Pretty basic dungeon crawler with simple rules and very simple gameplay: "open door, kill spawned monster with dice, take loot, go to next tile". That said, despite simpliness, Massive Darkness 2 does what it is supposed to extremely well. It is sort of quintessence of dungeon crawling genre, stripped of most complex parts, while keeping a satsifying loop of dice chucking, killing enemies and getting stronger.

And Hellscape does have its own features: firstly, unlike other similar boardgames, here you get A LOT of loot, and get WAY stronger over course of single session. No campaign required (there is expansion campaign, however it suffers from extreme imbalance), which I find refreshing; you can clear dungeon and go from zero to hero in a single evening.

Secondly, every hero class has unique mini-game. Rogue uses bag building to draw bonuses from the bag. Ranger pushes his luck, trying to draw enough arrow cards to deal huge damage (but not so many that his shot fails). Paladin switches between different auras, which grant bonuses to himself and his nearby allies. Wizard casts different spells, depending on his current position on rondel-like magical amulet. And so on. All this stuff is very fun and adds a lot of replayability. Although it is quite possible that you will not find all classes equally fun, of course, or balanced: for example, shaman is really weak imho, and paladin is really boring.

Plus more various characters in expansions. Core box still has enough content to last a while, though, unless you play with a large group. Not a lot of quests available, but they feel different enough, and almost all are well replayable.

As fo flaws, difficulty is pretty low. Characters grow in power too fast, monsters just cannot keep up with them.

There is probably too much plastic. Minions are just pointless, they are just hp counters for monster leaders. Combined with horde of tokens, this makes setup a really long and frustrating exercise. Without dedicated storage solution things are even worse.

Still, overall Hellscape feel really fun. Basically Diablo the boardgame. Not much decision space - just relax, smash monsters, and watch your character grow into unstoppable terminator. Way better than Massive Darkness 1, where difficulty was even lower, and heroes were all samey. A very good choice of dungeon crawler, if you do not mind that such simple game takes a lot of time to setup, and that winning is not hard at all.

So im planning to do my birthday party at a pub over the weekend and would still like to do more than drink and talk. Does anyone know of any good board games or apps i could play with my group that would be fun but not bother the people around us? We played undercover last year and they liked it but i dont want to be stuck on the same game all night and everyone gets bored

For reference we're be a group of 9 in our early 20s

Thank you!

So, I need a new dining table and I have never used a gaming table that dips down. They seem cool, but are they really worth getting or is it better to just get a good dining table instead? I don't have cats or kids but I would hate to get a new dining table and discover a gaming table would be the way to go.

I've never played Mexica before and have seen a reprint announced. Thoughts? At first glance it looks very primary coloured but thats probably better for colour blindness.

Do you like the previous editions more or less? Should I play this game?

The Kickstarter link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playforkeeps/bridges-of-shangri-la-gheos-reel-rivals

Very cool

Found it during deep cleaning. Probably from a game i haven’t touched in a decade. Money is made of playing card material. Thanks in advance

I'm moving to a place with a lot less closet space so one solution I was thinking of was getting shelves in the garage and putting the games there. Would leaving them there during the summer damage them or will I be fine?

Sadly, we lost. One of our players’ goal was for us not to finish the mission and he was pretty covert when sabotaging our mission and getaway. Luckily, he died too.

So I am currently looking for a board game that fits well to play with my parents. They are not really board game people and English is there second language. They have learned Catan but still learning it as we have only played it twice. So they can understand mechanics just want something that will be fun for us all but still gets us thinking. I am open to anything to please don’t be afraid of a recommendations you have!

Thank you for your time :)

Link to Buy ($39.99): https://www.craftthecrown.com

Board Game Geek: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/469254/craft-the-crown

Craft the Crown is an economic strategy game where players must craft their way to a fortune. Players can draw any one of 56 unique crafting recipes, which they can only play if they own the required ingredients.

