5 Board Games To Play While Still Stuck Inside

Welp, it looks like we're going to be inside a lot longer than we thought. If by this time the novelty of Pandemic has worn out and if one more game of Splendor or Azul will have you pull your hair out, here are five games available right now that can freshen your game collection and help with those long days.

5: Mysterium

Clue is fun but what if you could play Clue with the help of the murdered? Mysterium is a game where everyone works together to solve the sinister murder with one twist- one player is a ghost sending dreams to a team of psychics and is trying to lead them to the truth. This game can lead to a lot of speculation, table talk and bonding as the players try to interpret the esoteric clues given from beyond.

4: Villainous

Disneyland is closed for the indefinite future, but you can get that Disney fix from Villainous, a game where the players play as the bad guys in a race to pull off their dastardly plan first. The players use heroes against one another to foil their evil plots, giving the players control over both the heroes and the villains of the Disney cannon. Expansions have made a variety of bad guys available, including Yzma, Pete, Cruella and Dr. Facilier.

3: Smallworld

This one is not affiliated with Disney. Smallworld is a strategy game where players try to grow different fantasy races in a land that just can't fit them all. Races appear, reach a pinnacle of their society, then go extinct all within a couple turns. Conquests, betrayals and epic battles are imminent, creating an epic setting for players, but interwoven is a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that will give fantasy fans a good chuckle. Pick it up and see how long you can survive.

2: Stuffed Fables

An adventure game for all ages, Stuffed Fables follows the adventures of a group of stuffed animals as they protect their owner from nightmares. The cutesie premise can lead to some surreal and slightly messed up concepts but doesn't stray any lower than a G rating (Keep in mind that Secret of NIMN is rated G). Fun for all ages, this game has a fun story for the kiddos, relatively easy gameplay to keep them involved, but enough strategy to keep the grown ups thinking.

1: Mystic Veil

Full disclosure: Even to this day this game blows my mind. It's a deck building game in the same vein of Dominion and Legendary, but instead of adding new cards to the deck you add new advancements to your cards in the form of transparent sliders insterted into sleeves. Think of Magic: The Gathering but you build your own cards and by extension your own combos. It's a bonkers good time and something that everyone needs to try once, and while I regret to mention this because I think that especially now brick-and-mortarMystic Veil on the Switch that is quite good and has local and online multiplayer game stores need support and that nothing replaces the physical medium, there's a version of Mystic Veil available on the Switch and it's fantastic. The game is both local and online multiplayer meaning you can play a board game and social distance at the same time.

-JOE