2025 was a strange year for the hobby. Tariff disruptions, delayed releases, and a handful of games that never made it to retail shelves at all. And yet, despite all of that, I played some genuinely brilliant games this year. I’ve cross-referenced my own favourites with what other reviewers were saying across ten major board game sites, and the overlap is reassuring: the games I kept coming back to were largely the same ones everyone else was talking about. Here are my 19 picks for the year, plus a few games that deserve a mention even if they just missed the cut. Why 19? Becasue where’s the fun in just a top 10…Even then there’s a few
Magical Athlete
I’ll be honest, I went into Magical Athlete expecting to hate it. Roll a die, move around a track, sounds like every game I’ve been avoiding since childhood. But CMYK’s 2025 reimagining of the 2003 original is something else entirely. The 36 playable characters each have abilities that break the rules in ways that cause genuine chaos, and the whole thing dissolves into laughter within minutes. It came up more than any other game on the lists I was reading this year, and after playing it I completely understand why. My copy hasn’t left the shelf since.
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
This is the game I’ve recommended most this year. Matt Leacock took the Pandemic engine, a system that has started to feel worn after a decade, and found a setting that makes it feel tense and fresh again. You’re managing Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom while holding back the forces of Sauron across a spreading map, and the ringwraith threat keeps the pressure on in a way that genuinely captures the feeling of the books. Almost every reviewer I follow had this in their top five. I’d put it in mine too.
Molly House
Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle built something genuinely unusual here. Molly House is a hand-drafting game set in 18th century London around the underground queer community known as molly houses, and it’s one of the most distinctive designs I’ve played in years. You’re spreading joy and throwing parties while the Society for the Reformation of Manners closes in. There’s a hidden traitor element, a set collection engine, and a moral weight that sits underneath the whole thing. The themes are dark and not for every group, but I find it completely compelling.
Vantage
Jamey Stegmaier spent eight years on an open-world game with no win condition, and the result is the most divisive game I played all year. You crash on an alien planet and explore. Any test you attempt succeeds, but the dice determine what it costs you in health, morale, or time. Some sessions fizzle out. Others produce genuinely memorable stories. I’ve played it with people who were bored and people who couldn’t stop talking about it for days. I fall into the second camp, and it showed up on enough other best-of lists that I know I’m not alone in that.
Moon Colony Bloodbath
Donald Vaccarino, the person who made Dominion, built a game where everyone is losing, just at different rates. You construct an engine on the moon while accidents, robot attacks, and various disasters methodically dismantle it. The game ends when one colony collapses entirely, and whoever has the most survivors wins. The simultaneous play keeps it moving fast, and the shared suffering is genuinely funny. It landed on almost every best-of list I looked at this year, and after a few plays I understood why people couldn’t stop talking about it.
Hot Streak
CMYK keeps appearing in this list, which tells you something about how good their 2025 output was. Hot Streak is a betting game where animal mascots race and almost anything can happen. The rules take about two minutes to explain. The catch is that with a quiet, polite group it falls completely flat, and with an engaged, rowdy one it becomes one of the best twenty minutes you’ll spend at a games table. I’ve seen it knock Camel Cup and Ready Set Bet out of collections. It knocked both out of mine.
The Old King’s Crown
Pablo Clark designed, illustrated, and wrote this one entirely by himself, which is unusual enough to be worth noting. What he made is an asymmetric game about factions fighting for a crumbling kingdom, using a shared deck of multi-use cards where knowing what your opponent is holding matters as much as your own hand. It has some of the tension of Root without copying any of it. It can run long at four players, and a few of the faction abilities need careful handling, but at two or three players it’s one of the most original things I played this year.
The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era
Chip Theory built their reputation on Too Many Bones, and Betrayal of the Second Era is that same dense, tactically rich DNA dropped into Tamriel. Five regions, multiple quest lines, races, classes, skills, and a character building system that genuinely rewards different playstyles. The box is enormous and the price matches it, and I’ll be honest that solo play feels slightly off-balance for one character. But as a campaign game that gives you real ownership over how your character develops, I haven’t found anything that comes close this year.
Eternal Decks
This one snuck up on me. A co-op deck-builder played across multiple scenarios, Eternal Decks builds its tension through constraint: each new deck you earn brings a curse, options narrow, and every decision carries more weight as the game progresses. The illustration style is stark and immediately recognisable, and the whole thing plays faster than most games in the genre. It didn’t show up on many lists, but the people who found it were very enthusiastic, and after playing it I think they’re right to be.
Nature
North Star Games’ Evolution series has always interested me without quite grabbing me. Nature changed that. The base game is approachable but not especially exciting. Add one or two of the expansion modules, Flight, The Amazon, or Jurassic, and it becomes a genuinely dynamic tableau builder with real tactical depth. Jurassic makes things brutal and carnage-heavy; The Amazon layers in bluffing; mixing them produces something that felt different every time I played it. Best approached as an ongoing project rather than a single purchase.
Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game
Nobody was really talking about this game, which I think is a mistake. Emerson Matsuuchi built a stealth action game that actually plays like stealth, with scenarios pulled from MGS2 and a design approach that treats the source material seriously. The Psycho Mantis encounter is genuinely clever. The format is rigid because it follows the game’s story structure, which limits replay value and group size per scenario. But if you love Metal Gear Solid, I think this is extraordinary, and it deserves more attention than it got.
Origin Story
The closest description I can offer is an Ameritrash trick-taker, which shouldn’t make sense but sort of does after you play it. The wild tableau building and unpredictable event deck make it feel dramatic and occasionally chaotic in ways that more contemplative trick-taking games deliberately avoid. The game state can be genuinely difficult to read, and there are moments that feel almost broken. I think that’s part of what makes it interesting. One of the stranger card game designs I’ve encountered in a while, and I mean that as a compliment.
Purple Haze
A wargame set in Vietnam, and one that takes the setting seriously. Purple Haze is a modernisation of the old Ambush! solitaire system with paragraph-driven storytelling that forces you to make decisions about civilian interaction and confront the ethical chaos of the war. Ten missions, real moral weight, and a design that feels closer to an interactive novel than a traditional wargame. The firefight system adds rules overhead that can make returning to it after a gap feel like work, but I found it one of the most affecting games I played this year.
A Place for All My Books
Barnes and Noble named this their Game of the Year for 2025, which initially made me suspicious. Having played it, I think they got it right. You collect books around a small town, managing your social battery as you go, then arrange them in your home tableau to match pattern and goal cards. It’s a medium-weight puzzle that works with both dedicated gamers and people who rarely touch the hobby, which is harder to achieve than it sounds. The production is lovely and it earns its place on any shelf.
Galactic Cruise
Three first-time designers produced a complex, expensive Euro game that wears its Vital Lacerda influences openly, right down to hiring Ian O’Toole for the art and graphic design. You’re building luxury space yachts, creating itineraries for different types of travellers, and racing to hit three increasingly difficult goals before your boss retires. It’s rule-heavy and not cheap, but as debut designs go, this is one of the most impressive I’ve seen in years, and the people who love heavy Euros have been very enthusiastic about it.
Great Western Trail: El Paso
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Great Western Trail. I think it’s excellent, but the worker track is fiddly and the calculations can wear me down by the end. El Paso strips those frustrations out and keeps what the game does best, which is the deck building and the satisfaction of a good sale at the market. Workers get discarded on use but return through your deck, adding a small luck element that suits the setting. If Great Western Trail ever exhausted you, this version is worth a look.
Emberheart
Mindclash Games, known for Anachrony, built a worker placement game about dragon trainers with Andrew Bosley providing the art, and the result is something genuinely warm and distinctive on the table. I picked this up at Essen and found myself returning to it more than I expected. The worker placement mechanism has enough of a twist to feel different from its genre neighbours, and the dragon training theme gives it a personality that a lot of worker placement games lack. Early word from other reviewers has been very positive.
Wroth
Chip Theory makes a third appearance on this list, which reflects how strong their 2025 output was. Wroth is an area control game that’s straightforward to teach but rewards clever, conniving play. It has the kind of sneaky energy that makes area control worth playing in the first place, and it works well across different player counts. The art is striking. The people I know who found this one held onto it, and I count myself among them.
Dracula vs Van Helsing
A two-player trick-taker with genuine asymmetry, and one that rewards repeated plays. The two sides play completely differently from each other, and the tension of the trick-taking is layered with a push-and-pull area control element where discarding lower-value cards can cost you more than losing a region token would. It’s not perfectly balanced, but it’s a puzzle I’ve enjoyed working through. For anyone looking for a short, sharp two-player game with something to say, this is worth picking up.
Notable Mentions
These five games just missed my top 19 but deserve a place in the conversation.
Nemesis: Retaliation
The most ambitious entry in the Nemesis series, blending survival horror with social deduction. It’s the most complex game in the line, and in my opinion the best.
Parks: Second Edition
The definitive version of a game I’ve always liked. If you’ve never played Parks, this is the one to get. The second edition brings the best expansions into one clean package. Even if i do prefer the artwork from first edition.
Star Wars: Battle of Hoth
Commands and Colors applied to the Battle of Hoth, with a campaign mode where outcomes affect which scenarios follow. More thematically faithful than I expected.
Fromage
A worker placement game that stood out at the UK Games Expo and kept showing up on UK-focused lists throughout the year. The all-play mechanic makes it faster and more competitive than the theme suggests.
Ada’s Dream
A heavy Euro for people who want a serious brain-burn. Dice drafting, deck building, area control, and set collection all inside one game about building the world’s first computer alongside Ada Lovelace.