Tabletop games are a fantastic way for families and friends to get together, have fun, and have friendly competition around the table. Most games tend to take about 30-90 minutes, although some games can take much longer. However, there are very quick games that exist to provide a quick, punchy, burst of energy.
Short games are often quite innovative and surprising to gamers. It is an impressive accomplishment by the designers to pack the feeling of a full game in such a short amount of time. Many short games are perfect to play as a palate cleanser between bigger games or multiple times in a row as the main course for game night.
10 Illusion Bends The Minds Of Players
In Illusion, a card is placed on the table and an arrow is set next to it. The cards show odd patterns and shapes comprised of 4 colors: green, yellow, red, and blue. The arrow shows what color is the focus for the round. If a blue arrow is out, then players must play cards and arrange them so the card closest to the arrow has the least amount of blue and the card furthest has the most. The game leads to players second-guessing themselves and being surprised when they reveal how wrong or right everybody was.
9 Tenzi Is Fast & Frantic Dice Rolling
Tenzi has very simple rules on its surface. Each round, players roll 10 dice, save some, and re-roll the rest until all dice are the same. Every player does this at the same time, making each round intense.
Tenzi expands tenfold when it is played with its card expansion, 77 Ways To Play Tenzi, which adds in new rules, patterns players have to make, dice stacking, and much more. The game can get quite crazy and hectic, but players will be coming back for more as each round only lasts about 1 minute.
8 Fuse Is The Intensity Of Defusing Bombs
In Fuse, all players work together to try and defuse a bomb before it explodes. The game takes 10 minutes; players can simply set a timer or use a companion app that has intense background music and the classic movie sounds of a bomb ticking. Each player has cards in front of them with certain goals, like two dice that are the same number or 3 dice that are blue. Players draw random dice from a bag and must divide them as best as they can between all players to help everyone achieve their goals.
7 Keyforge Revolutionizes Card Collecting
There are many popular collectible card games like Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering. These games tend to follow the model of buying random packs and hoping for the best or rarest cards to use in a deck. Keyforge throws all of this out the window by having random decks that cannot be changed or modified in any way. The company behind the game, Fantasy Flight, uses an algorithm to randomly determine which cards are in a deck. No two decks are alike, creating a new experience and play style with every single deck.
6 Micro Macro: Crime City Is The Where's Waldo Of Board Games
Micro Macro: Crime City is a very unique game that is unlike anything else out there. In the game, players work together to solve crimes that have occurred on a giant fold-out paper map. Micro Macro: Crime City comes with several cases to play through and each of them takes less than 15 minutes. The map depicts an entire city full of new stories to discover as players track characters and suspects to see what they have done throughout the day. Players everywhere continue to rave about this interesting and original game.
5 Love Letter Is Romance & Bluffing
Love Letter has become one of the most successful games in the board gaming hobby. In the game, players have a random character card in front of them that is kept secret from all other players.
Each turn, a player draws an additional card and chooses which card to keep and which to play for its ability. During Love Letter, players will try to bluff and lie about which character card they currently have, which leads to some very tense and exciting moments. Love Letter has gone on to spawn multiple sequels and spinoffs.
4 Timeline Teaches History In A Fun Way
Timeline is a game that is only comprised of cards depicting a historical event on one side and the year in which it took place on the other side. Each event can range from something as important as The Moon Landing to something as innocuous as Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again." At the beginning of Timeline, a card is turned over to show the year. Players are dealt 4 random cards each and they must attempt to play cards correctly in the timeline, at the end, at the beginning, or somewhere in the middle.
3 Coup Lets Players Lie From The Very Beginning Of The Game
In Coup, each player is dealt 2 cards that depict a character and an ability that character can perform. On a player's turn, however, they can claim to have any of the 5 characters in the game and perform the ability that character has. Any player can accuse another of lying, stating that they do not have that character. If a player's accusation is correct, the accused loses a card. If a player's accusation is incorrect, the accuser loses a card. The last player standing wins the game.
2 For Sale Is Fast-Paced Bidding
For Sale offers players a quick and simple auction game that has two rounds. In the first round, players will bid money on property cards that have different numbers on them. In the second round, players use the properties they own to bid on money cards.
At the end of For Sale, the player with the most money from cards, and money left over from the first round, is the winner. For Sale is very easy to teach and quick to play, but still provides a good amount of strategy and forward-planning for players.
1 The Crew Turns A Simple Card Game Into A Space Adventure
Trick-taking games were thought to have fallen out of popularity over the years, appealing to trick-taking fans, but rarely reaching a wider audience. The Crew shattered expectations as the game continues to sell very well and has shown up in big-box stores like Target. In The Crew, all players work together in an attempt to play cards in a certain order. The catch is that players have a limited way of communicating to each other which cards they have in their hands. The Crew goes above and beyond, offering 50 different missions built around an entire campaign.