Best Board Games for Adults

ign.com:

When you hear “board games” it’s undeniable that a lot of people will presume children are involved somehow. And why not? They make fantastic family pastimes that bring kids and adults together for some quality time in our digitized and atomized age. But to pigeonhole them like that ignores the fact that the majority of board games are deep, demanding, and definitely designed for grown-ups. So whether you're into 2-player board games, party games, or even solo games, here are our picks for the best titles to stretch your grey matter and provoke some interesting discussions.

There’s no better place to start this list than with one of the most popular and engaging games of the last few years. Wingspan is often sold as a family game but in truth, it’s a little too complex and challenging for kids. It is pitch-perfect for adults, though, with a perfect weave of tactics and strategy together with a winning theme as you try to attract birds to a nature reserve. Different birds need different foods and habitats but will contribute to your growing ecosystem which becomes a kind of engine, generating resources to allow you to play bigger and more beautiful birds.

A lot of cooperative board games are very family-friendly, but Spirit Island is different. It’s deep and demanding, for one thing, with a commensurate sense of strategic satisfaction when your group pulls off a victory. For another, it boasts a thought-provoking theme of anti-colonialism, with players taking the roles of elemental gods working together to repel a colonizing invader. Winning means using a combination of your native worshippers and your special elemental powers to plan a way of predicting the path of invasion and throwing them back into the sea.

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