The top board games for adults

If you’re looking to indulge in a good-natured yet dynamic mystery, then look no further than Mysterium. One player takes the role of a troubled ghost trying to communicate their secrets across the veil, while the others play as expert mediums attempting to solve the victim’s murder. This is largely a co-op experience, but there’s more pats on the back to be gained if you solve the mystery before anyone else.

There’s a catch to all of this, of course. The ghost can’t spell out the whole story and may only provide clues through psychic visions – shown to the players by means of gorgeously illustrated cards, selected by the ‘ghost’ player to convey their message. If the mediums can make sense of enough clues and piece together the story of the ghost’s demise, they’ll solve the mystery and free the ghost from its purgatorial nightmare.

The cards’ surreal illustrations are beautiful, but ripe for miscommunication. You’ll be racking your brain to interpret the ghost’s hints, and with a limited hand of cards available, the ghost will face a hard task of choosing how best to communicate their intent. It’s a dynamic puzzle that will really push your communication skills.

This may be a list of the best adult board games, but that doesn’t mean every game must rely on dynamic cognition. Jenga’s block-building, tower-falling fun is a blast for kids, and Men at Work builds on that premise for a rip-roaring game of precarious placements.

Things kick off with some amiable tower-building – placing girders and supports to build a central structure. But things kick up a notch when Boss Rita appears and the ‘Employee of the Month’ awards are up for grabs. Increase the total height of the tower on your turn and you’ll earn one of these much-coveted tokens, but should you bungle and cause any part of the structure to topple, you’ll be kicked off site – and eliminated from the game.

Men at Work creates all the nail-biting tension needed for one evening. Its physical gameplay won’t be engaging for gamers who prefer a mental challenge, but for the right group, it’s oodles of chaotic, addictive fun. You’ll be screaming in terror as your glorious, if structurally unsophisticated, tower crumbles to the tabletop.

On the surface, Azul is a soothing puzzle experience. You take turns drafting tiles from a pool, and then you arrange them on your board to create pretty mosaics. But beneath Azul’s cozy gaming exterior lies a cutthroat gaming experience.

If you want to score serious points in Azul, you’ll need to lay different-colored tiles in a precise order. Everyone wants to build a masterpiece, but you’re fighting for limited resources in the form of a dwindling tile pool. To make matters worse, you must draft every tile of a color from a particular pool – and any that you don’t have space to place turn into negative points.

Azul can be a peaceful pastime for grown-ups looking to unwind, but it can just as easily turn into a merciless battle. The temptation to draft tiles that cause problems for other players is always strong.

Read our full Azul review to learn more.

Root’s cutesy art might make it look like a friendly game, but this strategy game is all about war. Specifically, players take charge of different anthropomorphic animal factions, all of who plan to dominate the forest in different ways.

At heart, Root plays as a game of area control, with players commanding troops and constructing buildings to entrench themselves across its map. But its genius comes from its asymmetry. None of the four factions plays the same and each has a unique ruleset, operation, and starting condition, ensuring every player will be waging a very different war.

Some factions will rush the enemy, others swarm the board but leave themselves thin and vulnerable, while others must carefully assess and exploit enemy weaknesses from within. Its depth makes Root the perfect strategy board game for adults.

While its rules may look intimidating, it offers a rewarding experience for anyone willing to put in some reading time. Its charming illustrations may also appeal to anyone interested in strategy board games but not keen on typical military themes.

Read our Root review to learn more about the board game (and its digital version).

A word-association puzzler, Codenames splits players into two teams who must locate a cadre of secret agents hiding in a grid of 25 cards, each coded with a single word clue. Each team’s ‘Spymaster’ has the answers and must guide their team to select the correct cards.

But doing so isn’t simple. Spymasters may only provide one single-word clue each round, plus a number, which indicates how many cards on the grid it connects to. Tune your mind to the same wavelength as your partner’s and guess which word – or multiple words – they’re referring to before the enemy team beats you to the punch.

A straightforward clue may progress your team’s objectives, but this slow pace will guarantee enemy success before you’ve discovered the location of even half your agents. Equally, go too vague by trying to hint at too many cards at once, and you risk your comrades misunderstanding you and picking totally the wrong cards.

A simple premise that builds on the word-association concept of classic games like Articulate!, Codenames offers loads of hilarious mishaps while putting your psychic communication to the test. It’s certainly earned its popular status as one of the premier board games for adults.

Here’s our Codenames review for more information on the top-tier party game.

While bird-watching might not sound like your cup of tea, Wingspan is a board game that makes the quiet pastime seem extra appealing. In this engine-building card game, you and your friends compete to attract the best and brightest birds to your wildlife reserve. Use food, eggs, and different bird cards to create powerful combinations that help you pick up the points.

Wingspan is packed with flocks of gorgeously-illustrated bird cards, and Wingspan’s expansions bring more birds from across the globe to your board. Most of these birds come with useful abilities that, once they’re played on your personal board, will help you amass resources (and points) much faster.

Careful drafting and resource management make this a satisfying strategy board game of middling complexity. It might be a little too chilled out for some players thanks to its theme and lack of crunchy rules, but we’re big fans nonetheless.

Read our Wingspan review to learn more.

Now it’s time for the big guns. Gloomhaven is huge, and we’re not just talking about popularity. Inside the enormous, 20-pound box is a sprawling co-op dungeon-crawler that has you battling, looting, and making crucial decisions as the campaign progresses.

In each individual scenario, gameplay focuses on playing cards from your hand. You select an ability from the top of one card and the bottom of a second, and this creates your movement and combat actions from the turn (as well as decides where in the initiative order you’ll sit).

If you run out of health or cards at any point, you’re out. You’ll also need to communicate carefully with your team. This is a co-op game, but one where everyone has hidden agendas and may abandon you to grab some extra gold at any time.

Once you’ve won or lost your dungeon crawl, you return to the hub world of Gloomhaven. Here you can level up your character and advance the story by interacting with the world around you – and because this is a legacy board game, your decisions permanently change the board you play on.

You can learn more from our full Gloomhaven review.

Eurogames, complex strategy board games with minimal player interaction and lots of paths to points-scoring, are the backbone of the modern board gaming hobby. Every adult board game collection should include at least one. If you’re shopping around, we think Scythe is one of the best euros out there.

Set in a glorious sci-fi reimagining of 1920s Eastern Europe, Scythe is all about resource management. Players race to earn stars, which you can pick up in a variety of ways. Construct buildings, complete secret objectives, or raise a mech army and best your neighbors in combat.

Once someone earns their sixth star, the game comes to an end, and the winner is calculated based on their stars, territory, resources, and popularity. The scoring can make this quite a complex game for beginners, but once you’ve got the hang of it, Scythe presents an intriguing puzzle.

It has some serious issues with pacing, as the eurogame genre gives players few ways to interact – or do anything at all to do between long, ponderous turns. But that’s our only real gripe with the design – it’s a game that always makes you feel like you’re in charge of a ponderous military machine.

You can learn more in our full Scythe review.