Best semi cooperative board games

After each, the game can be paused and continued later. During each mission, it is not the amount of tricks, but the right tricks at the right time that count. For 2 — 5 players, each game runs about 20 minutes. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site.

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Accept cookies Continue without consent Manage options Save preferences Manage options. We use cookies to optimize our website and our service. Accept Continue without consent Manage options Save preferences Manage options. Manage consent Manage consent. The cases are tough and memorable and they do a great job of making everyone feel like real detectives.

Read our Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective review. Get your copy of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. Ghost Stories is still one of the toughest cooperative board games out there. The artwork is excellent , the game plays smoothly once you know the rules, and the random village layout and the ghost cards help to make each game feel different.

If you like difficult co-ops, I highly recommend getting Ghost Stories. Also worth checking out is Last Bastion , a fantasy version of Ghost Stories released in late Read our Ghost Stories review.

Get your copy of Ghost Stories. It has a great spell-casting mechanism, the variable turn order adds in extra tension, and it plays at a nice pace. After every win or loss mostly losses , my group spends some time talking about how the story played out because the game does such a great job pulling you onto the island and not letting you go until you either succeed or fail.

Even if it only came with the first scenario in the box — the newest version has seven scenarios — Robinson Crusoe would probably still sit in this top spot.

Read our Robinson Crusoe review. Get your copy of Robinson Crusoe. Skip to content. The Grizzled review Buy a Copy Castle Panic review Buy a Copy Forbidden Desert review Buy a Copy Quirky Circuits review Buy a Copy Hanabi review Buy a Copy Resident Evil 2 review Buy a Copy One Deck Dungeon review Buy a Copy Maximum Apocalypse review Buy a Copy Dragonfire review Buy a Copy Mage Knight review Buy a Copy Castle Ravenloft review Buy a Copy Mysterium review Buy a Copy Black Orchestra review Buy a Copy Shadowrift review Buy a Copy Chronicles of Crime review Buy a Copy Codenames Duet review Buy a Copy Legendary Encounters: Alien review Buy a Copy V-Commandos review Buy a Copy Every session stars old-school boogeymen that are descending on a village with carnage on their mind, and you're the only thing standing in their way.

To stop this rampage, you'll have to destroy the monsters before they can feed on any locals. However, that's easier said than done. Each villain has a weakness, and there's a strategy to exploiting them you'll need to destroy all of Dracula's coffins before staking him in the heart, for instance.

How do you manage it without leaving innocent people undefended? The resulting chaos leads to some memorable moments.

More specifically, Horrified's biggest strength is its love of the 'trolley problem' - a situation where there isn't necessarily a right choice. For example, Dracula might be swooping in to feast on one unlucky villager. At the same time, a Creature from the Black Lagoon has cornered other civilians. Because you've only got time to save one, someone's going to die. So what do you do? It's a juggling act that gives this co-op board game an edge. It isn't stressful, though. You'll have a good time teaming up with your friends or family no matter which monsters you face.

What's more, different combinations add longevity to the mix if you become too familiar with Horrified's early missions. It's a masterclass of co-op gameplay as a result, and one of the best board games overall in recent years. If you love playing detective, Mysterium is the stuff of dreams.

It's a classic whodunnit in the best possible way, yet there's one key difference - the murder victim is helping you to solve their own death. More specifically, someone plays as a ghost. And not the chatty kind; they can only communicate via 'vision' cards, so everyone else must make sense of them in order to track down the killer. Because those cards are surreal and deliberately vague when taken out of context, the result is an engrossing puzzle for that'll keep you more than a little busy.

You can't mull it over for long, either. Mysterium has a time-limit, after which the ghost fades to nothingness and all hope of justice is lost. This adds pressure to your investigation, and good teamwork is the only way to overcome it.

Things going pear-shaped isn't a disaster, though. Win or lose, Mysterium boasts a setup which seizes you by the collar and refuses to let go. That puts it amongst the best cooperative board games on shelves right now, and one you'll keep returning to as well. If you're short on manpower, you can even get a two-player alternative called ' Mysterium Park '.

