15. The Isle of Cats
Oh no! The dread pirate Lord Vesh Darkhand is approaching your isle to plunder and destroy! You’ll only have a certain amount of time to get off the island before he arrives, but it being the Isle of Cats, you want to save as many as you can.
Your goal is to put as many cat tiles as possible onto your boat, which is also the board. There are shapes lined out inside the boat, almost similar to Tetris. The boat has rats inside, so you must use your cats (and the occasional treasure) to cover them up so you don’t lose points.
How many cats can you fit into your ship?
In the beginning, everyone starts with seven cards. You keep two cards and hand the rest to your neighbor. You repeat this until you have seven cards again in your hand. Depending on the selection, you may have the following: baskets, broken baskets, treasure cards, cards that let you grab a cat (regardless of color), and special ability cards.
You’ll start out with 20 fish that act as currency, and you’ll spend fish to play each card that you keep during the handout round. You’ll couple these with the basket cards to catch as many cats as you can. Certain colored cats earn you more points, but regardless of which cats you catch, you’ll need to carefully select where each cat will fit because if you mess up near the beginning, you’ll run out of space quickly and your points will be severely cut at the end. You can use treasure cards to fill up empty spaces if needed. After five rounds, the player with the most points wins.
With I first heard that there was a game out there that focuses on capturing cats and putting them onto a boat, I didn’t think that there couldn’t have been much strategy involved. But I was wrong! There is a lot of problem-solving because if you aren’t careful with placement from start to finish, you lose an opportunity for more points. So you have to choose your cards carefully, decide which ones are worth spending your fish on, and place the cat tiles accordingly.
Buy this game if:
- You want a game with a solo mode as well as a cooperative mode.
- You want a game with colorful artwork.
14. Picture Perfect
Family pictures are always such a pain. Once Grandma calls everyone over for a photo, you know you are in for a few minutes of aggravation. You just pray that you don’t end up next to that one uncle that always smells like garlic or the little cousin who never stops sniffling. And in the end, you hope that everything looks good so you don’t have to do it again.
In Picture Perfect, you have to bring the pains of family photos to board game form.
You and up to three others will attempt to make fourteen characters in the game gather together for a photograph. Simple right? The problem is that each character will have preferences on where they want to be and who they want to be next to (or don’t want to be next to) and it is up to you to solve that.
These preferences that each character has will be given to them on cards that will be kept in their envelopes. Every player will keep one of these envelopes, so essentially you will know the preferences of one or two characters. In order to find out the others, you will need to communicate, because the more you know, the more points you earn in the end. Or to solve the problem of someone withholding information, you can use action cards to see other character preferences that other players are holding.
Once you believe you have everyone in their right positions, you take a picture with your mobile device to act as the “final answer” to the game. Then you will review the picture with the preferences to see how many points you earned. The player who meets the most preferences for the characters is the winner.
Randomization guarantees that no two games are ever alike, and because every character involved will never have the same preference, you always have to be mindful of all the information you have and come up with a solution on where everyone needs to go to rack in the most preferences.
Buy this game if:
- You enjoy brain-teaser games and want to apply that to a board game.
13. Galaxy Trucker
Listed in the Best Science Fiction Board Games previous, Galaxy Trucker once again makes an appearance as an effective problem-solving board game!
In Galaxy Trucker, your goal will be to make as much money as possible for delivering cargo. You will achieve that goal in two parts: building your spaceship/truck and then surviving the delivery route long enough to transport your said cargo in (hopefully) one piece.
In the building rounds, you start with your board that has your cabin in the center. You then grab from a pile of facedown tiles that have the cargo you want as well as other space truck essentials and flip them up to attach to the cabin to make your sweet ride. Of course, your truck needs to be functional, meaning that any thrusters you find MUST point to the back of the ship, with nothing blocking their path.
Build the best vehicle possible with what you've got!
You’ll also find lasers, engines, and cabins, which you’ll want to add as much to your vehicle as possible for later, but there should be nothing built in front of the lasers. More cabin space will also mean more crew for your ship. Meet special requirements, and you’ll also acquire alien crewmen, which will boost your truck’s laser/engine power.
