Board Game Playground
Twenty-two board games.
Clever bots. Zero setup.
Play in the browser against bots that actually think, or invite friends with a link. Sign in with Google, pick a game, and you are at the table.
- 22 games
- Bots in every one
- 2–7 players
- Free, no downloads
TZAAR
Capture, stack, outthink.
An abstract duel on a hexagonal board. Every turn you must capture, then choose to capture again or strengthen a stack. Lose all of one piece type and you lose the game.
Family Inc.
Push your luck, rob the family.
Draw chips from the pile for as long as your nerve holds. Stop to keep them and steal matching chips from your rivals; bust and they're gone. First to 100 wins.
High Society
Spend big. Just not the most.
Bid your money cards on luxuries and dodge the misfortunes. The highest score wins, but whoever has the least money left at the end is out, no matter what they own.
No Thanks!
Every card is a point. Points are bad.
Take the card and the chips on it, or pay a chip to pass it on. Runs of consecutive cards only count their lowest card, and every chip you keep is a point off.
Razzia!
Bid for loot. Watch the police.
Gangsters divide the city over three rounds of auctions. Reveal loot onto the table and call an auction when it's worth it, because the seventh police raid ends the round with everything still on the table lost.
ZÈRTZ
The board shrinks. The marbles jump.
Place a marble, remove a ring, and the hexagon closes in. Captures are compulsory and chain together. Collect three of each colour, or four white, five gray or six black.
YINSH
Rings move. Markers flip.
Every move leaves a marker behind and flips whatever the ring jumps. Line up five of your colour to score a ring, but each ring you score is one fewer to play with. Three wins.
DVONN
Stack up. Cut off. Collapse.
Fill the board, then jump stacks onto each other: a stack moves exactly as far as it is tall. Anything that loses touch with the three red DVONN pieces falls away. Control the most pieces when nobody can move.
GIPF
Push in. Line up four. Take them back.
The game that started the project, in its basic form. Push pieces onto the board from the edge, shoving whatever is in the way. Four in a row come back to you, and anything touching them of the other colour is captured. Run your opponent out of pieces.
LYNGK
Claim two colours. Stack five.
The last game of the project, and a blend of all the others. Nobody owns anything at first: claim two colours, slide stacks onto the first piece they meet, link through your own colour, and take off every stack of five different colours topped by yours.
For Sale
Buy low. Sell high.
Two quick halves. First bid for properties, from a cardboard box to a tower, paying half your bid to drop out. Then sell them for cheques: the best property on the table takes the biggest cheque. Richest player wins.
The Bridges of Shangri-La
Masters, students, crumbling bridges.
Seed the villages with masters, train students, then send every student in a village over a bridge that breaks behind them. Arrive from the stronger village and rivals are sent home. When the last bridge falls, the most masters wins.
Acquire
Build chains. Buy shares. Cash in the merger.
Sid Sackson's classic. Tiles grow hotel chains across the board, you buy their stock, and when a big chain swallows a small one the majority and minority holders collect. Call the end when a chain is huge, and the richest wins.
Condottiere
Hire mercenaries. Take Italy.
Dominique Ehrhard's card battles for the cities of Renaissance Italy. Play mercenaries into your line, turn the fight with winter, drummers and bishops, and know when to pass. Five regions, or three that touch, and you rule.
Ride the Rails
Buy the share. Lay the track. Sell the ticket.
John Bohrer's hour-long train game. Six railroads open across a hex map of America. Each round take a share, lay track, and carry a passenger city to city; every railroad it rides pays its shareholders. Richest after six rounds wins.
Clans
Herd the huts. Hide your colours.
Leo Colovini's game of secret clans. Move whole groups of huts until a group stands alone and becomes a village; every clan in it scores its size, with bonuses and bans that shift each epoch. You lead one clan in secret, so help it quietly and starve the rest.
TwixT
Knight's moves, border to border.
Alex Randolph's connection classic. Peg holes on a 24 by 24 board; pegs a knight's move apart link up, and links never cross. Red joins top to bottom, Black left to right, with the swap rule to keep the first move honest.
Ecosystem
Draft a habitat, four by five.
Matt Simpson's card drafter. Keep one, place it, pass the rest: bees by meadows, trout by streams, foxes far from wolves. Twenty cards make your ecosystem, and the more kinds of life that score in it, the bigger the bonus.
Fuji Flush
Push it through or flush it.
Friedemann Friese's ten-minute card game. Lay a card in front of you: a higher number flushes it down the drain, an equal one joins forces with it. Survive a round and the card is gone for good. First to empty their hand wins, teams and all.
Tigris & Euphrates
Four spheres. The weakest counts.
Reiner Knizia's civilisation classic. Seat your king, priest, farmer and trader beside temples, grow kingdoms along the two rivers, fight revolts with temples and wars with supporters, raise monuments and gather treasures. At the end only your lowest sphere counts.
Ecosystem: Coral Reef
Draft a reef, keep the food web fed.
The Great Barrier Reef edition of Ecosystem. Keep one, place it, pass the rest: groupers by krill, clownfish by coral and plankton, eels lurking by coral, whales turning a neighbour facedown. Producers, prey and predators each score, and the weakest of the three is added again.
Ecosystem: Savanna
Draft the Serengeti. Hunters flip their prey.
The Serengeti edition of Ecosystem. Keep one, place it, pass the rest: giraffes by trees, zebras on grassland, gazelles in numbers, cheetahs and lions flipping prey at scoring time for the hyenas and vultures to feed on.