The Best Tabletop Games of 2025

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2025 was a fantastic year for tabletop games! Players had tons of new options, with exciting releases in role-playing games, board games, and card games. We’ve picked out some of our favorite games from the year, including easy-to-learn card games, lively party games, and challenging games that require teamwork.

Flip 7

Flip 7 is a fun and easy card game where players try to collect the highest score by taking risks. The game uses cards numbered 0 to 12, along with a few special cards. Each player receives a card and can choose to take another one, hoping to increase their score, or stop and keep what they’ve earned. But be careful! If you draw a card that matches one you already have, you get no points and are out of the round. It’s a game full of excitement and friendly competition!

The game goes on until all players are out, choose to stop drawing cards, or gather seven numbered cards – which triggers a ‘Flip 7’ and earns bonus points. ‘Flip 7’ is simple for families to enjoy, yet strategic enough to keep experienced gamers interested. Even though it can be frustrating to lose to a low pair like fours, ‘Flip 7’ was recognized with a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres award, a testament to its quality.

The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game

My top game of 2025 is the Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking Game, a beautifully designed cooperative experience. Each round presents a fresh challenge, like solving a puzzle. The game is divided into chapters, and each one features different characters, each with their own specific goals. Players must collaborate to achieve these goals, which could involve winning a specific number of tricks or winning a trick with a particular card.

As the game progresses, it introduces challenges and expands the possibilities. Even though the rules are straightforward, my gaming group really enjoyed The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game and were excited to immediately play its sequel, which was first available at PAX Unplugged.

Vantage

Vantage is a tabletop game that brings the feel of vast, open-world adventures to your table. Players find themselves stranded on a mysterious alien planet with few supplies and no clear path forward. Each player receives a unique mission and starts in a different location. Gameplay revolves around using cards that show the alien world to decide where to go and what to do.

In this game, players resolve actions by rolling dice and using whatever resources they have to increase their odds of success. What makes it unique is that succeeding is usually a given, but it might come at a cost – you could lose time, health, or luck. While many games try to create an open-world experience, this one feels particularly free-flowing and realistic.

Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Faerun and Adventures in Faerun

With the updated version of Dungeons & Dragons now available, the popular Forgotten Realms setting has made a significant comeback thanks to two new books released this fall: Heroes of Faerun and Adventures in Faerun. These aren’t just helpful additions to the 2024 edition of D&D; they’re some of the best sourcebooks Wizards of the Coast has published in a long time. These releases have successfully revived the appeal of the Forgotten Realms and offer a glimpse into the world before the upcoming Netflix series based on it.

Bomb Busters

In this award-winning game, players work together as cute animals to defuse bombs. It’s a cooperative game with a straightforward idea: each player gets a set of numbered wires and must figure out which ones match, but they can only use very limited clues to help them.

The game features helpful items that soften the impact of mistakes, but players need to be careful—a single wrong cut of the prominent red wire means instant failure. With a campaign mode offering many different scenarios, it’s a game you can enjoy playing again and again.

Leviathan Wilds

Inspired by Shadows of the Colossus, this game challenges players to scale enormous creatures and purify them by removing corrupting crystals. Each player controls a distinct character and uses a limited hand of cards to perform actions each turn. The gameplay involves carefully climbing these massive monsters, breaking the crystals attached to them, and avoiding attacks and obstacles along the way.

Leviathan Wilds brilliantly recreates the strategic thinking of rock climbing while also being a fun, cooperative game. You’ll face tougher and more unusual creatures as you play, either in individual adventures or as part of a larger, ongoing campaign.

Daggerheart

Critical Role has developed a compelling role-playing game called Daggerheart that offers a fresh take on games like Dungeons & Dragons. Daggerheart blends collaborative storytelling with a robust combat system focused on powerful combinations and dramatic actions. The game uses two twelve-sided dice, called the Hope and Fear dice, to resolve actions. Players add the results of both dice together, and the higher die also influences the story, creating additional outcomes beyond just success or failure.

Critical Role is continuing to use Dungeons & Dragons for its fourth campaign, but their new setting, Daggerheart, is proving very popular with fans. It appears to be the most well-received of the several D&D alternatives they’ve released recently.

Hot Streak

Get ready for hilarious chaos with Hot Streak, a fast-paced party game centered around mascot races! Instead of directly controlling the mascots, players work together to create a deck of cards that dictates how the race unfolds – will the mascots speed ahead, bump into each other, or stumble towards the finish line? Then, players place bets on the outcome, choosing between high-risk, high-reward wagers and safer bets on who will reach the podium.

The winner is the player with the most money after three rounds, and the lead can change constantly throughout the game. Despite being simple and quick to set up, Hot Streak offers surprisingly high-quality components and a lot of fun.

Super Boss Monster

The competitive card game, Super Boss Monster, has been updated with 16-bit graphics and some fresh features. The basic idea – building dungeons to trap heroes – is still the same, but this new version adds a town board and minions that give players small advantages before the heroes escape.

Even small improvements can significantly impact gameplay and reduce frustrating rounds, especially when players don’t get their ideal dungeon rooms. What’s great is that Super Boss Monster works seamlessly with older Boss Monster expansions, so it feels like an expansion to the game you already love, not a whole new purchase.

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2025-12-10 19:04