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Board games and video games are both more popular than ever, and there’s a lot of crossover between the two. Great ideas pioneered on the tabletop are finding their way into video games, and vice versa. So, with that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of video games that are perfect for those times when you crave a board or card game style experience, but don’t have the time, energy, or friends available to set up a game on the tabletop.
For the purposes of this list, I’m sticking to original video games that are not based on existing tabletop experiences. While there are many excellent digital adaptations of existing board games—from Ticket to Ride to Gloomhaven—they belong on a different list. But, since rules are there to be broken, I’ve included a final bonus game at the end which breaks this rule... sort of.
With that confusing caveat out of the way, on with the list!
1. Slay The Spire
If you enjoy card games and you haven’t played Slay the Spire, you’re missing out. This is a deck-building roguelike that takes a simple design idea and executes it to perfection. Every run begins the same: you choose from one of four characters and are given a small deck of rubbish cards that allow you to do basic things like dealing and blocking damage. Your goal is to ascend the titular spire by fighting your way past increasingly dangerous monsters using the cards in your deck. At the end of each fight, you’ll add one new card to your deck from a choice of three. That’s pretty much it. You’ll occasionally visit a merchant, or navigate a choose-your-own-adventure style dialogue to gain a reward or suffer a curse (sometimes both), and there are boss fights along the way too.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well it is... kind of. The brilliance of Slay the Spire is in the synergies you find by combining cards with complementary effects. Do you have a lot of cards that increase your block? Well, you might want to look for a card that allows block to rollover between turns, meaning you can stack it up until it becomes a virtually impenetrable shield. Or maybe you’ll find a card that turns block into damage. This is one of the simplest examples, but there are so many synergies to find in Slay the Spire that you’ll discover something new during almost every run. Some of these synergies feel so overpowered that you’ll think you’ve broken the game... at least until you get near the top of the spire, where fights get devilishly difficult. Another stroke of genius (and one that shows up in another game on this list) is the way that enemies telegraph their moves, giving you a chance to dodge or mitigate whatever they plan to throw at you.
As well as being mechanically brilliant, Slay the Spire features a weird and wonderful menagerie of enemy creatures that swerve the usual sword and sorcery archetypes. My favourite enemy design is a rat with a mushroom growing out of it, which seems a bit random at first until you realise that the fungus has infected the rat’s brain and is controlling it, The Last of Us style. Creepy!
2. Dicey Dungeons
Do you like the sound of Slay the Spire, but prefer dice-chucking to deck-building? Then look no further than Dicey Dungeons, another roguelike where you acquire new dice with special powers to help you fight your way through an increasingly challenging dungeon.
Despite having dungeon in the title, your adventure is presented as a sort of bizarre game show starring various anthropomorphic dice. If you’re old enough to remember the TV show Gladiators, it’s that sort of vibe. You’ll take charge of one of these six-faced characters and battle against various enemies, levelling up your character as you go. Every turn involves rolling dice and fitting them into pieces of equipment that can change the result. For instance, you might have a sword that accepts a maximum result of three, but adds plus two to that result. So while there’s plenty of randomness (this is a dice game, after all) there’s almost always something you can do to mitigate a bad roll. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock better equipment and more dice.
Dicey Dungeons is is a bit on the easy side, but if you’re looking for a straightforward and enjoyable way to chuck some digital dice, you’ve found it.
3. Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp
I have very fond memories of playing Advance Wars on my trusty purple Game Boy Advance back in the early 2000s. Fortunately, Nintendo have seen fit to revamp and reissue Advance Wars and its sequel as Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp for the Switch, which means that now is the perfect time to return to this classic series, or discover it for the first time.
Levels in Advance Wars play out on a grid from a top down perspective. You take it in turns with the AI to move your units around the battlefield and attack the enemy. At the start of the campaign you’ll only have access to basic units like infantrymen, but you’ll eventually be able to utilise tanks, planes, helicopters, naval units and more. The maps are initially rather simple, but you’ll soon discover the importance of locking down choke points like bridges and securing city squares which grant credits that you can spend to bring new units into the fray.
Although simple to start with—and very beginner friendly as a result—Advance Wars soon acquires plenty of depth as you try to balance the strengths and weaknesses of different unit types while navigating different terrain that impacts your ability to repel the enemy. Another welcome wrinkle to the action comes with the different commanding officers, who allow you to use special powers that can dramatically alter the course of a match.
Despite making use of modern military units like tanks and bombers, this is still a Nintendo game through and through, meaning there’s no blood and gore or hand-wringing exploration of the grim realities of modern warfare. The units and generals are rendered in a bright, cartoonish style. The maps feel quite small and are outlined with what looks like a wooden box or playset, adding to the impression that you are playing a tabletop game of sorts and further distancing the experience from any real-world conflict.
If you’ve ever been curious about tactics games like Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Xcom, you could do a lot worse than play Advance Wars. To my mind, it’s the ultimate gateway game for the turn based tactics genre. And the revamped Switch package contains both original games with upgraded graphics and gameplay—making it outstanding value for money. This version even contains multiplayer and a robust level editor, meaning there’s potentially hundreds of hours of content here if you really get into it.
4. Into The Breach
If Advance Wars can feel dinky at times, Into the Breach is positively miniature in scale. This is very much intentional. It’s the kind of game where you can easily stare at a level for 10 minutes or more while playing out various different strategies in your head, before committing to a move.
The setup is simple. Bug-like aliens are invading Earth and it’s your job to stop them. You do this by sending small squads of mechs to tackle the threat. The mechs are driven by pilots who bring unique abilities into battle and level up as your game progresses. Fights take place on tiny, 8x8 grids. As well as wiping out the bugs, you must also protect civilian buildings. Like in Slay the Spire, enemies telegraph their moves in advance, which turns Into the Breach into a fascinating puzzle in which every move and countermove feels significant, with myriad ways to succeed. One important mechanic is that you can push enemy bugs onto different squares, opening up the possibility of pushing them into hazards or manipulating where their attacks land.
