2 weeks Ago By James Bricknell
Best overall games to gift in 2025 To win Star Wars Rivals, you have to capture iconic Star Wars locations by having more influence on that location than your opponent. Character cards and action cards let you change the amount of influence and the turn-based style means you can never quite anticipate what your opponent might do. Each round is played pretty quickly, but it's a lot of fun to play multiple rounds.
The fun hook for Star Wars Rivals is the collectible aspect. You can purchase light- or dark-side booster packs, which include a new figure, two new locations and three action cards, adding a huge amount of variety to the game for just a few extra dollars. This means you can buy the starter pack as a gift and then booster packs as small gifts in the future.
Villainous is a fun game where you take control of the villains from a plethora of different movies. Disney, Marvel and Star Wars have their own branded versions of the game, and each is a little different. The main aim of the games is to be the biggest villain and defeat the others by controlling or exploring scenes or sectors.
Villainous has a lot of main games and expansions, but unlike most game expansions, these can mostly be played as smaller, standalone versions or merged into the larger games for more variety. Munchkin has been around for a long time now, but it's still a mainstay of our game nights. Imagine playing a game of D&D where everyone only cares about maxing out their characters and you will have some idea of how to play.
The goal is to level up to level 10 by defeating monsters and collecting loot. You do this by using your loot to make your character as powerful as possible, or by asking others to help. They won't always help, but that's part of the fun.
Because Munchkin is such a beloved game, a huge number of add-ons take the game from a 30-45 minute game up to several hours of monster-killing fun, and all of it is played only with cards. It's truly a great time had by all. I keep this game on the list with every update because it's easily my favorite "modern" board game, with tons of floor tiles you can use to create a haunted mansion, plus dozens of plastic miniatures for investigators and monsters; the vibe is classic H.
P. Lovecraft. This board game requires you to use its companion app, which creates the layout, spawns monsters and even adds sound effects.
The original and more expensive trailblazer Gloomhaven is a modern classic, but Jaws of the Lion is a streamlined version for more mainstream audiences at a fraction of the price and quickly became a favorite of mine. The cleverest part is that the map tiles were replaced by a spiral-bound book of premade maps. Finding fun games for smaller kids is tough.
The Floor is Lava! incorporates aspects of the classic Twister game with a lot of jumping around your living room. The soft foam tiles can be spread over a large area and have the added complication of challenges as you play. If you're the last person to get to the right color, your tile is removed until no tiles are left.
It's a great game and a budget-friendly option as a gift, too. It's time to get the Fellowship back together. Another board game with a tech twist, it starts with tons of cards, map tiles and miniatures, but it also uses a free iOS, Android and PC app.
These add extra narrative content and tell you how to lay out the map and which monsters to fight. This simple, but addictive card game is easy for anyone to learn, from young kids to adults. CNET contributor Oliver Haslam says , "It might be the most fun I've had with a card game since forever, and it made our recent vacation very memorable.
" Best family games to gift King of Tokyo is a longtime favorite family board game in our house, because it's easy to pick up (even for younger players), quick to play and still strategically satisfying. Each player takes control of a monster -- think Godzilla or King Kong -- and attempts to control Tokyo on the central game board. What ensues is a fun and often hilarious game of dice-rolling (imagine Yahtzee, but using dice with claws, energy bolts and points on them), aggressive play and chaotic attempts to wrest control of Tokyo from your competitors.
The game ends when only one monster remains alive or when someone reaches 20 points. It's simple but endlessly fun, even in a mixed crowd. Disney's Lorcana took the gaming world by storm when it was released in late 2023.
Think of it as an almost perfect mix of Magic: The Gathering and everything Disney. You play as an artist, bringing the characters of the world of Disney to life using ink -- your currency in-game -- so they can quest for forgotten lore. It's so polished, it feels like a game that's existed forever.
Heroes of Barcadia is a family game for the grown up family. It's a drinking game designed to be a proper tabletop adventure. Your hit points are decided by how much drink you have left, and all of the board pieces are waterproof, so you can spill the bear and not ruin your game! It's so much fun to play with a group of adults or just use soda for the younger ones; that's fun too.
This was an impulse buy that turned out to be one of the best games of the year in our house. The premise is simple: You're growing houseplants and need to collect water, sun and plant food. You do that by playing cards from your hand and then trading that hand with the person next to you.
Because each round is played simultaneously, Planted is faster than most turn-based games and has the feeling of a co-op game without actually being one. It's a joy to play and is now a staple in my family's game night. Cranium is an oldie but a goodie: It's perfect for bringing together kids as young as 5 or 6 with the rest of the family.