Much like the original, it ranks amongst the best co-op board games out there and is a great choice if you're hunting down board games for adults. Few board games capture the sense of stalking your prey like this one. Challenging players to learn their quirks and weaknesses, it immerses you in the world of Horizon to an extent you might not have expected. Character progression, skill-trees, and upgradable abilities only draw you in further.

Meanwhile, tactical depth in the heat of battle keeps you there. The Horizon Zero Dawn board game leans hard into positional combat, so figuring out where to set up your attack for maximum damage - while still keeping an escape route open in case things go wrong - is crucial.

Rehashing strategies won't cut it with these particular 'bots. Even though this version of Horizon is a co-op experience, it also manages to shake things up with a competitive edge. Individual players are able to earn 'Glory' points for killing monsters or targeting certain body parts, and while this helps your team progress in the grand scheme of things, racking up the highest score crowns you as winner of the match.

The result is a compelling race to the finish. It's a well-known fact that redshirts are doomed in Star Trek, but they're your only chance of survival in The Captain is Dead: Dangerous Planet.

As the franchise's third instalment, it builds on the formula in clever, compelling ways. Thanks to push-your-luck mechanics and a generous amount of depth, this is one of the best cooperative board games around. As the name would suggest, the commander of your away-mission has been killed in action boo. Now you've got to complete their mission and gather alien artefacts before you're overwhelmed by the planet's bug-like inhabitants.

Sadly, those artefacts are hidden deep in some bug-infested tunnels. If you want enough of them to win, you'll need to venture further and further into enemy territory. Getting out alive requires sound tactics and teamwork to match. That's because Dangerous Planet has lots in common with many of the best co-op board games. To begin with, it features a randomised board like Betrayal at House on the Hill. It also becomes increasingly difficult, a la Pandemic. Accordingly, making it over the finish-line is a challenge.

Tabletop veterans will adore it because of that. A quirky art-style and many, many nods to The Next Generation are just icing on the cake. Dangerous Planet is clearly a love-letter to sci-fi, and this pushes it over the edge into 'highly recommended' territory when it comes to co-op board games. Betrayal at House on the Hill is arguably the creepiest but most compelling experience on this list. Thanks to its unpredictable nature, random scenarios, and a procedurally-generated map that's different every time you play, it's one of the best cooperative board games out there.

Yet there's no way of telling what lies beyond each door. You put down a randomly selected tile every time you leave a room, so the party is creating an entirely new board with every session. This isn't a game about exploration, though. Something evil lurks within the house, and it's hungry for blood. Yours, preferably. This backstabber receives a secret rulebook and goal of their own, so teamwork amongst everyone else becomes essential.

Trust us, there's nothing more satisfying than laying a trap for your opponent and then pulling it off against the odds. It's a truly must have co-op board game. Biff Tannen is the worst. After stealing Back to the Future's time-traveling DeLorean, he's scattered various items across all of time and space in the most outrageous case of littering ever.

And if we don't put them back where they belong, history is doomed. Cue the music and a lighthearted co-op board game adventure to save the universe.

As you'd expect, Back to the Future: Dice Through Time draws inspiration from the entire film trilogy. It doesn't waste an iota of that material, either. For starters, the board is split into four eras - , , , and - that the players must navigate to retrieve every item Biff has stolen. They also have to clear iconic events from the movies including Marty's skateboard chase around the town square while watching out for paradoxes that'll end the game if they're not managed.

Oh, and two players landing in the same space will have dire consequences thanks to the rule that you should never, ever meet your past or future self. In essence, this is a love-letter to the franchise. It's not the really fun bit, though. Forgotten Waters. Nominated for 8 awards and won 1. More details for Forgotten Waters. Nominated for 2 awards. Nominated for 8 awards and won 3. More details for Nemesis.

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