I love games that manage to create a deep strategic puzzle using a small ruleset. Into the Breach is a brilliant example of exactly that less-is-more design philosophy. There’s enough diversity and randomness in the levels and in how you upgrade your pilots that each new run in Into the Breach feels rewarding. Now matter how many runs I complete, I always want to come back for at least one more turn.
Speaking of which...
5. Civilization 6
There’s no way I could leave Civilization off this list. The very first game in the series came out for MS-DOS way back in 1991. My first experience with the series came with Civilization 2 on my dad’s old (but then cutting edge) Windows 95 PC. I must admit, I was a bit young to fully grasp everything that was going on, but I was still blown away by this game that allowed me to usher an entire civilization from the stone age to the modern era. By the time Civ 3 came out, I was old enough and smart enough (just about) to fully appreciate this remarkable game series.
Writing this article gave me a perfect excuse to dive back into the latest entry in the series, Civilization 6 (which is available on modern consoles, as well as PC). The basics have remained largely the same since those early entries in the 90s and 2000s: explore a randomised map filled with resources and AI or human opponents and use settlers to found cities. Grow those cities, research new technologies, build armies to protect yourself, and shape your chosen culture through hundreds of small decisions. Civ is famous for its ‘just one more turn’ addictiveness. You’re only ever a few turns away from doing something cool: founding a new city, advancing into a new era, or sneakily converting an enemy stronghold to your cause using the power of religion or culture. The big twist in Civ 6 is that cities are no longer limited to a single tile; instead, certain buildings must be placed in external districts. This not only makes cities more visually impactful, but also leads to a nice strategic puzzle as you figure out how to arrange your buildings within the terrain for maximum benefit.
If you’re new to Civ, be aware that this is a big game with many interlocking strategies coming into play. Games take a long time to finish, especially on larger maps and higher difficulties. However, I think Civ 6 in particular does a good job of helping new players get acclimatised. It doesn’t punish you too severely for making sub-optimal choices. And if you’re a fan of strategic board games like Twilight Imperium, there’s a good chance you’ll lose hundreds of hours to Civilization 6 once it gets its claws into you.
6. Monster Train
We’re nearing the end of this list, so this seems an apt time to circle back to where we started. Monster Train is what Slay the Spire would be if it was made by ill-mannered orcs with too much time on their hands. Rather than playing as a hero, you command the forces of hell trying to defend their pyre (the source of their power) from the invading forces of heaven. The basic mechanics are almost identical to Slay the Spire: you start out with rubbish cards but are awarded better ones as you win fights, allowing you to build a custom deck each time you play. Monster Train has a bit more flexibility in how you upgrade your cards, but broadly this is Slay the Spire with an evil twist.
That said, Monster Train distinguishes itself from its towering rival (excuse the pun...) in a couple of ways. As the name suggests, fights take place on a train. Oddly, it’s a train with four compartments stacked vertically (I know—I’ve never been on a train that tall either. Just go with it, OK?). Enemies enter at the bottom and move upwards until eventually they reach your pyre. If your pyre dies, you die. To defend it, you can use cards to directly attack enemies or spawn your own demonic fighters into specific train compartments to try fend off the heavenly hordes. As a result of this unusual layout, Monster Train feels a bit like a tower defence game at times, as you furiously throw monsters into the fight to protect your pyre.
I’ll admit, I turned to Monster Train while looking for an alternative to Slay the Spire, after spending countless hours with that game. But I’m glad I did, because Monster Train stands out as a distinct and well-crafted experience. The graphics and monsters are fun and goofy, and it’s always fun to get to play as the baddies for once, kicking the snot out of the arrogant armies of heaven.
Bonus: The Lord Of The Rings: Adventure Card Game
Consider this the DLC of this article. I said at the start that I wasn’t going to include games based on existing tabletop experiences, but now I’m going to almost-but-not-quite break that rule.
You may have heard of The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games, which is a very popular deck construction game that recently received a snazzy rebrand/reissue. Well, there’s a digital adaptation available for modern platforms which I’m including here because (1) it's really good, and (2) it’s actually quite different to the tabletop version, to the extent that they stand alone as separate and complementary experiences.
In both versions of the game you field three heroes and try complete quests while fending off Sauron’s minions. You build a deck before starting the game (or choose a prebuilt one) using heroes hailing from one of several different themed spheres, like Leadership or Tactics. Heroes from different spheres are good at different things; Tactics heroes are great at fighting, for example, whereas Lore heroes are good at healing. The digital version of the game uses spheres but in a different way than its tabletop counterpart. Rather than expecting you to pay for cards using tokens accrued by a hero from a matching sphere, instead each card is given a rating of 1-3 and you can only include two or 3 rated cards in your deck if you have at least two or three heroes from the same sphere. This is one of many changes that makes the game a bit simpler to get to grips with. Another change is that rather than progressing through multiple distinct phases per round, you simply take it in turns with Sauron to resolve one action, and continue until you both have no further beneficial moves to make.
Overall, The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game is a simpler and more approachable game than its tabletop sibling—but it still feels like an epic and challenging adventure in Middle Earth. And when I say it’s easier, bear in mind that the original is notoriously challenging—the digital version is no pushover. It also includes some nice storytelling sections between levels with mostly excellent voice acting. The deck editor is also easy to use.
That’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed this list and discovered something new to play (unless of course you’ve played all these games already, in which case, you have excellent taste).