The best "Spiel des Jahres🇩🇪" board games 2024

Just One is a cooperative party game that combines elements of mystery and creativity. Players work together to guess as many words as possible, using unique clues provided by their teammates.

Codenames is a captivating and popular party game that involves clever wordplay and deduction. Two teams compete, each led by a spymaster who knows the secret identities of 25 agents, represented by cards bearing single-word codenames like "disease," "Germany," or even "carrot." The objective is for each team to be the first to correctly identify all their agents based on clues given by their spymaster, while avoiding the dangerous assassin.

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.

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.

Azul invites you to step into the captivating world of Portuguese artistry and craftsmanship. This board game draws inspiration from the introduction of azulejos, originally white and blue ceramic tiles, by the Moors. The tiles found a new home in Portugal when King Manuel I, during a visit to the Alhambra palace in Southern Spain, was enchanted by the exquisite Moorish decorative tiles adorning its interior. Filled with awe and inspiration, the king promptly ordered the embellishment of his own palace in Portugal with similar decorative tiles. As a skilled tile-laying artist, you are tasked with the prestigious mission of adorning the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora.

Embark on a noble quest to expand your kingdom in Kingdomino. As a lord, your mission is to explore vast lands filled with wheat fields, serene lakes, and towering mountains. Competing with fellow lords, you must identify the choicest plots to claim as your own.

Become a cunning charlatan or a quack doctor in the whimsical world of The Quacks of Quedlinburg. In this quirky board game, each player concocts their own secret brew, one ingredient at a time. But beware, for a careless addition could spoil the entire mixture!

Dixit is a beautifully imaginative and simple card game that emphasizes creativity and interpretation. Each turn, a player becomes the storyteller, selecting a card from their hand and giving a sentence or phrase inspired by the card’s image. The other players then choose cards from their hands that they feel best match the storyteller's sentence.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is a cooperative trick-taking game that takes players on an adventurous space journey, filled with challenges and strategic gameplay.

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.

Wingspan is a captivating, competitive board game from Stonemaier Games, masterfully designed by Elizabeth Hargrave. It's a medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building game that stands out with its unique theme and stunning artwork, featuring over 170 bird illustrations by artists Beth Sobel, Natalia Rojas, and Ana Maria Martinez.

Ticket to Ride offers a delightful and accessible gaming experience that can be grasped in under 15 minutes, making it perfect for both newcomers and seasoned gamers. Designed by the renowned Alan R. Moon, this board game revolves around a railway adventure across North America.

Carcassonne is a renowned tile-placement game set in the picturesque landscape of Southern France. This game is beloved for its simplicity, depth, and the beautiful mosaic players create on the table.

ICECOOL is an energetic and playful flicking game set in a penguin school, where players assume the roles of rascally penguins trying to snatch fish and the vigilant Hall Monitor trying to maintain order.

Perudo, also known as Liar's Dice, Bluff, or Dudo, is a classic South American dice game that combines elements of luck, skill, and bluffing. It's a game where players attempt to outwit each other through bold claims and challenges.

In 7 Wonders, you step into the role of a leader of one of the seven great cities of the Ancient World. Your objective is to gather resources, establish commercial routes, and assert your military might. The game is not just about managing resources but also about building an architectural wonder that will stand the test of time.

Camel Up is an exciting and unpredictable racing and betting game where players wager on camels competing in a zany race around a pyramid. With its unique mechanics and charming theme, it's a game that promises fun and laughter for up to eight players.

In Dominion, you step into the shoes of a monarch, much like your ancestors, ruling over a small, picturesque kingdom. However, your ambitions stretch far beyond the peaceful realm you've inherited. Your goal is to expand your territory, transforming these modest lands into a vast dominion filled with diverse landscapes and resources.

Hanabi, named after the Japanese word for "fireworks," invites players to collaboratively create the perfect fireworks display. In this cooperative game, the goal is to arrange cards on the table in the correct order to achieve a stunning pyrotechnic spectacle. However, there's a catch - players must hold their cards so that they are visible only to their teammates. To succeed, you'll need to provide hints to your fellow players about the numbers and colors of their cards, working together to avoid mistakes and complete the fireworks show before running out of cards.

Colt Express is a fast-paced, action-packed board game set in the Wild West, where players take on the roles of bandits attempting to rob a moving train.

Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters, also known as Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister!, is an award-winning cooperative board game where players embark on an eerie adventure to collect treasures from a haunted house.

Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King is a strategic tile-laying board game set in the stunning landscape of Isle of Skye. In this game, 2 to 5 players take on the roles of chieftains from different clans, each aspiring to expand their territories and build their kingdoms to gain the most points.

Challengers! offers a fresh and dynamic deck-management experience, where 1-8 players engage in a tournament-style battle that lasts around 45 minutes, regardless of the number of players. This game stands out by allowing players to encounter a new opponent in each round, pushing the excitement and strategic planning to new heights with every match.

The abstract game of Qwirkle unfolds with 108 wooden blocks, each featuring six different shapes in six distinct colors. Unlike traditional board games, there is no designated board; players utilize any available flat surface.

Istanbul is a strategic board game set in the bustling environment of Istanbul's grand bazaar, where players compete as merchants trying to outmaneuver their rivals to collect precious rubies.

Paleo is a cooperative adventure game set in the Stone Age, where players work together to ensure the survival of their human characters while completing various missions. The ultimate goal? To paint a woolly mammoth on a wall, leaving a mark of your existence (or just because it looks cool).

Embark on a captivating journey through Victorian London alongside the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases. This immersive and challenging game allows you to step into the shoes of a detective, matching wits with Holmes himself.

Villa Paletti is an engaging and whimsical game designed for 2 to 4 players, aged 8 and up, that challenges budding architects to construct a towering structure. Set in a land of blooming lemons, players follow in the footsteps of the sage "Paletti" who sought to complete his grandfather's unfinished castle in the sky. The twist in Paletti's plan is to reuse old columns from the lower levels of the castle to build higher floors, creating a daring and precarious architectural marvel – the Villa Paletti.

El Grande is a classic strategy board game set in medieval Spain, where players, as powerful lords or "Grandes," vie for control over various regions in a declining kingdom. The game is known for its blend of tactical depth and strategic planning.

Alhambra is a strategic board game set in the historical context of the construction of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, during the Middle Ages. It combines elements of resource management, tile placement, and strategic planning.

Living Forest is a captivating board game where players become nature spirits, striving to protect a sacred forest and its tree from the destructive flames of Onibi. With the help of animal guardians, players work to save the forest through a combination of strategy, luck, and cooperation.

Exit: The Game – The Abandoned Cabin plunges players into an immersive escape room experience in the form of a board game. Trapped in a cabin with barred windows and a locked door, players must rely on their collective wits to find a way out.

Kingdom Builder is a strategic board game where players shape their domains by building settlements, with the ultimate goal of earning the most gold by the end of the game.

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.

In the strategic world of Thurn & Taxis, players immerse themselves in the bustling realm of Bavaria and its surrounding regions, embarking on a quest to construct post office routes. The game unfolds on a dynamic board depicting a map of cities, with interconnecting roads weaving through various colored regions. Players strategically build postal routes from city to city, navigating the intricate network of roads and collecting bonus points through clever decisions.

CATAN, formerly known as The Settlers of Catan, is a highly acclaimed and award-winning strategy board game where players aim to become the dominant force on the island of Catan. The game is renowned for its appeal to both experienced gamers and newcomers to the board game hobby.

Heimlich & Co. is a clever and secretive board game where players maneuver a group of spies around a track to earn points, all while keeping their true identity hidden. The game's unique twist lies in the mystery of each player's color, only revealed at the end, making deduction and misdirection key elements of play. With a simple roll of the dice, players decide how to advance the spies, influencing the scoring but trying to conceal their motives.

Broom Service is a captivating and strategic card-based game where players aim to score the most victory points by adeptly delivering potions throughout a magical realm. This game is a reimagined version of the award-winning Witch's Brew, offering a fresh theme and new gameplay elements, while retaining the core mechanics that made the original game popular.

Tikal is a compelling strategy game set in the dense jungles of Central America, where players embark on an expedition to uncover lost temples and hidden treasures. As explorers, players reveal new parts of the jungle board, discovering temples that need to be excavated and treasures that can be collected. The objective is to score points by controlling these temples and treasures. Notably, Tikal is the first game in the renowned Mask Trilogy.