For many, board games are a restful, relaxing hobby and a nice way to spend an afternoon. Board game aficianados, however, know that in the wide world of board games, there are those designed to make teeth clench, hearts race, and knuckles whiten. Whether competitive or cooperative, some games are meant to stress players out.
Whether these board games force players to race against the clock, act with incomplete information, or move even closer to an inevitable disaster with every move, some games are tense experiences from start to finish. Although far from a relaxing game of Guess Who?, these stressful games still have their droves of fans.
10 Diplomacy Sets Every Player Up For Betrayal
A classic war game, Diplomacy actually has very simple rules. Players build and move units, and try to take the territory of their foes in very basic combat that doesn't even include dice. What gives the game its edge, however, is the reliance on secrecy and interpersonal alliances.
All sides begin Diplomacy in a rough stalemate and players all take their moves simultaneously, writing their choices down without telling the others. As such, each player needs the help of others to make any gains, but also knows that any allies they have could betray them at any time.
9 Jenga Is A Rising Thread Of Tension
Many games inevitably build towards a failure point, but few do it as simply as Jenga. The incredibly well-known game is a simple block-pulling exercise that pits players against gravity as they attempt to deconstruct as much of a tower as they can without causing it to topple.
While no move is truly safe, the early game does allow players to remove easier blocks, such as those that are loose or high up the tower. As the game stretches on, however, every block becomes crucial to the tower's stability, making every move a razor-sharp test of judgment and a steady hand.
8 Codenames Stretches The Linguistic Centers Of A Player's Brain
Codenames, requiring a minimum of four players to run, is a game about guessing the correct words from a packed grid of them. Only one player on a team knows which words need to be guessed and all they can give as a clue is a single word, with no other communication allowed. Giving one word at a time is a sure way to lose, so the team member needs to give a clue that links several answers together.
However, the game has no way to ensure that the codenames a team needs to guess are linked in any sensible way. Players need to be in almost perfect lockstep with each other in how their minds work to spot the connections. The slightest misstep on either side can potentially lead to defeat.
7 Twilight Imperium Is An Exercise In Prolonged Stress
An epic, sprawling, sci-fi strategy game, Twilight Imperium puts each player in charge of a faction in a divided galaxy. It is a game based on points, as each player strives to complete objectives both public and secret. Players are able to engage in war, diplomacy, trade, research, and more.
The game is notorious for how long it takes. Each player is considered to add at least ninety minutes to its playtime. Despite this, Twilight Imperium is a perfectly dynamic game where any move could upend the balance of power or lead to a kingmaker scenario. The game is a slow, steady build-up of stress as players attempt to maintain their position over the duration of an entire afternoon.
6 One Night Ultimate Werewolf Gives Players One Shot And Little Information
Werewolf, also known as Mafia, is a classic deception game where players attempt to root out a hostile element from their group with incomplete information. It normally takes place over a number of in-game nights. Players must use logic, abilities, and social skills to pick out the werewolves from a slowly-decreasing list of subjects.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf changes this, as the name implies, by making the game happen in the space of one night and day. There are no second chances, no allowances for wrong guesses. The players have to find the werewolf or they lose. However, not even the werewolf can relax. Due to the shifting roles in the game, the werewolf might not have any idea of what's happening either.
5 Letters From Whitechapel Is A Tense Police Chase
Board games often either have players in a free-for-all or have players on teams of equal numbers. Plenty of asymmetric games exist, which gives the teams different numbers, advantages, and win conditions. Letters from Whitechapel is one of the more notoriously stressful.
One player controls the world's most infamous murderer, Jack the Ripper, and the others control the London policemen who are trying to bring him down. A hidden movement game, the police need to attempt to intercept Jack as he commits murder and flees to his hideout, while he has to plan his path to avoid them. Feeling constantly unfair for both sides, Letters from Whitechapel can be a harrowing and stressful experience.
4 Coup Forces Successful Players To Lie And Guess The Lies Of Others
Coup is a relatively simple game with very complex psychology behind it. Players have two cards that they can use the actions of, and they aim to amass money and spend it on a number of ways to eliminate their rivals. The twist, however, is that the cards remain secret and players can use the actions of any card, even if they don't have it.
Coup is a game of bluff and insight that requires players to leave their opponents guessing at what they've got in their hands. With play, counterplay, and the potential to lose resources at any point, players have to balance every action, every lie, and every accusation.
3 Uno Infamously Strains Friendships
Modifying the rules for a number of card-shedding games into something unique, Uno is widely-played and infamous for the uncomfortable and competitive atmosphere it can make. On its own, the game can still be stressful. Players have to decide what to play, how to slow down their opponents, and when to rid their hand of cards without picking up any others.
What makes Uno truly stressful, however, are the special cards. These each have unique abilities, including making players skip a turn, changing the game's turn order, and making the player draw multiple cards. A single one of these special cards can ruin a player's game. Playing a special card can often feel like an act of malice that heightens the tension for all.
2 Operation Is A Test Of Nerve And Dexterity
Many stressful board games are such because they strain a player's knowledge, mental skills, or trust with others. Operation strains something far more basic: simple manual dexterity. The game requires players to remove a number of objects from a facsimile of a man's chest without touching the edges of the small spaces the objects are stored in.
Starting off difficult and only getting harder, Operation tasks players with keeping their hand as steady as possible. Its buzzer noise, which is triggered by a slip of the hand, has become an infamous sign of failure in board games.
1 Pandemic Is A Game With Multiple Ticking Clocks
A countdown to failure is a sure way to make a game more stressful, giving a time limit before the players inevitably lose. Pandemic, however, takes things to another level by having four ticking clocks. Players have to battle to end four disease outbreaks before a single one of them becomes unstoppable.
Pandemic forces players to split their attention, make hard decisions about what they want to focus on, and work together as efficiently as possible to keep all the different diseases under control. Even with all of that, the game is infamous for being easy to lose at almost any point.