After you make your truck, you shove off to make your delivery. Along the way, you’ll be pulling from a deck of cards that determine your next course of action. You may encounter planets where you can grab more cargo for your ship. You may run into an abandoned ship to grab more scrap. Or you may run into space pirates that will challenge the integrity of your truck and your crew, which is why having plenty of weapons and engine power is important for a safe voyage.
In the end, all you need is one point to win the game. That’s how much faith the game has in you completing your tasks successfully. The game is so maddening that it is confident that you will hit rock bottom every single time. But you’re a strong, independent galaxy trucker, so prove them wrong!
While part of the game relies on luck, there is much more to it than that. Part of the problem-solving process depends on how well you work with what you are given. Once you know how all of the pieces are supposed to fit in to make your space truck functional, it’s up to you to put it together and prepare for the worst. And what doesn’t work in one play, you’ll learn how to make it better in the next.
Buy this game if:
- You want a challenge in creating the perfect truck/ship through luck-of-the-draw gameplay and trial-and-error.
12. Factory Funner
The title of this board game is going to offend every stickler of English Grammar that reads this list, myself included. That being said, Factory Funner will be a challenge to those looking for a challenging board game that also acts as a puzzle.
Similar to Galaxy Trucker, your goal is to create a machine to produce the raw materials that you want in the most efficient way possible. You’ll grab tiles and connect them properly so that they have inputs and outputs, which is simple at first, but then they will begin to twist and turn all across the board. It can start to look a little chaotic, but as long as you know where everything is going and you are confident you are going to get all of the different-colored goops you need to be produced, then you can move on to the bookkeeping phase. If you need to move any pieces at any time, that will cost you points.
Can you build the most efficient factory for the most points?
During the Bookkeeping phase, one player will tally up the potential money (points) your machine will produce. Tiles will tell you sometimes how much they can earn, so they’ll be tallied in minus the costs of adding new parts to a factory. The winner after eight rounds is the one that earned the most money.
Your brain will struggle to keep up if you are not being mindful of where all of your machine parts are going, as well as how much each tile is going to earn you in profit after it is all completed, or how it's going to cost you money.
Buy this game if:
- You enjoyed Galaxy Trucker’s tile-laying gameplay, but want a different theme.
11. Overbooked
Airlines can be such a pain. You buy the tickets, but you never know who is going to be surrounding you in the other seats. If only there was a way to let the airline know ahead of time what you prefer in terms of which strangers you are okay with sitting with and where. In Overbooked, you get to live out that fantasy.
Overbooked is a strategy game where you are an employee of an airline and you are tasked with booking flights and placing passengers inside the plane according to their needs. Couples must stick together, friends want to stick with groups, etc.
Use your problem-solving skills to win the game!
During your turn, you’ll draw a passenger tile and learn its identity. You’ll know beforehand what criteria the passenger has in order to be seated properly. There will be cases where a passenger will not be able to be seated depending on that criteria, so he is considered “overbooked” and can be put aside, for now, to wait for the next available flight. Other players can take these tiles for their own flights if needed when that happens.
The game is over once everyone has had a turn after the last child passenger tile is drawn.
Like Picture Perfect, there are preferences that your passengers want you to know, and it's up to you to figure out a way to make everyone happy. It’s a true puzzle game in that sense, and anyone that likes these kinds of brain teasers will enjoy this.
Buy this game if:
- You have played Picture Perfect,
- You are interested in Brain Teasers.
10. Tiny Towns
Think you live in a small town? All across the US, there are many small, unincorporated towns that have less than 10 people living in their population. But we’re not talking about those types of towns right now, because we’re going to be busy making our own tiny town in this game.
In Tiny TownsEvery player has a 4x4 grid that represents their town. You’ll know which building to create through card drawing, and you’ll gather resources to build the tiny homes in your tiny town.
