The List: Top 10 Games I Like to Show People

As a regular host of game nights, I’ve had years of experience trying to keep people happy at the table. Whether that’s by providing snacks and drinks, pausing to review crucial rules before they become game-changing, or just putting the right tunes on in the background, all it takes is one element being off to sour the experience. The most important aspect of game night, shocking no one, is the games.

Having something ready to go is crucial to a game night’s momentum. No one has fun sitting around while we hem and haw about what we want to play. And since I’m the one who owns the games 90% of the time, I like to keep a list in my back pocket of options I can teach on the spot and that seem to please anyone. The best options on that list, as far as I’m concerned, are games that DO something. Whether it’s showing off a mechanism, setting up a social construct, or just having an amazing table presence, these ten games sit at the top of my mind when picking games in a pinch.

Sleuth

Most people have probably played Clue/Cluedo in some form, and if not, they’re probably aware of it, at the very least. I’ve always enjoyed figuring out whodunit by asking questions and marking off cards, but sometimes a bad die roll (or three) can ruin solid logic. And don’t get me started on people’s guesses dragging your pawn all over the board against your will. I hate that.

Sleuth does a similar thing but removes the board. This 1971 Sid Sackson classic has you asking questions about three gems in three formats in four colors. Find out which gem is missing from the collection before your opponents take the glory for themselves.

It’s dead simple, relatively quick, and distills deduction down to its essence so anyone can get in on the fun. It plays up to seven people, but I wouldn’t recommend playing it with more than 4 players, as the games get exponentially more complicated the more you split up the clues. I like it best at 3 players, which keeps the information tight and trackable. You can’t do better with deduction than Sleuth.

Deep Sea Adventure

One of my favorite genres of board game is the, pardon my language, “Oops, I fucked it up!” game. This is a game where the longer you play the more you realize you should have done something differently. The best example I can think of is Rolling America, a dice game that has you filling a map with adjacent numbers only to inevitably get toward the end and realize you have made some very poor choices. Deep Sea Adventure does this on a scale that lets everybody feel the consequences of your bad choices, and boy is it a good time.

See, all the players are divers sharing the same rented submarine—a submarine that has a shared pool of oxygen amongst all the players. This means that every breath you take is one less breath everyone else gets to take. So on your turn you dive down as far as you dare and grab some treasure. You get to decide when you turn around to head back, subtracting movement from the die roll for each treasure you’re carrying. Inevitably, everyone drowns in the first round because someone who hasn’t ever played decides they can get down to the deeper, juicier treasure and back, no problem. But it definitely is a problem. For everyone.

And that’s where everyone realizes at the same time that you all, together, have fucked it up. The oxygen runs out as people try desperately to roll what they need to make it to the surface with their measly treasures. And as they drown, those treasures sink to the bottom, pile up, and become even more enticing for everyone, leading to the second round, where, likely, everyone drowns. God, it’s a good time! Short, hilarious, and super replayable, this semi- (but not at all) co-op ropes everyone into a social construct and anchors you all with the consequences.

Smartphone Inc

This game is funny. I have introduced it to many groups, all of whom are initially hesitant because of the theme. They all end up loving it when they give it a try because it’s a super tight euro that allows you to execute a strategy and interact with your fellow players in about an hour. My Tuesday night game group requested it for a whole month, which is almost unheard of there! The funny thing is that the theme is what drew me to it in the first place. I still can’t understand what is off-putting about playing as a cell phone company at the onset of 4G, but to each their own.

Regardless, this game has you upgrading your phone capabilities, spreading across a map, and claiming customers who are willing to pay the price you set your phones at. All of this is accomplished with my favorite part of the game: the action selection tablets.

These double-sided panels allow you to overlap them in almost any way, and the icons that are showing when you’re satisfied are the actions you’ll be able to take, from raising or lowering prices to adding more supply to improving your tech or market reach. And the more squares you overlap by, the more phones you’ll be able to sell. It’s a brilliant, empowering, and agonizing mechanism that makes players’ faces light up when they realize how free-form the whole thing is.

