Love board games but tired of setting up all the pieces and organizing times when everyone can get together? Digital board games make it easy to sit down and enjoy a session of strategic combat, cooperative exploration, or competitive engine-building with friends online. In this list you’ll find a lineup of some of the best digital board games that you can dive into right now.
1. Dune: Imperium
In Dune: Imperium, your goal is to take control of the planet Arrakis and its spice. Increasing your standing on the game’s four influence tracks, which represent the Fremen, Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild, and Empire, is just as essential as winning conflicts with other players. You’ll play as a great house leader, utilizing their unique passive and signet ring ability. The game is part deck-building and part worker placement, and one of its key expansions, Rise of Ix, is making its way to the digital port soon.
2. Terraforming Mars
As a rich Earth-based corporation, it’s your goal to make Mars habitable and take over as much of the planet as possible. The game gives you an incredible variety of ways in which you can do this, from building cities and greeneries to crashing one of the planet’s moons against its surface. By increasing oxygen levels and temperature, as well as placing ocean tiles, you’ll accumulate terraform ratings and move towards the planet’s completion.
3. Scythe
It’s the 1920s, but the Great War is entering its next round of conflicts, in which giant mechs roam throughout Europe and destroy everything in their path. In this alternate history, engine-building and resource management are the name of the game. As the Nordic, Saxony, Polonia, Rusviet, or Crimea faction, you’ll conquer territories, engage in conflicts with other players, and work towards control of The Factory at the center of the board. The game also earns bonus points in my book for its fantastic artwork.
4. Wingspan
Whether you’re a bird enthusiast or not, Wingspan is an awesome strategy game. Here your goal is to play birds in each of the three biomes in your play area: wetland, grassland, and forest. As you continue building each of these spaces, you can launch a series of satisfying effects based on the bird cards in each row and collect the points necessary for victory.
5. Everdell
Everdell is a fantastic worker placement game in which it’s your goal to build a thriving city inhabited entirely by adorable animals before the next winter. Playing cards from the meadow and managing your resources are at the core of the gameplay, but you can also host fun events, send your workers on journeys, or visit one of the game’s randomized forest areas. The music and atmosphere that the digital port brings to the game are fantastic.
6. Elder Signs: Omens
Elder Signs: Omens leans into classic Lovecraftian horror, with players trapped inside the Miskatonic University Museum with an ancient demon that must be sealed away before time expires. It’s a cooperative or single-player dice-rolling experience in which your investigators will need to best a series of scenarios to collect the coveted Elder Signs, which close the portal to the beyond.
7. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game
One of the biggest problems with the physical edition of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game was that you needed six players in one place for four to six hours. Thankfully, the digital edition fixes this. As one of the great houses of Westeros, players conquer as many of the map’s castles as possible, allying with neighboring players or perhaps engaging in conflicts with them instead. Bidding power tokens for control of the Iron Throne, the Valyrian steel sword, and the messenger raven are also essential to achieving victory.
8. Mysterium
Mysterium is a cooperative game in which a team of psychics investigates a murder at an old manor, where a ghost attempts to communicate the details of its death to the living. Players are given strange, artistic clues that must be correctly interpreted before the clock runs out. Along the lines of Clue, you’ll need to successfully identify the correct person, place, and weapon to solve the case.
9. Carcassonne- Tiles & Tactics
In Carcassonne, it’s your objective to build a kingdom using a series of tiles containing fields, roads, cities, and monasteries. Cities with completed walls, roads that successfully link two cities, and monasteries all work for increasing your score, as long as you’ve got ‘meeples’ tokens in the correct space. It’s a classic game that starts out simple, but you can also add any of the game’s six DLC expansions to make it even more fun.
10. Root
Root might look like a cute game based on its art, but it’s an intense war game. Players control one of four factions: Marquise de Cat, the Eyrie Dynasty, the Woodland Alliance, and the Vagabond. The strength of the game lies in the differences in play style of these four factions, all of whom seek control over the woodland and its resources.
11. Dominion
If deck-building games are your favorite, Dominion is a must-play. The objective is to have the most victory points. However, these points are mostly tied to the worst cards during the game because they slow down your deck’s engine. Instead, you’ll want to buy gold and add a few of the game’s ten kingdom cards to your deck. These kingdom cards rotate each game, and there are hundreds to choose from if add on the game’s numerous expansions.
12. Gloomhaven
Gloomhaven is a dungeon crawler RPG in which you’ll play through an epic campaign as one of seventeen mercenaries, collecting loot, upgrading skills, and making critical decisions that affect the game’s story. Scenarios in the campaign play out following addictive turned-based exploration and combat. The world of Gloomhaven is original and deeply engaging, and the game’s complexity makes it suitably challenging, even for experienced board gamers.
Published: Jul 7, 2024 09:38 am