quick-playing version of the beloved cooperative game Pandemic. Set against the backdrop of Europe, this iteration maintains the core mechanics of the original game but in a streamlined format that's ideal for players looking for a shorter game time and greater portability.

Players control a world power in a cooperative game focused on climate change. They implement political measures and technologies to mitigate global warming and build resilient societies. If the global temperature rises too high or too many citizens face crises, everyone loses; however, by working together to reduce global emissions to zero, all players can triumph.

Knit Wit is a word game where players come up with unique answers to generated categories to score points. Players use numbered spools and loops, creating their own categories during the game. As they brainstorm words related to the spools, they compete to provide answers while avoiding duplication with others, ultimately scoring points based on their unique responses and the value of bonus buttons.

Crowds gather for a spectacle under the scorching afternoon sun, as nervous horses break their harnesses. The race begins, and players, acting as charioteers, speed around the arena in a bid to cross the finish line first. Utilizing dice rolls, players can perform various actions, such as increasing speed, changing lanes, or attacking opponents, but they must manage the risks of collisions and potential damage to their chariots.

Forbidden Sky elevates the cooperative board game experience to new, thrilling heights. As part of the esteemed Forbidden... series, players join forces to brave the dangers of a floating platform, ensconced within the tumult of a fierce storm. The objective is clear yet daunting: forge a circuit of cables to ignite a clandestine rocket, racing against the twin threats of lightning strikes and the perilous wind that seeks to cast players into the abyss.