Lords of Vegas

This is the game I explain to people when they find out I like board games and inevitably ask, “Like Monopoly?” It’s a helpful stepping stone to hobby board games because the two games share some DNA. The concepts of owning property and trying to snatch a contiguous block of the same color are here. The different valuations of things depending on where they are located feels familiar. But past that, Lords of Vegas cranks the fun of property wrangling to 11. And most importantly, it has a concrete end timer.

You start with just a few parking lots and the promise of riches to be had. Each turn a card gets flipped, showing you which property goes to the current player. Then players have a chance to build casinos, with the more expensive ones nearer the strip. Every card flip gives away a parking lot and triggers a certain color of casino to pay out both money and points. So you play the odds, building casinos that haven’t hit yet in the hopes that they’ll come up and grant you a huge pack of points. You’ll need to expand your casinos into other spaces because the more spaces you cover, the more points it will pay, and at some point you’ll need more than 2 at a time to keep moving up the score track due to the point barriers that stand in the way.

The luck of the card draws, the gambling at people’s casinos, and the rerolling dice to try and become the boss of a particular block of properties all lends to the Vegas feel of the game. It’s thematic, cute, and can be mean as hell. So yeah, I guess in some ways it sort of is like Monopoly.

Medici

If someone is curious about auction games, there’s only on game I reach for (that’s not true, because I’ll also reach for Ra, For Sale, QE, Modern Art, and any number of train games), and that’s Medici. It’s the cleanest auction game I have ever played, and it’s not complicated by different currencies, side transactions, or concepts that take several turns to grasp. There are two goals to this game, and both are fairly simple to grasp: 1. Fill boat. 2. Get most.

Filling your boat with the highest value goods will score you points every round. Getting the most of a certain good will score you points every round. And those points? Those are what you use to bid. So there’s no conversion math to do, no complicated calculations when it comes to what certain things are worth, and no need to go back and forth between 30 options.

You get one lot of (at most) three goods, and you decide if the points you’d spend getting it are worth the points you’d get for it. Do that the best and you’ll come out on top after 3 rounds. It’s as simple as that, and it serves as a good litmus test for whether players might want to try out other, more interesting auction games. Because, as you may have guessed, I always want to play an auction game.

Thunder Road Vendetta: Maximum Chrome

Some of the games on this list serve as entry points for genres or mechanisms. This one is on the list simply for the fact that it’s pretty. Ulitmately, it’s a stupid game of rolling dice, crashing cars, and engaging in a dangerous sprint to the finish line. Sure, you might be on fire, half damaged, or one bad die roll away from ending up a smoking, twisted, horrible warning to others, but dangit, you’re going to push as hard as you can to win!

It’s got the toy factor that makes you feel like you’re seven years old again playing with Matchbox cars, but this time the threats are real (not really), the bullets are flying (sorta), and the race is full of mortal consequences (metaphorically). But, you know, driving cars around is fun, so shut up.

It’s a child’s toy given an adult-money makeover, assigned rules, and set against an apocalyptic wasteland. You can find several versions and ways to bling out your set with 3D terrain, custom vehicles, and more, but the fun is the same no matter how you slice it, crash it, shoot it, or launch it into a cliffside.

Nuns on the Run

We’ve covered apocalyptic racing, sussing out stolen gems, and diving into perilous seas. But no list of themes is complete without…nuns? It might not be your first choice, but when you get into sneaking around an abbey at night trying to find a book of magic, some liquor, or a forbidden letter from a lover without getting caught by the prowling prioress or the ancient abbess, you’ll be hooked on this hidden movement game, no matter what the theme.

The first time I saw this game on a table at a con, it stopped me like a bolt from Heaven. It’s just dots on a map, but something about it told me this was going to be a good time. And I’ll be forever grateful we stopped to ask the people playing what it was. Everyone in our game group loves this one, which is good, because it’s my husband’s favorite game.

You’d be shocked how many people have never heard of hidden movement games. Until you try one, it’s hard to wrap your head around a game where everyone is secretly scribbling in a pad, running from one hallway to the next and praying they don’t make too much noise, ruining the best laid plans for themselves AND the two other players secretly lurking in the same part of the board. Once that moment hits, and everyone at the table is groaning and laughing at the upset, it becomes clear why this is the game we pick to introduce these games.

