Best Board Games for Adults to Pass Your Time With Friends (2020)!

Best Board Games for Adults to Pass Your Time With Friends (2020)!

Are you a person who loves spending time with friends? If yes, board games can help you arrange for some great time pass sessions with your friends where all of you can have fun together. In this article, we have listed a number of such games that you can buy online and have a great time with your dear ones. Go ahead!

Related articles

What are Adult Board Games all About?

Board games are tabletop games involving placing or moving counters to a pre-marked surface according to rules set. Some are purely an element of luck, while others are based on strategy. In this day and age, the internet and visual games tend to take most of everyone's time, as most of us spend time trying to solve a puzzle on our smartphones or playing video games. Most of these online games are played solo, thus, it is easy for you to fall into solitude while playing.

Adult board games are now taking over since people have rediscovered the importance of unplugging and spending time together with family and friends. Thus, you can make it count by playing games that are not only fun but also engaging and intellectually demanding, not to mention, competitive!

Tips to Employ When Identifying the Best Adult Board Games

Simple or Complex

When playing as a family, simple games are ideal since they are accessible for younger people to join in. Some people like participating in games that have shorter experiences to avoid drifting away. At the same time, some people tend to like strategies that take longer to solve, especially those that build up into a sophisticated economic plan that can take up to a whole afternoon to solve. Simple games are accessible for a new player to catch up and learn, quicker to play, and you are more likely to find people who already know how to play and can be played by both non-gamers and gamers alike. Complex games are thought-provoking, therefore great for those who love unfolding mysteries. Games such as Risk and Monopoly are complex, yet fun to play.

Competitive or Co-operative

Some people just like games that are competitive, where they get to pull all their tricks and display their different abilities and wits. Therefore, competitive games give the participants the joy of beating their opponents. Some people may not enjoy games that are competitive, thus cooperative games can suit them much better where everyone is working together to achieve a common goal. Cooperative games are usually played during team-building experiences. Depending on the kind of players involved in the game, both games should be fun as long as you ensure that everyone participating is enjoying that kind of play.

Type of Competition Involved

Different games involve different types of competition, either direct or indirect. Should you choose to engage in a competitive game, one should always consider the level and kind of competition involved in the game. This is because some people tend to dislike aggressive competition engaged in some games like chess, where the players directly attack each other with every move. And they like games like poker which are less aggressive, and players do not attack each other directly and only know the winner with the last step. Friends who dislike competitive games may find indirectly competitive games interesting, therefore not entirely hating on competitive kind of games.

Main Theme

Inboard games, themes refer to the subject matter around which the game is built, which could be a strong, driven theme such as 'mystery' or an abstract theme like 'shapes'. Game theme information can always be found on the right sidebar on the information section on the game page. Themes allow you to find other games with similar themes like the ones you like to play, thus a more natural way to make your collection.

One should always consider looking at the theme in a game to ensure that everybody participating is having as much fun since some people might not enjoy the themes but rather enjoy the mechanics and the rules of the game. In contrast, others enjoy understanding the atmosphere within the intense themed games.

Consider What You Already Have

Before choosing or buying a board game, it is advisable to take a look at the kind of games you already have in your existing collection. Also, look into the tactics used to play each game to avoid buying games that play similarly as the ones you already have. We suggest that you buy games with different tactics and themes to build upon your collection unless you happen to like games of a specific kind. There is a broad selection available for you to choose from with descriptions of particular games to guide you, which you should consider instead of doubling up on games you might already have.

10 Best Adult Board Games

The kind of game you and your friends want to play primarily determines your choice for the game. Together with other like-minded people, you can always start your collection of fun board games that most or all of you find fun and easy to play. The following are some examples of the best adult board games:

Rebel Nemesis

Rebel Nemesis is a thematic game that has a semi-cooperative mechanism that takes you into the heart of all the terror of science-fiction horror survival. This game's main tactic is for you to control your crew mates to survive in an alien-infested ship. The crew members have unique skill sets, starting equipment for individuals and personal deck cards that aid their survival what an ideal science fiction horror should have.

Winning the game depends on how first you are at combating the hostile organism that keeps advancing and evolving with time. Taking a more extended time gives aliens time to get stronger. To win the game, you have to get back on earth in one piece after completing two or more objectives given as the game begins.

Dead of Winter

Source www.t3.com

Dead of Winter is a mega collaborative thematic game that tests the survivors' cooperative traits in the effort to stay alive amidst crises and the challenges they face both externally and internally. Each player leads a group of different traits of survivors. However, each player has to complete a personal, secret objective that is most likely a psychological trick for the players to attain victory.

Dead of Winter has its players fighting their internal weaknesses and external threats from an apocalyptic world to maintain the colony's morale, find supplies and food as well as resolve the crises within their territory. Between 2-5 players placed in the colony have to frequently decide between fending for themselves and what's best for the entire territory.

Secret Hitler

This is a game that involves 5-10 players seeking to find and stop the Secret Hitler, who is one of the players with the other players being secretly assigned fascist or liberal roles. As the game starts, liberals do not know who anyone is, fascists know each other and who the secret Hitler is but the secret Hitler does not know who the fascists are. This is because all players close their eyes except the fascists, and the Secret Hitler puts his thumb up to identify himself.

