The best games with monkeys/apes 2025

Coconuts is a lively dexterity game inspired by the "Monkey King" character from Chinese mythology. In this engaging and playful game, players take turns launching coconuts towards cups positioned in the center of the play area. Successfully landing a coconut in a cup allows you to stack it on your board. Even more strategically, if you land a coconut in an opponent's cup, you can claim it and move it to your board. The game also features "Monkey King Magic" cards, which add a twist by allowing players to disrupt their opponents' shots in various ways. The first player to build a pyramid of six cups on their board is the winner.

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.

Coconuts Duo is a standalone expansion for the dexterity game where players use their monkey catapults to throw coconuts into cups, claim them, and place them on their boards. By stacking a pyramid of six cups, players can win the game and claim the title of Monkey King, but they must watch out for the new powerful magic cards that the other player can use. It can be played as a tense two-player game with ten new special magic cards or combined with the original game for up to six players.

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.

My Little Scythe is a charming, family-friendly board game that offers a light and engaging experience inspired by the critically acclaimed Scythe. It's a game of adventure and whimsy, set in the enchanting Kingdom of Pomme, where players control delightful animal miniatures on a quest to earn trophies and achieve victory.

Cheeky Monkey is a gambling game featuring eight sets of animals, including elephants, seals, and monkeys, represented by plastic chips. Players draw chips until they decide to stop or draw a duplicate of an animal already collected, returning their current chips to the bag in the latter case. Special rules allow players to steal matching animal chips from opponents or trade monkeys for chips on top of their opponents' stacks, with the game ending once the last chip is added and bonus points awarded for the most chips of a single type.

Design the best wildlife sanctuary over five rounds. In each round, draw three cards, play one, and pass the others (simple drafting phase). Each card features four biomes, each containing an animal, and at least one biome must be covered when discarding a card. The entire sanctuary must fit within a 6 by 6 grid.

"Tier auf Tier" is a stacking game designed for toddlers. Players roll the die and stack the designated animal on the corresponding game piece along with any animals that are already there. The game features three different versions for little ones to explore.

Zooloretto is a charming and strategic board game where players become zoo managers, tasked with building and managing their own zoos. The goal is to attract the most visitors by creating a diverse and well-organized collection of animals.

Zooloretto: The Dice Game adapts the basic Zooloretto Coloretto mechanics, replacing cards with dice that introduce uncertainty in which animals can be taken. Players keep track of scores for their zoo, accommodating five animal types, and can collect coins and barns for overflow animals. Each turn, players either draw two dice and assign them to transport wagons or take all dice from a wagon, scoring based on the animal coins shown. The game concludes when a player's animal boxes are filled, with scoring based on collected animals and bonuses, while penalties apply for overflow barns. The player with the highest score wins.

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.

It's party time in the jungle! Build a pyramid, play bowling, throw and catch, and take on many other small challenges to win medals. This action game encourages young children to interact with objects and develop their fine motor skills.

Being a zoo animal is challenging. The enclosures are too small, the daily routine is dull, and the visitors are unbearable. You need to escape the zoo within seven days, collaborating secretly with other animals to collect discarded trash and devise a clever escape plan. Each player has a unique animal card and plays on a board with a path made of colored fields.

Baobab features players constructing a tree using 108 random cards they cannot see. Each turn, a player declares how many cards they will play and places them according to the card's instructions. Falling cards lead to penalties, and the game ends when a player places their last card; the one with the fewest cards in their penalty pile wins.

The game features a play area with motorized trees that have rotating tips. Players use levers to raise and lower the treetops to catch animals and transport them through the jungle to the beach. You can also knock down your opponents' animals using the treetops, sending them back to the start. The first player to bring five animals to the beach wins.

Players take on the role of sloths, cozy and lazy creatures enjoying a vacation with other animals. While the energetic animals explore, sloths prefer to be carried around to collect tasty leaves without much effort. The game features a unique mechanic where players use cards representing various animals to facilitate movement, and interaction among players drives the gameplay without random elements. Enjoy over 256 combinations of animals on the massive game board, with more expansions planned for additional fun.