Burgle Bros

This is one of the most played games in our household. It’s definitely the co-op game that my husband and I tackle most frequently. Why do we love it so much? Picture this: you’ve just broken in to a bank through the entrance, and you don’t know where the security systems will show up on your floor. You know there’s a guard prowling around who would love very much to unmask you and lock you up until even you forget what you look like. But you’re not going that easily. No. You’ve got powers—sometimes eerie powers. You control the birds. You can crawl on ceilings. You have a single stick of dynamite to blow up a wall and get to the precious safe. You know, normal stuff.

Burgle Bros is 3 floors of chaos that you have to mitigate in order to crack all 3 safes and escape through the roof with the loot. Did we mention that each loot you get is random and comes with a slightly debilitating burden? Did we mention that the guards get faster as you are more successful? Did we mention that one false move could spell doom for your whole team? Oh, and each setup is random, from where the walls are to where the annoying deadbolt that eats all your action ends up? And yet each game is winnable—theoretically, anyway.

We often have long losing streaks where we get so close before being stymied by guards who seem to predict our every move. It makes those wins feel all the sweeter. And the game gets harder the more players you add. It’s an ideal game for teaching people what co-ops can do. It teaches real interaction and planning. It sometimes makes you trigger something awful to put yourself in danger and clear the way for other players to get away from guards. It’s tense, tight, and thematic as heck, and that’s why we love to show it off.

Sheriff of Nottingham

I’ll say it now so no one has to find out later: I don’t really care for social deduction games, especially not for new players. There’s too much at stake when you want to ask rules questions without giving away your role. One person who doesn’t get it or isn’t into it can ruin a game. It’s just…not fun. And many players are uncomfortable with lying. You know what my solution is for people who love social deduction and want us to play it all the time? I introduce them to Sheriff of Nottingham.

Every round someone is the titular sheriff, and they get to decide whether they will inspect or ignore the bags that the other players are passing through his checkpoint. These bags may be filled with apples, cheese, chicken, or dirty, dirty contraband items like crossbows and beer. Shameful! Players have to look the sheriff in the eye and tell him what’s in the bag and how many. Then comes the showdown. Call out a liar and you’re richly rewarded. Peek at a bag of an honest merchant and there are consequences. Pricey consequences.

Clever set collection can win you the game without ever having to tell a lie. But those lies can get valuable contraband into Nottingham for fun and profit. The profit is the point, after all. The player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner, with bonuses given for the most of each item passed through. It’s not social deduction. It’s not deduction. But it gives the same flavor of sniffing out a liar without all the complicated roles and the fragility of the system. I definitely give this one two chickens up (certainly not crossbows…nope)!

Quacks

I’ve found that slapping Quacks on the table causes people’s heads to spin with the number of pieces, the text on everything, and the complicated-looking boards. And I agree with those twirling noggins; it’s a lot to look at. But this game can inspire people’s confidence in tackling complex-looking games, because after two rounds, they understand the mission, are curious about what the different ingredients do, and want to explore a strategy. When it blows up in their face, rather than want to quit, they’re eager to go again!

It’s this game that we show people if we want to get them playing something bigger than a card game. We layer on the promises that this will all make sense. And it does. And it’s SO FUN. The table erupts in laughter, smiles, groans, and curses. But the math maths, and the turns keep getting bigger, and they can’t get enough of it.

The game launched as Quacks of Quedlinburg, but it’s now just known as Quacks. The expansions are good and don’t add too much. Honestly, you can teach the Herb Witches with the base game to add a little player agency. And if you can afford it, spring for the version with the bakelite ingredients. They add a tactile joy that is definitely missing from the cardboard versions. But honestly, no matter what it’s made of, it’s a good time. And it could inspire your friends to look into what else looks too complicated but might prove to be amazingly fun.

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And there you have it. These are the top 10 games I like to show people, no matter what stage they are in their gaming journey. They’re solid, fun, thematic, and satisfying in equal measures. Sure, there are other games I like better, games you’ll surely see on a future top 10 list, but I can’t really say a bad word against anything listed here. Do yourself a favor and get acquainted with a couple of these if you haven’t already. Thanks for tuning in, and I look forward to sharing more in the future. Happy gaming!