When your teenagers get bored because they’re out of school for the holidays, college board games can be true life-savers, while also offering a great way to challenge them mentally and stimulate their critical thinking, real-life reasoning, and problem-solving skills (under the guise of having fun). That’s why the best games are both fun and simultaneously educational, with some elements of competition that keep fellow players fully engaged and on their toes.
Board game makers work hard to ensure the uniqueness, elements of surprise or chance, and addictive nature of their games keep people coming back to them and playing over and over again. Let’s take a look at 13 of the best college board games that engage, excite, and incidentally exercise tweens’ and teenagers’ sponge-like, ever-active brains (and young adults, too).
Settlers of Catan is a wildly popular civilization-building strategy game played on a hexagonal board, in which players aim to earn victory points by building settlements and cities. It combines chance, skill, and strategic thinking, as players must trade scarce resources to obtain the building materials (game pieces) needed for their civilization. The goal is to trade, build, and settle on the island of Catan faster than your opponents, and due to the variable board, the repeat game play opportunities are endless to create countless new experiences.
Even new players will have a good time exercising social and negotiation skills in bartering resources, as well as foresight and the ability to anticipate your and your opponents’ next moves and adjust accordingly. This game easily accommodates 5 – 6 players and, while complex in strategy, it has simple rules and is easy to learn.
Exchange is kind of like the stock market version of Monopoly or Monopoly meets The Wolf of Wall Street, with the high finance theme. Players assume the role of a securities trader, competing to attain the highest net worth on Wall Street. While the premise is straight-forward, the challenging aspects are trying to plan strategies over five rounds and cash in on a constantly changing market that’s hard to predict. This game gives great real-world insight the difficulty of quickly, but rationally reacting to real-time, hard-to-anticipate actions of others.
Exchange lasts five rounds, with each round comprised of three phases, including selecting a security, buying or selling, and influencing the market. Within the confines of the game, it is possible to pop the stock market bubble, resulting in huge price shifts. This is the perfect game for any finance-interested students who want an enjoyable, no-risk foray into investing and trading. Exchange works best with 3 to 6 players and can be played in 35 minutes or much longer, depending on the speed of your players’ decisions.
EXIT: The Game is an intense, exciting, and spirited series of board games comprised of riddles and puzzles needed to unlock doors, uncover objects, and reveal new riddles. The premise is similar to a real-life escape room in that the team begins at the start of the game locked or trapped in an imaginary room and needs to riddle their way to freedom by the end of the game.
The game challenges students to solve problems and arrive at solutions to unexpected scenarios, thus exercising their critical thinking, problem analysis, and practical reasoning skills. Since these riddles range in obscurity and difficulty, the game could take hours, depending on the players’ ability to arrive at the far from obvious solutions. The only way to successfully complete this game is to think outside the box and work together as a team, whether you’re playing with close friends or new acquaintances.
If your teen is a history buff or you’d like to impart some Cold War knowledge without a history lesson, you might want to get them the Twilight Struggle board game, which is a two-player tabletop game that simulates the Cold War. One player assumes the role of the Soviet Union, while their opponent acts as the United States. The game board is a world map divided into different regions, each accompanied by its own deck of cards.
Players draw and play cards, which represent various historical events (from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Berlin Wall and more). The objective in order to win is to control more key regions of the world than your opponent, thus obtaining additional points. This game doesn’t require any prior history or Cold War knowledge, though it does help if students are interested in history or the war-based theme, as this is very prevalent and pervasive throughout every card and action in the game.
For a group of two to six players with an hour to spare and an urge to embark on an exciting quest to be a top spy, Spy Alley could be a great board game option and awesome social experience. Players assume a secret identity and use their wit and deductive reasoning to unmask and eliminate enemy spies. Players are fully immersed in the world of espionage and intrigue by playing the roles of spy and counter spy in a game that’s never the same.
In other words, you can play a dozen times, and each game will be different, providing educational tidbits to bolster each player’s skills and strategy for the next game. If any game hones players’ social skills, it’s this one, as players develop their social deduction, reasoning, and logic amongst a group of friends.
Mysterium is an intricate investigative game based around a crime committed at the Warwick Manor, from which psychic investigators (players) must fully probe and identify the culprit. One player assumes the role of the ghost and attempts to lead the investigators to the culprit over seven “nights”, during which the team will encounter visions that reveal clues for those wise enough to deduce them.
This game is one of the more vivid, exciting, immersive, innovative, and thrilling board games (largely due to the features and premise) that facilitates teamwork and group cooperation, asymmetrical gameplay, leadership, and social awareness. Mysterium offers an excellent way for young players to build interpersonal skills, as well as street smarts, critical analysis, and strategic elimination.