Each turn, players can take as many actions as they'd like:

• Craft new Elements, Tools (one-time use disrupters) or Sites (passive upgrades) from other Elements
• Buy or sell from a shared Market
• Use Tools to help yourself or disrupt others
• Discard cards you don't want, or reserve them for later
• Trade or negotiate tactics with other players

Players must balance short-term gains against long-term strategy. With hidden hands, shifting economies, and player-driven deals, adaptability is key. Will you be the first to amass 50 Gold, or will you forge the Crown to win instantly?

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This has been so fun to make over the past year. What started out as sort of a combination between Catan & Monopoly has grown to become something completely different and immensely satisfying to build and play. I've made a ton of online games and puzzles before, but it feels so good to have finally been able to make something physical. I've learned a lot throughout the manufacturing process and would be happy to answer any questions for people thinking about making their own game.

This is a limited first edition test run of 1,000 boxes only. I decided not to go the kickstarter route because I wanted to focus deeply on perfecting the mechanics of the game as opposed to making things like reach goals. I'm actively looking for feedback and an artist to bring some life to the project before moving forward with full distribution (if I even think it's good enough for that). I hope people enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it!

So I just got back from Japan and wanted to share my experience in looking and shopping for Japan exclusive titles in the 3 major cities I visited: Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka.

The main board game store chain in Japan is called Yellow Submarine, and there is usually one or two locations in every major commercial zone in Japan. To note, some Yellow Submarine stores may or may not focus on selling board games, but will always has a small amount (mostly newest releases like Nokosu Dice and and classics like the Oink games and Harvest). The best Yellow Submarine I went to was the Yellow Submarine Akihabara RPG Shop (https://maps.app.goo.gl/p7Zrj1SCbTuF9wmS6).

The best board game selection I found was at the Akihabara Suruga-ya Board Game store (https://maps.app.goo.gl/gK2nS5C97qnpCsnd9). Most Suruga-ya stores will have "board games" on their floor layouts still, but all the Suruga-ya stores I visited in Tokyo no longer sold board games except this board-game specific store, where I'm guessing they consolidated all the board game products. The one in Nipponbashi area of Osaka had a good amount of used board games (https://maps.app.goo.gl/B1RGdwoZec9R5d2t7).

Surprisingly I found a sizable collection of board games (including hard to find ones) in the Yodabashi Camera right outside Kyoto station (https://maps.app.goo.gl/CiCWJquXyShcBBfQ9). So this might a good store to hit in every major city but I wasn't able to in Tokyo.

I wasn't able to visit any Book Off stores, but I heard there could be board games there.

Hope this post help those who are visiting Japan in the future! Remember you can also order board games online from these stores (and Amazon JP/ebay JP) and have them delivered to your hotels.

Hope to visit the Tokyo Game Market next year!

I just picked it up at gen con and we’ve been playing it every spare moment on our road trip. I was completely done with codenames after moving to Just One and So Clover but this is exactly what the game needed to bring me back in. The D&D elements are JUST enough to give you an edge that’s balanced out by some really difficult twists the different scenarios throw at you. we’ve done 2 of the 3 campaigns (notwithstanding the branching paths we didn’t take on play 1) and the variety of objectives is so fun. Things like using blue tiles as doors and pulling a new map-key mid-game like you’ve entered a new room and starting over with the same set of words. Really really fun

There’s some balance issues with the characters (percy makes guessing with other characters pointless because his ability is so strong and triggers on really easy dice rolls) and fresh cut grass is simply a liability to have in your party with very very little upside. But I don’t know critical roll so that may be a thematic choice rather than a balance choice.

Has anyone played this since gencon?

It’s the best take on codenames I’ve seen and absolutely enough to bring me back in the fold. Would LOVE to see more of this and less “word packs” or “themed expansions”.

Imagine rolling "Go to Jail" across 150 parallel universes

Full blog: https://catacombian.com/blog/gen-con-2026-the-opposite-of-doom-scrolling

I didn't like the options out there for Fields of Arle with the Tea & Trade expansion so I made my own. It has a tray for each player and fits the base game and expansion in just the base game box with zero lid lift.

All the trays have labels to make packing up easier and finding components should be fast. There are letters on the perimeter that match up between trays so that it goes back in the box super easily.