This classic game includes everything from sculpting clay to Pictionary-like challenges and pop culture trivia. Best two-player games to gift The Fox in the Forest is a simple trick-taking game with a few special cards mixed into the traditional format -- but unlike almost any other trick-taking game, it's built for two players. What makes The Fox in the Forest a great game is the unique card powers and the scoring system.
Rather than trying to take all the tricks to win the game, you're trying to take certain numbers of tricks for certain point values -- and if you narrowly miss those ranges, you often miss out on a big bonus. Magic the Gathering is one of the world's most well-known two-player card games. It's been around for a long time and, over the years, has become heavy with rules and complex play styles that make it inaccessible to the average person.
The Foundation box aims to make entry into MtG a little easier by offering a step-by-step guide on playing your first game, complete with two decks to try out and a board to keep it all on. It's an excellent way to start this amazing card game. Twilight Struggle balances the strategic complexity of a "big" game with the simple mechanics of a traditional conquest game like Risk.
One player takes the role of the United States, and the other person plays as the USSR as you struggle for presence, domination or complete control of various battleground regions around the world. Both sides race to put a man on the moon and degrade the DEFCON status through military operations, while carefully avoiding the devastation of nuclear war (an instant loss). Perfect for those history buffs who also love to play games.
Codenames is a super-popular small party game, but there's a two-player version of this great game that's just as fun -- if a little less satisfying, since you can't rub your victories in as many of the vanquished players' faces. The players set up a grid of cards, each with a single word on them. Then one player is tasked with using single-word clues to get the other player to guess a certain number of "correct" cards.
It's a game of word association, shared knowledge and trust. It's fun, and as a bonus, it's good for couples because it teaches you to communicate very efficiently with your partner. If you're in need of a simple puzzle game that's easy to learn and soothes your anxieties, look no further than Patchwork, a game in which you "sew" your own quilt and race your competitor to collect buttons.
The game is fast-paced, the racing and patch-buying elements satisfy competitive spirits, and the Tetris-like quilt-sewing mechanism is as gratifying as finishing a puzzle. Best strategy games to gift In Windward, you play a boat captain who sails the skies of a planet looking to capture giant space whales called Crestors. There is a small amount of luck in the amount of damage you take, but because the wind direction controls your movement, there's a lot of strategy around how you move and making sure you don't encounter other players.
This conquest game feels different every time you play it. Essentially, players are vying for control of a Risk-like board with too few spaces to accommodate everyone, hence the name. You bid for one of dozens of fantastical creatures, each randomly paired with an additional special ability -- which can lead to hilarious combinations like Were-Will-o'-the-Wisps or Peace-loving Homunculi.
Then you spread using your special abilities, collect coins based on the territory you control and leave that race behind for a new one. It's an addictive gameplay loop, often equal parts funny and competitive, and you can learn and play it in under two hours. Agricola is one of the best board games ever designed, and it's one of the best examples of worker placement mechanics, too.
The concept is simple: Players each use their farmer and wife (both called "workers") to complete various actions as the seasons progress, such as gathering wood or vegetables, upgrading their farm house, building pens, buying animals, having children and much more. Over time, players have children (more workers to use) and expand their farm. The problem during all this, though, is scarcity: Agricola is a harsh game.
Even without an opponent blocking you from certain actions, it often feels like you're just scraping by -- getting just enough food to feed your family for the winter. Players often end up with very few (or negative) points in their first game, but when you start to learn, it feels incredibly satisfying. Best kids' board games to gift The easiest way to get your kids away from the screens and into the physical world is to create those apps in board game form.
Crash Cats is a puzzle game you would see on an iPad where you have to move the blocks to free the colored one, but this time, it's cats running around a house. You have to tilt and turn the board until all the other cats explode off the board, and your little guy is left victorious. It's a lot of fun for kids 6 and up.
From the makers of Exploding Kittens, Hurry Up Chicken Butt is a hot potato-style game with some sneaky exercise thrown in for the kids. The dice roller has a timer built in, and the person with it when the time runs out is the chicken butt. When you have it, you have to roll the dice inside and grab a card matching the color shown.
The cards have tasks like "do five star jumps" or "hop 10 times," adding some much-needed exercise into an already fun game. What's better than a game where kids have fun? It's a game where they learn, too. Build 'Em Up Dinos gives your younglings a chance to learn about dinosaurs while going on a board game hunting trip to find their body parts.
It's a lot of fun and perfect for the dino lover in your life..
