There’s a rather sad perception in the world at large that board games are for kids, things we should put away when we grow up. Not only does it seem a bit forlorn that we can’t enjoy silly things as we get older, there’s a very wide range of board games that, for the most part, aren’t silly at all. They’re engrossing, rich and demanding of your strategic skills, taking many plays to understand and master, rivalling the depth of centuries-old classic board games like chess and go.
So here’s our voyage across the world of grown-up board games, picking out the very best for your gaming table. It spans everything from fantasy and sci-fi to ecological and social themes, and takes in everything in between. There’s sure to be something here that piques your interest, and whatever you pick, it’ll reward the time you put into it handsomely over and over again.
TL;DR: The Best Board Games for Adults
- Arcs
- The Gang
- The White Castle
- Deep Regrets
- Apiary
- Clank! Catacombs
- Cascadero
- Hegemony
- Wingspan
- Spirit Island
- Brian Boru
- Dune: Imperium
- Ready Set Bet
- Terraforming Mars
- Root
- Anachrony
Arcs
Sometimes being an adult feels like you should put away the satisfying pew-pew of space conquest games in favour of something more refined, sober and strategic, but, as discussed in our Arcs review, this title allows you to have your intergalactic cake and eat it. It's a tense two-hour game of futuristic civilization building, with a circular board that leaves you nowhere to hide, underpinned by highly innovative mechanics that mean you can chuck dice and bicker with your opponents while still ensuring the most devious, adaptive, aggressive strategies win.
The Gang
When grown-ups think of games, they often think about Poker night. And why not: it's stood the test of time as a thrilling test of nerves and skill. But if you want to mix things up a bit and maybe get more friends involved, The Gang is where you go. It's essentially Poker - Texas Hold 'Em to be specific - except you're cooperating as a group to build the best hand you can. The betting element comes from how good you think your own personal hand is going to be. It's a tense, riotous time as you try and play both the odds and your fellow gamers as you race to open a series of bank vaults with your card-sharping skills.
The White Castle
The White Castle is a semi-abstract game set in feudal Japan, which is really just an excuse to solve a fascinatingly varied puzzle challenge in every game. Each round dice will be rolled which you assign to action spaces based on their color and value. But the kicker is that what most of the spaces do changes not only between games but sometimes between rounds, ensuring that every single play has constantly shifting parameters you need to roll with to stay on top of the strategies.
Deep Regrets
What better to while away the dark nights when the kids are all tucked up in bed than with some truly spine-chilling tales of terror on the high seas, involving hideous mutants from the deep and wicked sea-captains? With Deep Regrets you can construct your own, as you venture out onto perilous waves for a week, kitting out your boat and then hauling up increasingly vile creatures from the ocean while your character's sanity frays at the edges. If you're up to the haunted depths of our Deep Regrets review, you'll also discover a strand of dark humour that really helps the game stand out.
Apiary
What's better than bees? Bees in space! Apiary imagines that insects have evolved to be hyper-intelligent, and you're competing with other hives to expand into outer space. Mechanically it's a strategic worker placement affair, ensuring lots of heft to your descisions, but there's a really clever twist. In most such games, placing a piece blocks that space for other players. But here, some of the spaces allow you to work together, meaning you can tag along with another player's pieces, resulting in a fascinating waggle dance of timing in which you both compete and cooperative with your fellow hives. The result is a richly strategic game with a truly unique feel.
Clank! Catacombs
Gamers have spent years waiting for the perfect dungeon-delving board game, but all the candidates tended to either run too long or rely too much on luck. This latest evolution of the popular Clank franchise, where you select cards for a deck that helps you creep through a dungeon to loot treasure without alerting a sleeping dragon, has hit the sweet spot. It enlivened the deck-building aspect with more control, letting you fine-tune your selection for more strategy, while adding a tile-based variable layout to the dungeon itself for tons of variety and replay value. And the sneaking mechanic remains as tense as ever as you draw cubes from the bag, praying not to trigger a dragon attack or swarm of ghosts.
Cascadero
Reiner Knizia, the brains behind Cascadero, is a hugely acclaimed and prolific board game designer, renowned for his skill at creating exciting, interactive games that boast both easy rules and strategic depth. He’s hit top form again with this peculiar game about placing messengers next to towns. Ignore the theme: it’s really just an excuse for a cunning setup where everyone wants to be the second person to play next to a town on a tight board, meaning almost every play opens an infuriating opportunity for someone else to benefit, and it’s down to you to work out how to advance your own plans without giving a bit boost to an opponent. But watch out, as the chain-based scoring system, which can lead to one move having a sudden cascade of after-effects, can trip you up if you don’t consider every element of the play carefully before picking your move.
For more information about gameplay for this game, check out our in-depth Cascadero board game review.
Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory
You can’t fault Hegemony for its ambition. It puts each player into the role of the social strata of a country: the working, middle and capitalist classes plus the state itself. Each has its own set of cards, spaces on the board and actions to take that fit into the overall framework of play. At the same time, each class has its own goals, which often involve advancing its own interests against those of other factions, setting up a fascinating balance whereby everyone contributes to keeping things on the rails while trying to inch ahead in the overall stakes. Much like a real society, in fact, even if it is a very simplified model. Between its open social commentary and its intricate strategies, Hegemony has what it takes to keep you hooked for game after game.
Wingspan
There’s no better place to start this list than with one of the most popular and engaging games of the last few years. Wingspan is often sold as a family board game but in truth, it’s a little too complex and challenging for kids. It is pitch-perfect for adults, though, with a perfect weave of tactics and strategy together with a winning theme as you try to attract birds to a nature reserve. Different birds need different foods and habitats but will contribute to your growing ecosystem which becomes a kind of engine, generating resources to allow you to play bigger and more beautiful birds. And if you want an even bigger challenge – in every sense of the word – try Wyrmspan, a successor title that enriches the mechanics for deeper strategies and swaps birds for dragons.
Spirit Island
A lot of cooperative board games are very family-friendly, but Spirit Island is different. It’s deep and demanding, for one thing, with a commensurate sense of strategic satisfaction when your group pulls off a victory. For another, it boasts a thought-provoking theme of anti-colonialism, with players taking the roles of elemental gods working together to repel a colonizing invader. Winning means using a combination of your native worshippers and your special elemental powers to plan a way of predicting the path of invasion and throwing them back into the sea.
Brian Boru: High King of Ireland
The titular Brian Boru was a famous king of medieval Ireland, whose campaign of military, social and economic might to unify the island is replicated in this fascinating trick-tacking game. After drafting their cards, players compete in tricks to win control of towns on a map of Ireland, but losing cards net critical resources to use in marriage, supporting the church or seeing off Viking invaders. Failing to balance all these elements can cost you the game, while other players will be competing to steal your tricks away or usurp you on one of the game’s supporting tracks.
You can read our full review of this board game for more information about gameplay, mechanics, and rules.
Dune Imperium
The Dune movies have been some of the biggest theatrical events of the last few years and it just so happens it’s very well supported with board game spinoffs. Among them is Dune: Imperium, where players are the nobles of the Dune universe, each building their own deck of cards representing their resources, influence and personnel. These can then be played to board spaces to intrigue with other factions or do battle on the planet’s surface, or held for an extra effect on a “reveal” turn. It’s a potent, spicy mixture, forcing players to keep tweaking their deck builds and strategies as the drama unfolds.
Ready Set Bet
There are a lot of games on this list that interpret “adult” as being sober and serious. But we all know that there are advantages to being an adult, too, such as being able to scream and shout and play games with irresponsible themes, such as the horseracing title Ready Set Bet. It’s a simple, fast-paced affair where you throw betting chips down on a mat indicating which horse you think will win, getting multipliers based on the odds or a penalty if you’re wrong. The catch is that you can add bets as the race progresses, and you see which horses are in the lead, but you can’t supplant an existing bet. This leads to a double-whammy of excitement as the horses thunder down the cardboard while you panic about how early you dare put your stake. Add in special power cards and a variety of prop bets, and you've got a sure-fire winner, even if you lose all your money.
Terraforming Mars
If none of the other games on this list tickles your fancy, then Terraforming Mars’ cross-genre blending might be what you need. In your quest to civilize Mars before your competitors you’ll need to juggle hand management, resource gathering and positional play on the planet’s surface, all these factors tying together into one neat package. Best of all, for a game of this style, they also help conjure a real sense of humanity coloniing the red planet, inch by dusty inch. The different corporation powers and card deals make each game feel new and stop there from being a guaranteed path to victory.
See our list of the best solo board games for more like this
Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right
From the box art, you might assume this is a kids’ game about cute woodland animals. In fact, it’s a fascinating and multi-layered exploration of the meaning of power for different groups in society. There are four factions in the game: the traditionalist birds, the industrialized cats, the oppressed woodland folk and the lone Vagabond. Each has its own set of rules and goals to bring to this highly asymmetrical game where you’ll marshal troops and cards to build up your resources, fight and advance your goals. And if the layered strategic puzzle isn’t thoughtful enough, you can discuss the political and philosophical ramifications of the game’s model afterwards. Enormously popular, Root has spawned a bewlidering array of expansions which we've run down in our Root buyer's guide.
Anachrony: Essential Edition
Worker placement, where you have a limited pool of pieces to assign to actions on the board, is a common mechanic in mid- and heavy-weight games. Anachrony takes it to the next level by allowing you to “borrow” workers and resources from your future turns as part of its time-traveling theme. Failure to pay back your loans when that turn rolls around has predictably dire consequences. Atop the usual business of juggling the resources you need to climb one of the game’s paths this makes it feel fresh, complex and challenging while also evoking a classic science fiction theme.
For more ideas, take a look at our picks for the best board games or take a look at the best board games for kids and the best board games for teens for family-friendly options.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.