During each turn, a player will have a turn as a Master Builder. He or she will announce a resource that must be used. All other players will gather one cube of that resource and place it on an empty grid in their town. When a player decides what building they are constructing, they must announce it to the group. When you have enough resources for that building, you’ll remove the resource cubes from your board and add your brand-new building to an empty square.
Can you make the most of the tiny space you have to make a town?
Once you have no more empty squares you are done with your game, so you’ll tally your score. The whole game ends once everyone has no more squares to fill. The player with the most points from their tiny town is the winner.
In Tiny Towns, sometimes you just have to deal with the hand you have been dealt, so you have to be mindful ahead of time of what you can possibly build and what you cannot. Sometimes it isn’t about creating the biggest building to win but making the most of your Tiny Town. Mixing up how you play each time will help you better make your little town flourish.
Buy this game if:
- You like games with high replayability.
- You want a game that encourages different strategies in each playthrough.
9. Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion
Ruh Roh! The gang is in trouble again and it's up to you to help them solve the mystery and escape from being trapped inside a haunted mansion! You and your friends take on the role of the Mystery, INC. gang and try to escape the mansion of Lady Fairmount. The game comes with narrative books instead of an app, and everything is written out for everyone playing to understand.
Without giving away any context/spoilers of the game, your goal is the solve the mystery of the ghost of Lady Fairmount and escape her mansion. Each character has their own ability that contributes to solving the mystery and escaping the mansion. Scooby-Doo can sniff, Velma researches, Daphne can use items, Fred investigates, and Shaggy eats (naturally). No one player takes on the role of any character solely; all players are working together to escape the mansion.
Use all of the Mystery Inc. gang characters correctly to escape!
You’ll follow the narrative of all of the character books to continue through the mansion. It will guide you on how to use coded numbers located in each room. Since each character can only do certain things such as smell and use items, you’ll need to move those said characters into a room to see if can provide you with context clues to progress.
If you get stuck on a puzzle, you’ll be encouraged to try three times before eating a Scooby Snack, which provides you with a clue. The more Scooby Snacks you eat, the lower your overall score will be after escaping the mansion.
While using the themes from a children’s tv show, this game’s puzzles can prove to be challenging since each character only has one ability to help solve them. This encourages you to pull each character to a spot to see if something different happens when you use those abilities or give you some idea of what needs to be done. Wisely using all of the Mystery Inc. members will guarantee your escape from the doomed mansion.
Buy this game if:
- You love the Scooby-Doo franchise and want to feel like you are in one of their episodes.
- You want a game where using the characters is all part of the escape room experience.
8. Pandemic
A popular board game among enthusiasts, Pandemic throws players into the beginnings of a global-wide disaster where four horrible diseases threaten to take over. It’s up to you and your team to go around the world and research and find cures to put an end to the pandemic.
In Pandemic, you are tasked with saving the world from four different diseases. Sounds a little daunting, admittedly, but the gameplay is simple. Here is how it is played.On your turn, you take up to four actions:
1. Drive/Ferry-move your character to a city that is connected by a white line to the location you are on.
2. Direct Flight-use a special card to go directly to the city that is named.
3. Charter Flight-use a card that has the city you are currently on and moves yourself to any other city.
4. Shuttle Flight-move to a city with a research station, but only if you are currently in a different city that also has a research station.
Travel around the world to find cures!
During these moves, you can also build a research station (if your location currently doesn’t have one), share knowledge, treat or cure diseases, etc. After this, you draw two cards and do any of the epidemic cards that you get. You can also get event cards which you can use when you feel it is best.
The game is over if all four diseases are eradicated (win) or if there are no more cards left to draw (lose)
For being a board game that hits a little too close to home with everything that has happened in the past few years, Pandemic still succeeds in being fun and enjoyable to play. Tasking you with the problem of how to save the world, you need to team up with your friends to come up with a strategy on how to build your research stations and find or treat those diseases before they have enough time to run rampant to the point of global devastation.
Buy this game if:
- You are looking for a solid co-op board game.
7. Quoridor
When you first look at this game, you would think that you are going to observe a game of chess. But upon watching the gameplay, it is not as complicated-in fact, anyone could play it and be an expert after one try!