Welcome, kids! You are invited to spend a day at Rattlebones' fantastic dice festival, where you can play games, win prizes, and go on a quest to find Rattlebones.

Hey, monkeys! It's time to climb and grab the juiciest fruits before the other monkeys do. To reach the top of the tree in Banana Matcho, roll the dice and create the most valuable fruit combinations while avoiding the top monkey "Banana Matcho" on an opponent's roll.

In the year 2083, humanity has long since vanished, leaving remnants of its existence. Nature has reclaimed the land, and evolved apes have formed tribes, mastering human artifacts in their pursuit of knowledge. As the leader of one such tribe, guide your group toward collective intelligence by collecting resources and points through a unique deck-building and resource management system, ultimately aiming to reach 80 points to win.

What are monkeys doing in your living room? Players must compete to collect the most bananas in this simple pantomime game featuring bizarre and wacky poses. Each round, one player imitates an action while others guess, leading to funny penalties that require them to hold strange positions during their turns. The goal is to collect as many penalties as possible before the miming ends.

Players find themselves in an ancient temple, where tourists are being robbed by pesky kleptomaniac monkeys. Temple guardians must return stolen items to their rightful owners or risk losing their jobs. This cooperative game features a storytelling and voting mechanism, suitable for ages 8 and up.

The game resembles the classic Ker Plunk. Players drop plastic monkeys through a hole in the top of a transparent plastic "tree," where several colored sticks are inserted to prevent the monkeys from falling. Players must remove a stick of the rolled color while trying to avoid letting monkeys drop, with the player holding the fewest monkeys at the end declared the winner.

Monkeys are in a wild mess! Players need a bit of luck to sort them out and collect all their monkeys first.

Six coconuts each contain six monkeys ("Bommeln") of the same color. Players aim to collect one monkey of each color, or five if playing with seven or eight players. The game starts with the coconuts shuffled on the board, obscuring their colors, and players take turns rolling a die to trigger various actions, such as rotating the board, guessing the color of the monkeys, or quickly swapping two coconuts.

Embark on a jungle adventure to find the treasure of Winzul. Choose from eight characters stranded on a remote island and search for gemstones to access the treasure chamber. Along the way, dangers await, but characters can grow stronger and even steal from other players. Your goal is to reach the center of the board with enough gemstones to open the treasure gate, navigating a network of around 70 locations filled with hidden challenges and opportunities.

Players promote monkey civilizations and free monkeys from lunar isolation by launching spaceships. They must carefully consider which tribes to advance, as their actions can provoke rival tribes. The player who sends the most powerful primates back to Earth by the end of the game will win. Each move impresses one of the six monkey tribes while angering another, making it crucial to know when to play favorites or risk incurring the wrath of a tribe. The game also features six original illustrations by cartoonist Scott Starkey.

1-4 players embark on a crash course with wild foes, deadly environments, and unrestrained psychological horror. Each player controls a facet of Colonel George Taylor's psyche, working together to survive the challenges of the Planet of the Apes. Based on the classic film, it promises an exciting adventure in an unfamiliar land and is designed for fans of the genre and the movie series.

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.

Four pilgrims unite in a cooperative miniatures board game set in ancient China, searching for sacred texts that offer salvation in a demon-overrun world. Players face various bull demon minions and ultimately confront the bull demon king. The game emphasizes teamwork, with options for different playstyles, and each session lasts between 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the quest. Each game includes around 10 quests with unique objectives, allowing players to choose between ruthless action or a more virtuous path that impacts their abilities and karma. Solo play mirrors multiplayer, with one player controlling all four pilgrims.

Monkeys have eaten all their bananas and need to find a new banana field. Players race to reach it first while facing hyenas and snakes. This children's game is for 2-5 players and includes 33 cards, 10 game pieces, 2 dice, and rules.