All Board Game Reviews

Go travelling and experience Japan in this fun, replayable, reasonably priced board game.

Beautiful, funny and full of character - Botany makes you want to don your pith helmet, find your warden case and disappear into the wilds hunting for plants.  A great game that we highly recommend.

Railroad Ink is a well-designed, polished roll-and-write that comes in various flavours.  Rolling dice, players build a road and rail network across their board, connecting the edges with as many entrances and exits as possible. It's a fun game for a while, but it lacks variety over back-to-back plays.

Wingspan has become a flying success, spawning a Wingspaniverse of different games and expansions.  It's easy to see why, the quality is superb, the gameplay is fun and the bird cards are beautiful and interesting.  This absolutely has to be on your gaming shelf.

Next Station: Tokyo (or Tokyo trains, as it is called at TGT) is an exceptionally good roll and write from Blue Orange Games.  Players flip cards and then draw railway lines in for the Tokyo metro, trying to cover the most areas on their pad to score the highest points.

Create words as fast as you can in a crossword grid; whoever uses all their tiles first wins.  It's really easy to understand, can be played solo and is very replayable.  It's a game that belongs in everyone's collection and has become a holiday favourite.

Whale to Look is a cute little Japanese board game all about whale watching.  You are a tour guide and you must outcompete your rivals by spotting the most whales in three trips!

As sleek as a sailfish, Finspan is a streamlined version of the incredibly popular Wingspan. This time, the focus is on fish and their oceanic associates. This game is fun, without any of the bloated rules from the later Wingspan expansions. Finspan is a brilliant gateway game and should be an essential addition to your collection.

Paper Dungeons is a roll and write dungeon crawler that manages to cross pollinate different game designs to create a fast, slick and incredibly enjoyable experience. It's clever, combines strategy and luck in a rewarding way and if it had just an increased level of interaction between players would perhaps have landed a perfect score.

The latest expansion in the Wingspan universe, this time, the birds are from the Americas, with a special focus on hummingbirds.

A worker placement game with class, Viticulture is all about growing grapes and making wine.  It's a calm, calculating game that requires plenty of planning.  It's a quality board game too, as you would expect from Stonemaier Games.

A great introduction to roll and write games, Ganz Schon Clever is competitive, easy to pick up and challenging to master. We highly recommend this compact, satisfying game.

Birdwatcher is about attracting birds of paradise to your tree and creating a portfolio of their photographs.  If you wish, you can even replicate their bird calls to each other!

Micro Dojo is a tiny game where players move retainers around their town to ensure their dojo is the most impressive and prosperous.  It's travel-friendly with colourful pieces and a great theme.

This card game is small, inexpensive and packed full of beautiful folky artwork.  Two players go on a foraging trip to see who can collect the rarest or most delicious fungi.

A brilliant business-building simulation, Food Chain Magnate is a rewarding long play. It's complicated and can be quick to lose, but overall it's fun, has a fantastic theme and delivers detail without being onerous.

Galaxy Trucker is an old classic, which has just been re-released, designed by the legendary board game designer Vlaada Chvatil. You are a cosmic haulage expert looking to make big bucks before the universe destroys your ship.

Mariposas is a beautiful board game about the migration of monarch butterflies from Mexico into North America. Players must breed their butterflies, score objectives and then make it back south again before the game ends.