The Best Adult Board Games, According to Cool People

“Hands down, Just One is our favorite new party game,” says Kelsey Demers, who runs the board-game blog the Tabletop Family. “It’s simple to play, a breeze to teach, and utterly addictive.” Word-association games are a great choice to play with friends in larger groups because they are “full of inside-joke possibilities and they let you make new memories by reliving old ones,” explains Meeple Mountain founder Andy Matthews. The main objective, as the title suggests, is for players to help their teammates guess a word by suggesting “just one” word as a hint. Which sounds easy enough, but, as Matthews warns: “Watch out, duplicate words cancel each other out.” A right answer scores your team one point, while a wrong answer docks two points, with the ultimate goal being to get as many points out of 13 as possible.

“Based on the classic parlor game Celebrity, Monikers is a silly social affair for four to 20 friends,” says Dylan Speed of Meeple Mountain. Players give clues to teammates, hoping they’ll guess what’s on the card which could be anything from a world-famous pop star to a brief viral sensation, or even an obscure concept like sausage fingers, he explains — which makes it an excellent pick for pop-culture fans. “Over three rounds that allow progressively fewer words — from unlimited, to one, to none (charades) — everyone will shout and laugh their way through an evening of making nonsense and new inside jokes,” promises Speed.

“Using only a couple words as clues, can you get your team to correctly guess your words?” Dr. Joey J. Lee, director of the Games Research Lab and coordinator of the M.A. Program in Design and Development of Digital Games at Teachers College, Columbia University, asks about the basic premise of this spy-themed Czech favorite. Similar to the basic elements of charades, players divide into two teams with one designated spymaster providing clues. By guessing the words correctly, players unveil the other teams’ agents. The first to unmask all of its opponents’ spies wins.

“This is my favorite party game when mixing kids and adults,” says Scott Cooper, owner of Seattle-based Blue Highway Games. A cross between Pictionary and telephone, each player attempts to draw the Telestration word they have been given. When the time is up, all players pass their sketch to the person next to them, who attempts to guess what has been drawn on the dry-erase board. Everyone then passes their guess — which ideally matches the previous player’s word — to the next player, who is then tasked with drawing it. The game is finished once all of the boards have been returned to their original player. According to Dr. Michael James Heron of Meeple Like Us, a board-game-review site with a focus on accessibility, “It plays really quickly, has everyone laughing all of the time, and likely won’t provoke a single argument.” Kurt Refling of Meeple Mountain agrees: “The results are gut-bustingly funny.”

The Quacks of Quedlinburg is one of board-game enthusiast and Cartamundi tabletop games ambassador Sean Amdisen-Cooke’s “all-time favorite games” to play. “It’s a push-your-luck-style game where players draw blindly from their ingredient bags,” he says. Some ingredients will help you gain points and coins which you then spend on more resources. “But if you draw too many of the wrong ingredients, your pot will explode and you’ll have to make the hard choice between getting only victory points or coins,” which will put you behind your opponent, he explains.

“Charterstone is a campaign-style game in which, over the course of 12 games, you’ll build and expand a village shared by you and your opponents by constructing buildings and unlocking new elements with each play,” says Demers. “Consider it the board-game equivalent of a Netflix binge,” she adds, because you won’t be able to stop playing the game once you start. The branching storyline slowly grows more complicated, and by the end, after you’ve completed your 12-game campaign, “you will have a unique-to-you board game you can play again and again.”

If you find battling a fictional pandemic soothing compared with living through one, Pandemic, Greg May, owner of the Uncommons and Hex & Company, calls it a “stellar cooperative game.” The main objective is for players to work together to stop the spread of four diseases and save the world. “This is considered a modern classic because it has a simple set of rules, it has a theme everyone can get into, and it is highly replayable,” adds Ronny Alexander of the cooperative board-game review site Co-op Board Games.

Patchwork, created by accomplished game designer Uwe Rosenberg, is one of the best two-player games for beginners. The game challenges players to strategically collect different pieces to create a quilt. May calls it “the perfect game for couples” that is sure to delight “fans of Blokus or Tetris.” Cooper adds that although the rules are simple to understand and it only takes about 15 minutes to play, the “subtle strategy keeps it interesting.” May agrees: “Games are usually quite close, and there are just enough layers to keep you coming back without dragging things out.”

Walsh also loves the party game Dixit, which he describes as “a great icebreaker of a game, fantastic for getting everyone interacting.” It begins with one player being designated the storyteller; that player makes up a sentence based on the image on one of the cards in their hand. Then each player selects the card in their hand that best matches the sentence and gives it to the storyteller. The storyteller shuffles the cards and presents them to the other players, who place bets on which is the original card with the winners gaining points for correct guesses. As an added bonus, “the card artwork is beautiful, imaginative, and sometimes a little surreal,” Walsh says.

Another popular option is 7 Wonders, “a trading and resource-management game in which players build up their architectural wonder across three ages of time,” explains Lee. “Efficiently building your civilization’s commercial routes, military, or technology can give you an edge in the future.”

Heron also recommends the “clever and beautiful” Parks, which he describes as “a wonderful, evocative hike through the National Park System of America.” Players take on the role of hikers as they navigate different trails, collecting memories of the different places they visit. The game is played in four rounds, each one representing one of the seasons with the trail tiles being rearranged before players begin the next round. The game features 48 unique illustrations from over 35 artists, as well as 102 color-coded wood tokens that feature 12 delicately carved animals native to the country’s parks.

“Fans of Risk should definitely give Scythe a try because of its fantastical art and beautiful miniatures,” says May. Scythe takes place in a post-WWI dystopia where players have to vie for resources and land. Since the rules are complicated and the gameplay long, it’s a good option for serious gamers who are looking for a game to go on for hours.

“This small card game is unlike anything else out there right now,” promises Alexander. The gameplay seems simple: You have to work together to play cards in ascending order. The twist? No one can talk about the cards in their hands. Because of this surprise element, the game has lots of potential for replaying. Alexander says, “There are plenty of exciting moments in every game of The Mind.”