The majority are usually the liberal team whose role is to stop Hitler while the Fascists play together to support their leader, who is cold-blooded by sowing mistrust. The liberal team has to enact five laws as their objective to assassinate the secret Hitler before the fascists succeed, putting the nation into war.

Funskool Game of Life

Source www.amazon.in

Game of Life is not only fun but also a game of chance and choice. The game integrates children with life values such as money management, caring for others, making investments, the importance of insurance as it entails spinning a wheel of fortune that allows the player to experience the entire course of life through significant milestones such as education to retirement.

Children are introduced in an excellent way of calculating risks and making investments as the game throws in some light to the stock market. The entire lifespan is broken down into a series of chances and choices where the player, through doing good deeds, earns valuable life tiles. The win is in retiring with the most significant fortune due to the good deeds that add up to the wealth.

Risk

This is a lengthy game that may take even several hours or even days to finish. Risk involves 2-6 players who may dissolve or form alliances in this strategy game of conquest and conflict as well as diplomacy. The board on the standard version depicts the earth divided into six continents with 44 territories in a political thematic view.

The aim of the game is for the players to occupy all the territories, therefore kicking out the other players. Dice rolls are used to determine results as players try to capture territories from other players as turn rotates amongst players controlling the armies of the playing pieces.

Monopoly Game of Thrones Board Game

Source www.amazon.in

The Monopoly game is based on a hit movie and features the mechanism of player elimination. Players use game tokens to sail through the Westeros to buy and trade iconic locations within the seven kingdoms, and when pursuing the rule of the Iron Throne, build castles and holdfasts.

Throughout the gameplay, the iconic theme song is played by the iron throne cardholder, a music component incorporated into a Monopoly board for the very first time. This game involves 2-6 players at a time who trade using game tokens. With very complex rules but simple interactions, it has proven suitable for both adults and children.

Funskool Othello

Source www.amazon.in

Funskool Othello is a strategy game that is simple to play. Black and white discs are used to represent players on the board. The players normally trap the discs of the opposite side between two of their discs. Once captured, the disc is turned over the other side, which has a color representing the other side. The fun is in beginning the game with only four discs and ending up with up to 64 discs.

To defend your discs, the primary strategy in Othello is to secure a corner and automatically protect your discs within the vicinity. The opponent is always trying to make moves to make you leave the corner so that they can keep it to themselves. Even more, fun, if you can still make a move but have no discs, the opponent ought to give you one of his own.

Mayfair Games Catan 5th Edition

The settlers of Catan is an award-winning game, for the "hall of fame" and "game of the year" In Germany. 5 to 6 players can now explore and settle in the lands of Catan. The addition of more opponents has made the game even more fun to compete against while embarking on your quest in the opulent but remote Catan Island. The players control the settlers who are adventurous, by cunningly but cleverly trading using resource combinations such as wool and grain to get development cards to develop roads to the remote island, acquire cities and develop settlements.

You can use lucky dice, trade, or cards to acquire resources being aware of thieves who may steal your gains, cut off your roads, or even create monopolies. The beauty is in the fact that no single game resembles the other as the random mix of Catan Harbors creates a different board every time you play.

Funskool Scotland Yard

Source www.amazon.in

Scotland Yard is a co-operative game where a robber, being controlled by one of the players around the board, is chased by a team of players cooperating as police. 3-6 players can play the game at a time. Each detective begins the mission with 22 tokens that enable him to travel to different destinations by all means available while using the token to indicate his next goal to help other detectives aware of his whereabouts. The criminal wins by escaping from being captured until no detective can move from their location. The detective wins when one of them arrives at the place where the criminal is or vice versa.

Mattel Scrabble Board Game

Source www.amazon.in

Scrabble is a fun game that introduces you to new words, thus, improving your vocabulary. Playing Scrabble involves forming words using letters with values to create words using letter tiles of different score values.

The main objective of this game is to achieve the highest score by using letters with top letter value together with premium squares with score values on the grid. Each player uses their letter tiles to form words while taking advantage of the letters already on the network. Usually, the board consists of crossword fashion and interlocking words that can read either across or downwards.

Some Researched Benefits of Adult Board Games

Playing board games through competitive and cooperative gaming not only entertains but also has some health benefits as expounded below.

  • Gaming improves cognitive skills and memory formation. The prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, the areas of the brains responsible for the establishment of memory, get engaged and strengthened when gaming.
  • Playing board games reduces mental disorder risks by keeping one’s mind engaged and stronger to reduce the tendency of decline in cognitive skills.
  • The laughing that comes during gaming releases endorphins in the blood, which maintains blood pressure.
  • The type of energy induced in the body when engaging in a fun activity and laughing minimizes the release of stress and chemicals related to stress that tends to affect one's immune system.
Related articles
From our editorial team

Game Night!

Board Games can make up for a great pass time for you and your friends. If you're throwing a house party for your gang, you can make it memorable with a great game of Catan or maybe Scrabble. Get some snacks to go with it and you're gonna have a great time with your folks!