You might be surprised that the Pandemic Board Game did not come out in 2020 or have anything to do with the Covid-19 pandemic, but it sure has picked up steam and popularity thanks to its namesake. That said, people don’t just like the Pandemic Board Game due to the uncanny connection to recent world events, but rather they like the fact that it’s a fully strategic, and a real life team-oriented game in which players must work together to eradicate diseases before they overwhelm the world. Simply put, it’s the ultimate problem-solving and team-building game in a high-stakes, time-sensitive environment.
Players must both work to stem the tide of infection and simultaneously work towards finding cures, while four diseases threaten the world. This game is best for two to four players and can be completed in 45 minutes. The unique ending here is that all players win or lose together, rather than pitting them against one another like most other games. This instills a sense of unity and shared responsibility that mimics a real-world team project or workplace scenario and is great practice for students.
This is much like regular Clue except it’s played with the familiar Harry Potter characters, including Harry, Hermione, Ron, and all the rest. Clue is a game that requires some thinking power because you have to eliminate suspects and answer questions to get the right answer in the end. In this particular game, you have to explore the Hogwarts school in order to find a missing student, and if you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll have tons of fun along the way.
The Clue board game is now available in other themes as well, not just Harry Potter, so if you love this game but would like a little variety when you play it, all you have to do is look online to see what’s available to you.
Disney villains come to life in this game that requires problem-solving skills and paying attention to what is going on around you. You can choose to be Ursula, Maleficent, the Queen of Hearts, or numerous others. Along the way, you can cast spells and even set traps in order to come out ahead of the others. Even more interesting, each of the villains has a specific goal to meet, so you’ll enjoy being whatever character you’ve chosen to be.
This game is best when played with two to six people. It gives good people the chance to pretend they’re evil and to use that evil to complete their objective. It’s a lot of fun as well! While it does involve villains and actions taken by villains to get what they want in the end, it’s not only so much fun, but a perfect way to foster friendly competition and enhance otherwise stale social events (without having to endure a complex set of rules).
Avalon is a social deduction game in which players are split into good and evil without the good “Loyal Servants of Arthur” knowing who is on their good team. It’s a game of concealed identities and hidden loyalty, as players are either Loyal Servants of Arthur or belong to the Evil Ways of Mordred, creating a friction-filled resistance. Good can win by successfully completing three Quests, but Evil wins if those three Quests end in failure or if they assassinate Merlin at the game’s end or if a Quest cannot prevail.
During the game, players may make claims (true or untrue), and discussion, deception, accusation, and logical deduction are all equally important for either Good or Evil to win. Due to the team nature of this game and the division of sides, it does require larger groups, so engaging five to ten players is ideal.
If you’ve ever been interested in being a spy – and who hasn’t? – you’ll love this game. You start this popular game by dividing into two different teams, and the goal of the game is to identify the spies on the other team. Each team has a “spy master,” and that person is responsible for giving clues that will help “out” (or reveal) the other team’s spies. That person can use various types of clues in order to identify who the spy is on the other team, with very few restrictions.
Codenames has several different versions as well, including a Disney-themed family edition and a Harry Potter edition. The gist of the game is the same each time, but the different editions add a little more variety and excitement to the games. If you love anything related to spies, this is the perfect party game for you!
Dominion is a two to four-player card game of building a deck, though there are multiple decks to be built, and cards can be used differently each time, thus making the game uniquely repeatable with countless completely different experiences. The card decks contain resources, victory points, and available actions, and while players start out with a small collection of very basic resources, they aim to accumulate gold, provinces, inhabitants, and the structures of a kingdom by the end.
Since there are so many different combinations that can be played (literally millions), not including the dozens of expansion packs available, you can truly play this game endless times over without getting bored, and since each session only lasts 20 to 30 minutes, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to reimplement and practice a new strategy.
Ticket to Ride is an ideal family game and a great 30 to 60-minute activity for two to five players, in which players create their own cross-country train network to connect two cities across the United States. During the cross-country train adventure, players must compete to collect and play matching train cards to claim railway routes and connect cities before their opponents, earning more points for longer routes. The object of the game is to build the longest continuous route while earning bonus points and Destination Tickets.
This is a good game for kids and teens (and most age groups) interested in maps, geography, the railroad industry, or the history of transportation, as it requires players to think like a railroad entrepreneur and act quickly and strategically in the face of looming competition. Though it isn’t specifically a business game, it is a great game to cultivate elements of the entrepreneurial mindset and competitive startup journey, so it can also be great for students interested in business and starting new ventures or entering competitive arenas.
Whether you’re planning a family game night or are looking for college board games your teen can take to university, this list offers up a wide variety of high-quality, innovative, and fun board games that will facilitate a productive social life, make quality time more mentally stimulating, and help new friends form bonds and develop their social and strategic reasoning skills. The above games can provide a great outlet for everyone from young children to college friends, and they prove rewarding experiences can be created away from a screen, as well.
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