The best games with "Highest-Lowest" scoring 2025

That's Pretty Clever is a strategic dice game where players must make thoughtful choices to optimize their score. The game's title, Ganz schön clever in German, aptly describes the need for cleverness and tactical thinking.

High Society is a competitive auction-style card game designed by Reiner Knizia, where players vie to acquire wealth and status while avoiding financial pitfalls. The game focuses on strategic bidding and careful money management.

Ingenious, also known as Einfach Genial, is a strategic tile-placement game that challenges players to think tactically about color scoring. It's a game that balances individual progress with the need to perform well across different areas.

Between Two Cities is a collaborative, tile-drafting board game set in the early 1800s, a period of significant urban development. Players take on the role of master city planners, working in partnership to design two distinct cities.

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a distinctive tile-drafting game where players take on the role of master builders, collaboratively designing grand castles for the whimsical and demanding King Ludwig. This game is a unique collaboration between Stonemaier Games and Bezier Games, blending elements of creativity, strategy, and cooperation.

Players take on the role of leaders from two villages that have maintained the tradition of brewing beer and baking bread. They share resources and fields while competing to outdo each other's products. Over six alternating years of good and bad harvests, players must manage tasks related to harvesting, production, sales, and facility upgrades, while balancing their goods to ensure victory based on the lesser earnings of either beer or bread.

This is the two-player travel edition of a classic game. Players compete on a hex board using 57 game pieces made up of two connected fields, each featuring various symbols. The objective is to strategically place pieces to score points based on matching symbols, with players tracking their scores on a point tracker. The game ends when no more pieces can be placed on the board, and the winner is determined by the highest score in the category with the fewest points.

Nile DeLuxor is a revised edition of the card game Nile, featuring a new expansion that adds several new cards, including two new crop types, monuments, and action count cards. The game accommodates up to 6 players, and it is available as a published version as well as a print-and-play edition from Minion Games. The published version includes the original game and the expansion.

Players take turns adding tiles to a shared game area. Each time a tile is placed, points are earned for matching symbols in rows extending from the newly placed tile. At the end of the game, players calculate their scores based on the lowest value among their symbols, and the player with the highest of these lowest scores wins.

The period of warring states (475-221 BC) marks a time of endless conflict between seven rival states: Qin, Chu, Qi, Yan, Han, Wei, and Zhao. These states were ultimately unified under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC, leading to the foundation of modern China.

Reiner Knizia's Tigris & Euphrates is a highly regarded strategy board game, often considered his masterpiece. It's set in the ancient fertile crescent and involves building civilizations through strategic tile placement.

Players take turns placing colored domino stones on a game board, scoring points for each row of symbols they expand. The catch is that a player's score is determined by their lowest color, requiring balanced play across all colors. Ingenious Extreme builds on this concept with more colors and a new tile shape, creating more complexity as players aim to score while blocking opponents.

Heaven & Ale is a strategic board game set in the intriguing world of monastic brewing. Players take on the roles of monks in charge of ancient monasteries, tasked with brewing high-quality beer. The game combines resource management, timing, and competitive elements, challenging players to skillfully balance the upgrading of their monastery's garden with the efficient harvesting of resources necessary for brewing.

Fields of Arle is a strategic farming simulation board game designed by Uwe Rosenberg. Set in the small East Frisian town of Arle, it allows one to two players to experience the life of farmers during a period of prosperity, focusing on the cultivation of flax and other agricultural ventures.

Manipulate the political landscape of King's Landing in this fast-paced card game for 3 to 6 players. Players embody one of nine iconic characters from A Song of Ice and Fire, using their influence to gain allies and shift the loyalties of others. Be cautious with your alliances, as betrayal can come when you least expect it!

Lords of Xidit is a high-stakes strategy game set in the mythical kingdom of Xidit. Players take on the roles of Idrakys, noble heirs tasked with recruiting soldiers, reclaiming cities, and battling the corrupted creatures unleashed by the Black Southern Host.

Players aim to keep their score as low as possible in Allegra, which is based on the public card game "Golf." Each player starts with twelve face-down cards arranged in a grid, and gameplay involves drawing cards and strategically swapping them to form groups of three identical cards, which are then discarded. At the end of three rounds, the player with the lowest total score wins.

Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends is a captivating game of magical strategy and tactics, where two to four players assume the roles of summoners in an epic arena battle. Each summoner, either working alone or in teams, demonstrates their mastery of magic by deploying minions to create complex patterns, summoning powerful beings, and outmaneuvering their opponents.

Crown of Emara cleverly blends elements of card management and worker placement into a strategic board game set in a peaceful and prosperous kingdom. Players compete to become the successor of the benevolent King Thedorius by proving their ability to care for the citizens of Emara. The game challenges players to balance the demands of building homes and meeting the needs of the citizens, all while navigating their counselors around two separate roundabouts to maximize the efficiency of their actions.

Merchants of the Dark Road immerses you in a world where the sun sets for an extended dark season, and the perilous task of connecting cities falls upon a courageous few. As a merchant navigating these treacherous paths, your quest for wealth and renown unfolds on a board intricately designed with a rondel action system at its core. Here, strategy involves collecting items, equipping your caravan, engaging with heroes, and mastering the market—all while the allure of adventure and the promise of fame beckon.

Centerville is a relatively easy board game for 2-4 players that abstractly models the growth and management of a small city. Players assume the roles of entrepreneurs, tycoons, politicians, and local makers working on modern urban development, accumulating wealth and fame along the way. The game's mechanics involve rolling dice to implement various actions, leading to the development of a vibrant community, with only the player who balances wealth and prestige emerging as the winner.

Samurai - the card game simulates the board game by placing cities on the board and allowing each player to play one of their five cards. A city is considered surrounded when four cards encircle it. A new city is placed when two different player cards create a location for it.

The Prodigals Club is a unique, thematic board game where players take on the roles of Victorian gentlemen striving to ruin their social reputations as thoroughly as possible. The game is a blend of strategy and satire, as players attempt to lose elections, squander their wealth, and alienate the elite of society—all in a bid to outdo each other in self-destruction.

This classic dexterity game can be learned in seconds but offers a fun test of hand-eye coordination that challenges people of all ages and skill levels. The game consists of a clear plastic tube, 30 thin sticks, and 32 marbles. Players insert the sticks through the tube and pour marbles in from the top, then carefully remove the sticks one by one without letting any marbles fall. The player who collects the fewest marbles at the end wins.

"Wendake" refers to the traditional territory of the Wyandot people, also known as the Huron Nation, who lived in the Great Lakes region. Players explore the traditions and daily life of these tribes during the years 1756-1763, amidst the backdrop of the Seven Years' War. The game focuses on life in native villages, fields, and forests, where players assume the role of a tribal chief, managing essential aspects of their tribe's existence while collecting points in various domains such as economy and rituals.

“Rush to the ship! Twelve houses in our city have already burned down!” Life on our planet is being scorched by increasing sunlight, forcing everyone to relocate people and factories from the "old" planet to a new one in just four rounds.

The tribe is ready to leave its refuge and embark on a journey to new lands. As the head of your clan, guide your prehistoric people through the valley by utilizing the environment, hunting for food, and discovering safe caves for winter. Players build their personal boards by placing tiles that represent their journey, aiming to gather habitats and protection points while facing intriguing choices and dilemmas along the way.

Professor Eisstein has invented the best penguin food ever, but he accidentally lost his new food pellets on ice floes in the sea. Players help the professor find all the pellets and feed the penguins. This is a simplified, child-friendly version of Knizia's classic Ingenious, where players score points by collecting penguin food tiles and feeding them to their penguins.