Great Board Games & What We Can Learn From Them

When you design board games, it helps to play great board games. By analyzing what works and what doesn’t, you can create something special of your own.

Let’s talk about the old classics, the new classics, and do a deep-dive into the inner workings of recent games like Sagrada, Azul, and Terraforming Mars.

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The 10 Most Popular Board Games of All Time and Why They Made Board Gaming Better

Let’s look back at the top-selling board games of all time. Some have aged beautifully, some have aged horribly, but in all cases we can talk about them and learn from them.

The 10 Best Board Games of All Time and What We Can Learn from Them

There are over 100,000 board games in existence. The vast majority have been forgotten and buried in the sands of time. A handful have stood out head and shoulders among the rest.

5 Lessons from Catan for Aspiring Board Game Designers

The board game market as we know it today did not exist yet. Catan was the first major hobby board game to come into existence.

4 Lessons from Santorini for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Santorini is a fantastic board game that came out about two years ago. In its heart, it’s an abstract strategy game that could have come from antiquity.

4 Lessons from Pandemic for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Let’s talk about Pandemic – one of the greatest games ever made. Despite being more than ten years old now, this new classic can still teach us a lot.

4 Lessons from Sagrada for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Sagrada is one of my recent favorite board games. It is fundamentally a pretty simple game, but it has a lot of really endearing qualities.

4 Lessons from Terraforming Mars for Aspiring Board Game Designers

I played Terraforming Mars for the first time recently. It is an absolutely fantastic game and really valuable for learning board game design.

4 Lessons from Ticket to Ride for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Ticket to Ride came out in 2004. Along with games like Catan and Pandemic, Ticket to Ride helped turn board gaming into the hobby that we love today.




4 Lessons from Azul for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Azul has taken the board game world by storm. Like Sagrada, it’s a gorgeous and approachable puzzle game with emergent complexity.

4 Lessons from Twilight Struggle for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Twilight Struggle is one of the best board games of all time. It’s overcomplicated yet elegant, frustrating yet beautiful. What can we learn from it?

4 Lessons from Root for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Root is a wargame about adorable animals. Marquise de Cat rules the woodlands with an iron paw. This sets the stage for really clever strategies.

4 Lessons from Twilight Imperium for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Twilight Imperium is a masterpiece. But how exactly did this extremely long, extremely complicated, and extremely expensive game succeed in the market?

4 Lessons from Dinosaur Island for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Dinosaur Island was massively successful. It raised $2M+ on Kickstarter and stayed in the BoardGameGeek hotness for a really long time. How’d they do it?

4 Lessons from Everdell for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Everdell is a worker placement, tableau-building fantasy board game. It takes its name from a charming valley in the game’s world.

4 Lessons from Paladins of the West Kingdom for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Paladins of the West Kingdom has been on the Board Game Geek Hotness every time I’ve checked. We are going to dig into what makes this game so successful.

6 Reasons Escape Rooms Will Make You a Better Board Game Designer

Handcuffed to my manager, I reached into the toilet to find a small key. It wasn’t a typical day at work, you see. I was in an Escape Room.

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4 Lessons from Spirit Island for Aspiring Board Game Designers

In 2016, Spirit Island raised $84,176 on Kickstarter. Spirit Island has remained on the Board Game Geek Hotness list off and on for almost three years. Its expansion went onto raise almost $800,000.

4 Lessons from Quacks of Quedlinburg for Aspiring Board Game Designers

In 2018, Quacks of Quedlinburg won the elusive Kennerspiel des Jahres award. What can we learn from this award-winning board game with a silly name?

7 Lessons from Monopoly for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Ah, Monopoly. One of the oldest board games in the store. A top 10 best-seller with over 1,100 versions. It’s also a terrible board game.

4 Lessons from Imhotep for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Imhotep is a great game and it has a lot to teach board game designers. Let’s talk about what makes this game tick and how you can learn from it!

4 Lessons from Exit Games for Aspiring Board Game Designers

Escape Rooms are dangerous right now. Exit Games by Kosmos are the closest we can get to the authentic in-person experience right now. They’re pretty good.