Much like last year, we’ll be rolling with three articles highlighting great games of 2025. The first, this one, will cover things on the lighter end of the spectrum, the games that are a blast no matter who’s at the table, be they Grandma, a kindergartner, or Ned after a few pints down at the pub.
My favorite way to approach games like the ones on this list is with an eye to an end. Do I need a fun, zippy starter for game night to play while waiting for everyone to arrive, or a cozy play that’s not going to melt my brain after the kids are asleep? A game great for airports, or for repeated one-on-one clashes with a coworker over lunch?
Keep the goal in mind, and that Want List handy as new games go in and out of stock frequently, and you’ll be sure to find a great time with the games below.
1. Great Western Trail: El Paso
As a venerable series, Great Western Trail has remixed its animal deck-building, point-scoring formula across Texas, Argentina, and New Zealand. Great Western
Trail: El Paso shrinks the sprawl to a bite-sized experience that still has, uh, bite. There’s a few tweaks here, namely to the rail expansion and the worker hiring, that reduce rules overhead and playtime, while keeping the core race and cow components. El Paso is a great intro or travel-sized version of a modern classic.
2. Vantage
A more unique game than most on this list, Vantage excels as a cooperative exploration adventure that illustrates the creativity of modern board game design. Each player will draw and place cards, pulling your group into player-driven vignettes. You’ll make choices, you’ll explore, and your knowledge of the world will carry over from one game to the next. At the end, Vantage is a communal, Thoreau-esque experience of wandering and wonder.
3. Deep Regrets
Fishing for monsters. Who wouldn’t bite that hook? Deep Regrets pitches you and your fellows (there’s a solo mode too) in a competitive race to wrangle horrors
from the local waters. Every turn you’ll roll a few dice, gauge your insanity, and decide whether it’s a better call to head in with your current catch or risk it all for a bigger eldritch beastie. Funny, with impeccable artwork, and hilarious moments, Deep Regrets is made for a talkative, narrative-driving group.
4. Spooktacular
Perhaps the epitome of designing for everyone, Spooktacular packs 20 (!) monsters into its carnival of terror, and your group will each control one with the goal of devouring as many visitors as possible. It’s a points race, and your choice of monster comes with wildly varying complexity. The kiddos and Ned can pick simpler fiends while you concoct masterful schemes with your own. An hour later, the amount of unfortunate tourists will tell who’s done it better.
5. Toy Battle
Paolo Maori’s staked a name for himself designing impeccable and swift two-player duelers. Toy Battle takes our childhood and puts it on the table in a drafting and placing game that resembles, at times, Chess as played with dinosaurs and robots. Special abilities warp play, keeping both players engaged for twenty spicy minutes until, inevitably, you’re setting it up for a second round. Best served as a nightcap or morning coffee game at your next event.
6. Hot Streak
Ready, Set, Bet and Long Shot: The Dice Game have begat Hot Streak, a natural evolution in the screaming chaos genre. You and a cohort of game pals will line up mascots, fire the starting gun, and draw cards to see madness ensue. These racers will bumble this way, that way, and often backwards, all while everyone’s dropping bets like madcap degenerates. It’s hilarious insanity for thirty minutes, perfect for parties, bars, and family nights.
7. Magical Athlete
Or perhaps all those games above owe their existence to Magical Athlete, a refreshed reprint of a classic that arrived this year. We’re rolling and moving along a simple track here, but every racer has unique, game-breaking abilities (like teleportation, tripping, or swapping) that sprinkle strategy onto the randomness. If Hot Streak is best deep into the evening when everyone’s a bit crazed, Magical Athlete makes a great opener.
8. Zenith
A neat tug-of-war dueler where you’re battling over planets, Zenith packs a crisp production with compelling choices. Do you advance game-altering technologies, or must you drop more forces into the fray to keep your opponent from taking a world? Special abilities, light take-that elements, and a nifty partner mode for 2v2 gameplay give Zenith more punch than its rules would suggest. For folks looking for a tight sci-fi contest that you can play anywhere, Zenith is an easy recommend.
9. Tag Team
Like Zenith, Tag Team’s a dueler that’s more Smash-Up than Lost Cities. In other words, you’re picking two unique characters, shuffling their decks together, and
slowly building a deck to wage War-style combat with your opponent. Simple rules lead to mind games, as the deck-building piece creates a dynamic puzzle fortified by asymmetric characters. If you have a partner, siblings, or a desire to challenge randoms in the airport to a snappy battler, this is the game.
10. A Place for All My Books
Gorgeous, tactile, and delightful, A Place for All My Books is a cozy worker placement game that asks you to arrange your library according to various goals. You’ll score points stacking those books in patterns, all while wishing your own literary endeavors looked so neat. There’s enough strategy here to keep everyone engaged while sipping some tea and snuggling with a cat. At the end, no matter who wins, you’ll look at your beautiful books and come away satisfied.
11. Finspan
Ah, another Wingspan riff. While it may not be wholly original, Finspan has a reason to exist beyond simple capitalism. Beyond the fishy fun, Finspan is the lightest
of the ‘spans and, thus, works great as an introduction to a whole slew of core board game mechanics, from set collection to combos to, naturally, stealing all the sharks so your pals are left wanting. If you’ve kids or friends that want an onramp to board gaming, Finspan is an excellent choice.
12. Knitting Circle
From the folks who created the sharp Calico comes the friendlier Knitting Circle, a tile-layer where you’re trying to fashion wonderful garments with the aid of your kitty pal. We’re doing some drafting, some strategic resource management and recipe fulfillment, and some good ol’ bonus point scoring at the end. All this layered onto a cute-tastic design with yarn, cat meeples, and chunky tiles. Like many games on this list, Knitting Circle thrives as a casual-but-not-dumb introduction to core euro mechanics, all while being a pleasant play in its own right.
All of these games are excellent plays in their categories, both for new players and old hats. Earlier this year, we published a few pieces on board gaming ‘ladders’, essentially ways to introduce people in your life to this great hobby and build them up. Every game on this list fits the lower rungs on that ladder, teaching core concepts while serving as an inviting, fun, and social way to get together (and many play great solo too!).
After all, it’s not much of a leap from Toy Battle to Under an Iron Sky, right?