Your goal is to reach your opponent’s line at the opposite end of the board. Everyone’s pawns on the board can move one space at a time in any direction except diagonally. You and the other Players will place wooden blocks to hinder each other’s progress, so you will need to find ways around it.
Make your way to your opponent's end of the board to win!
Everything you do in this game will either earn you victory or give you a taste of defeat. When you can only do one thing at a time, you’ll need to solve the problem of how to win while anticipating what your opponent will do to try to hinder your progress.
Buy this game if:
- You want a game you can play and enjoy with one other person.
- You need a game that isn’t complicated to play or hard to teach.
6. Forbidden Island
There’s a fortune to be had on a mysterious island, and it's up to you and your intrepid team to get it out! The island is sinking, however, so unless you want to swim home, you’ll need to get the treasure fast!
Your goal is to figure out how to keep the island from sinking for as long as possible while getting as much treasure as you can. You’ll each get an adventurer card to determine what you can and cannot do during a turn. Cooperation is key to solving how to best get the treasure.
Move through the island and gather the treasure before it's too late!
During your turn, you can take three of four actions which are: Move, Give a Treasure Card, Capture a Treasure, and Shore Up. Then you will draw two treasure cards and flood cards equal to the water level (which is measured with a water level marker).
The island is slowly sinking during the game, so you all must team up together to use sandbag cards to stem it up. It won’t hold forever though; it will only buy you time to get the rest of the treasure.
Teamwork is key for Forbidden Island. Your abilities in the game may be what makes the difference between sink and swim, so you’ll need to rely on your team a lot to solve the puzzle of this island. Forbidden Island is a tried-and-true game that has been played for years and still holds up for fun gameplay.
Buy this game if:
- You need a game to build teamwork.
- You want something that is popular in the gaming community.
5. Photosynthesis
Nature is beautiful. People have been expressing its beauty for years and years and years. Poems, songs, postcards; there hasn’t been a source of media that hasn’t been used for it. Until now at least. In the board game Photosynthesis, you’ll take charge of growing trees and preserving a forest.
Throughout the game, you’ll be planting seeds to grow trees to earn points. Sunlight is key to growing your trees, giving you light points to use for future rounds. You need to avoid any shade that can block the process of photosynthesis.
Everyone has their own set spot on the board, so there is a possibility that one of their trees will block out your spots, which you will not earn light points for, so you’ll need to plan ahead and plant carefully. If the tree is taller than the one casting the shadow though, light points will still be earned.
Grow and harvest your trees wisely to bring in more points!
Once everyone has earned their points for the round, it’s time to spend them. You can spend points to plant more seeds in your part of the board, or you can use them to make an already available tree to grow. And if a tree is large enough, you can spend those points to harvest it, thus giving you a scoring token and another opportunity to grow a new tree in its place.
After three rounds, the player with the most victory points earned from available light tokens and scoring tokens is the winner.
The main problem that you need to keep in is how your trees will be affected depending on where you plant them. Plant them a certain way, then they’ll get their potential sunlight blocked by opposing trees and they won’t grow to their full potential. Keep your trees tall for too long and you miss out on more points. There is a lot to consider, so you have to keep everything in mind and also know when to harvest for maximum points.
Buy this game if:
- You are big on unique games. You don’t see many tree-growing games out there.
- You want a game that raises awareness on topics like the ecosystem.
4. Tokyo Highway
In Tokyo Highway, Your goal is to create a highway efficient enough to have 10 cars run through without any complications. You will have three things that you need to accomplish before your turn is over. You’ll first a.) construct a pillar, which is the multiple gray tokens, and six yellow tokens.
You’ll make a base first with your road and gray token, and place a car on it. Every other player will do the same thing. You’ll have to work around the other players' roads and if you knock any of their roads, cards, or pillars, you must offer your materials (equal to the amount they lost) as a penalty.
If you lose all of your construction material before the game is over, you are out and the rest continue playing. But if you have constructed enough roads that can hold all 10 of your cars, you win!
Keep all 10 of your cars on your highway to win!