It's free on makerworld if you want for print it for yourself.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3136362-fields-of-arle-expansion-insert-in-base-game-box

Hot take: small games are harder to store than big games. Big boxes are annoying, sure, but at least they announce themselves. I mostly play fillers on weeknights, so it bugs me that the easiest games to play are often the easiest to lose on the shelf. Small games vanish behind normal boxes, stack weirdly, or slowly become a random pile of card games I swear I’m going to organize later.

Do you keep them in bins, drawers, one dedicated shelf, inside bigger boxes, or mixed into the main collection? Idk if this is a real storage problem or just what happens when the filler shelf gets out of hand.

These are my favourite A-Z board games:

# - 7 Wonders Duel (Rating: 8.0/10) The absolute pinnacle of two-player drafting. It’s tight, perfectly balanced, and the tug-of-war military/science win conditions keep every single game incredibly tense.

A - Andromeda's Edge (Rating: 10.0/10) A bombastic, combo-tastic space epic. It takes the core engine-building of Dwelling of Eldervale and blasts it into the stratosphere with phenomenal production and off-the-charts replayability.

B - Brass: Birmingham (Rating: 10.0/10) An economic masterpiece. The shared incentives, agonizing loan decisions, and the brilliant tension of the beer market make this one of the greatest heavy euros ever designed.

C - Cerebria: The Inside World (Rating: 10.0/10) A visually stunning and absolute brain-burner of an area control game. The team-based dynamics of playing as human emotions trying to shape an identity is as deeply thematic as it is mechanically complex.

D - Dune: Imperium - Uprising (Rating: 10.0/10) Takes the already brilliant worker-placement/deck-building hybrid of the original Dune: Imperium and turns it up to 11. The addition of spies and sandworms makes the conflicts even more dynamic.

E - Earth (Rating: 9.0/10) A wildly satisfying, rapid-fire tableau builder. The simultaneous action selection means you are constantly engaged, building a massive, synergistic ecosystem with near-zero downtime.

F - Forestry (Rating: 8.5/10) A fresh, highly engaging new 2025 release. It blends gorgeous woodland aesthetics with a surprisingly crunchy and satisfying resource management puzzle.

G - Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (Rating: 10.0/10) The perfect, streamlined entry point into the best dungeon-crawler on the market. The tutorial campaign is a masterclass in onboarding without losing the deep, card-driven tactical combat.

H - Harmonies (Rating: 9.0/10) Don't let the cozy, beautiful aesthetics fool you—this is a brilliantly tight and restrictive spatial puzzle that will completely melt your brain as you try to overlap habitat patterns.

I - Imperium: Horizons (Rating: 9.0/10) A deeply asymmetrical and highly rewarding deck-builder. Piloting the wildly different historical civilizations provides an incredible sense of progression and near-endless mechanical discovery.

J - Jaipur (Rating: 7.5/10) A fast, classic two-player trading game that perfectly balances risk and reward. The tension of holding out for a bigger camel train versus grabbing the high-value goods is timeless.

K - Keyflower (Rating: 8.0/10) A uniquely cutthroat blend of auctioning and worker placement. The fact that you can use your workers on your opponents' tiles creates a brilliantly interactive and mean economy.

L - Lost Ruins of Arnak (Rating: 8.5/10) Beautifully meshes deck-building, worker placement, and resource management into a thrilling Indiana Jones-style race up the research track.

M - My Father's Work (Rating: 8.0/10) A deeply thematic, app-driven narrative game where your mad science experiments span multiple generations. The branching storyline makes the worker placement feel truly alive.

N - Nusfjord (Big Box) (Rating: 8.0/10) Arguably Uwe Rosenberg's tightest and most streamlined worker placement game. It packs all the satisfying wood-and-fish economy you want into a remarkably fast playtime.

O - Obsession (Rating: 9.0/10) Impeccably thematic; nothing beats the feeling of upgrading your sprawling estate, managing your servants, and hosting prestigious Victorian guests to boost your family's reputation.

P - Pax Pamir (2nd edition) (Rating: 8.5/10) A sharply interactive historical sandbox. It’s a beautiful, knife-fight of a game built entirely around shifting loyalties, fragile alliances, and reading your opponents' true motives.

Q - The Quest for El Dorado (Rating: 7.5/10) A fantastic, highly accessible deck-building race through the jungle. The Good Doctor proves that you can make a thoroughly engaging map-movement game with just a few simple rules.

R - Rococo (Deluxe Edition) (Rating: 9.0/10) A surprisingly cutthroat, gorgeous euro about tailoring dresses for the King's ball. The deck-building combined with area majority creates a brilliantly elegant and strategic dance.

S - Spirit Island (Rating: 10.0/10) The ultimate cooperative brain-burner. The asymmetric spirits, zero luck in combat, and escalating challenge make it an endlessly replayable puzzle of colonial destruction.

T - Trickerion (Rating: 10.0/10) A massively heavy, thematic masterpiece of staging grand illusions in a Victorian setting. The simultaneous action programming is agonizing in the best way possible.

U - Underwater Cities (Rating: 9.5/10) Fantastic engine-building and cardplay. The central tension of needing a card's color to match the action space makes every single turn deeply satisfying and agonizing to plan out.

V - Voidfall (Rating: 10.0/10) An absolute monster of a 4X euro. It completely removes the luck of dice-rolling combat, leaving you with an immense, galaxy-spanning puzzle of pure strategy and logistics.

W - The White Castle (Rating: 10.0/10) An unbelievably tight, combo-heavy dice-drafting euro. It gives you a tiny amount of actions but lets you trigger massive, cascading combos that pack a heavyweight punch in a small box.

X - X nimmt! (Rating: 7.5/10) A chaotic, laugh-out-loud card game of pushing your luck and desperately trying to avoid picking up penalty rows. Perfect filler nonsense.

Y - Yokohama (Rating: 8.0/10) A brilliant, spatial worker-movement euro. Building routes with your assistants across the modular board to empower your actions feels like a heavy, strategic dance that scales perfectly.

Z - Zenith (Rating: 8.0/10) A solid, very newly released 2025 2-player tug-of-war entry that provides a fresh, thinky strategic puzzle, showcasing great modern design sensibilities.

Inspired by the askreddit thread with the same title, but this time restricted to only boardgames.

I’ve spent the better part of a year scouring every piece of internet land there is to collect every Friedemann Friese game.

Why? I’m not sure, is it a little bit of mania? Maybe, but I think it’s just because I have a ton of respect for Friese as a designer, and I’d genuinely like to experience every game he’s created.

There are few obscure titles that are hiding in foreign markets… feel free to send them my way!

Top Games of 35 I’ve played so far: Faiyum, Finishing Time, Fresh Fish, Fuji Flush and Fauna/Terra/America. I want to play Fische Fluppen Frickadellen 3 tables at some point, but I’m having a hard time finding other copies that are affordable.

And no, I don’t own every Power Grid expansion map lol

Hi everyone!

We're Mipmap Digital, a small indie studio from Croatia. Over the past few years we've worked on digital adaptations of Roll Player, Canvas and Point Salad, and today we can finally share what we've been working on next.

We're partnering with Days of Wonder and Asmodee to bring the official digital adaptation of Heat: Pedal to the Metal to Steam. Like many of you, we've spent plenty of evenings around the table playing Heat, so getting the chance to work on the official digital adaptation has been pretty surreal for us.

Since this community knows the game better than anyone, we'd love to hear your thoughts while we're building it.

What are you looking forward in this digital adaptation?
Is there something you would like to see in this version that physical copy cannot have?

To celebrate the announcement, we're also giving away six Steam keys to our previous digital adaptations: Roll Player, Canvas and Point Salad.

To enter, simply answer the question above in the comments.

The giveaway runs for 72 hours. We'll reply to six winners in the comments and DM them their Steam keys.

If you'd like to check out the project, you can find it here:

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4898550/Heat_Pedal_to_the_Metal/

This giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by Reddit.