This is a fun game to play if you’re into puzzles that depend on balance and stability. Keeping track of where your strengths are on your personal highways and you’ll be able to succeed quickly get all of your 10 cars on and raring to go to wherever life takes them next.
Buy this game if:
- You enjoy games with balance and stability.
3. Evolution
Your goal in Evolution is to adapt your species to survive in an “ever-changing environment” by gaining the most points in feeding it, increasing its population, and evolving it.
Each round will play out in four phases: Dealing with trait cards, selecting food, playing cards, and feeding. When it is your turn, you’ll be dealt your trait cards, which you’ll examine their food select one secretly, and put into the center of the table (the watering hole). This card will serve as food during the feeding phase.
After that, you’ll play as many of the trait cards as you’d like during the play phase, as long as your species doesn’t exceed three traits altogether, and there are no duplicates. And during the feeding phase, all the cards that each player added to the watering hole are revealed, and how much plant food is determined and given to players. If you have a non-carnivore species, this is fine, but if you have a carnivore though, you’ll need to find another way to feed.
Feed your creatures wisely so that they can survive their environment!
And that is by attacking other species. Depending on the size and traits of your carnivores, you can attack any other species that the other players have. If an attack is successful, you will take meat food from the food bank and place it on your carnivore’s board.
If the population of your species goes to zero, that means they are extinct and no longer available to be played. The game is over after the cards deck is shuffled once and played through twice. The player with the most food tokens at the end of that is the winner.
Giving your animals the best chance of surviving is a real challenge at times. You need to make them thrive in their environment, but if you are not going to make them into carnivores, you’ll also need to make them strong contenders. So finding the perfect balance with some of the luck mechanics in this game may be tough. But if you solve that problem, you are almost certainly guaranteed a win.
Buy this game if:
- You want a game with beautiful illustrations.
2. Pelican Cove
The goal of Pelican Cove is to take eight magical birds from Australia and fulfill their deepest wishes. They are very particular about where they land to rest, so your task is to make sure that they land exactly where they need to be on the board.
Each player will refer to the eight randomly drawn cards that will point to how the different colored pelicans want to be in their final positions. Players will each try to match it as best as possible. Afterward, you’ll tally up points depending on how correct you are to how the drawn cards asked you to place the birds.
Much like in Picture Perfect and Overbooked, it’s all about finding out where everything goes in a timely fashion. The clues for each bird will cause you to pause and think carefully before putting them in their spot. There are varying levels of difficulty, so you can keep playing this for more challenging puzzles.
Buy this game if:
- You can’t get enough of those brain teaser puzzles.
- You need a game that doesn’t have over-complicated rules.
1. Wingspan
A lot of puzzle-based board games have the theme of nature. Photosynthesis and Pelican Cove fit that theme. On the top of this list though is a game that has had a lot of positive feedback since it’s release, and we’re happy to have it on the top of our list. Here is Wingspan.
In Wingspan, your goal is the create an effective wildlife preserve for birds. In order to have a wildlife preserve for birds, you’ll need birds to put it in. In order to get birds, you’ll need food. Each player will receive five food tokens at the beginning but if you need more, you’ll need to take a roll with the birdfeeder (which is a dice tower).
Collect eggs to earn points. The rarer the bird, the better!
With birds that you collect, you may gain new abilities that are activated when you play the bird onto your board. Some can help you draw additional cards, which is helpful when trying to get the rarer birds for your preserve. Birds will also provide you with more eggs depending on which slot you put them in on the board.
Whoever has the most birds and eggs on their board at the end of four rounds is the winner.
A lot of games, in order to be effective in problem-solving, should have a lot of evolving, complex challenges. Wingspan does this well. This is a perfect game because you are trying to accumulate the most points possible with birds and eggs. The further slots you put birds in, the more eggs you accumulate, so you’ll probably want the rarest bird there, but if you are trying only for the rare birds, you’ll miss out on easy points. So you need to balance out your gameplay if you hope to become the winner.
Buy this game if:
- You want a beautifully illustrated game with easy-to-learn rules.
