2025 was another impressively busy year for the tabletop world. From big releases in tabletop RPGs to another crowded year of board game and card game releases, there was no lack of variety in what players could try this year. We’ve highlighted some of our favorite games in 2025, ranging from simple but addictive card games to fun party games to challenging co-op experiences.
Flip 7
Flip 7 is a deceptively simple push your luck card game that will draw plenty of cheers and jeers as it makes your way around the table. The Blackjack-esque game features a deck of cards numbered from 0 to 12, with a few special cards mixed in for extra flavor. Players are dealt a card and then decide whether to push their luck and accept another or hold for guaranteed points. If the revealed card is a duplicate of a card they already have in hand, they’re knocked out and receive no points.
Play continues until every player is eliminated, has stopped accepting cards, or has collected seven numbered cards, earning them a Flip 7 and bonus points. Flip 7 is easy enough for the whole family, but engaging enough to satisfy even hardcore gamers. And while there’s nothing more disheartening then getting knocked out by a pair of 4s, there’s a reason why Flip 7 was nominated for the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award.
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game
My personal favorite game of 2025, the Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking Game, is an elegant cooperative game where every round feels like a new puzzle to unravel. Each chapter of the game uses different characters, all of whom have unique win conditions. Players have to work together to complete each character’s win conditions, which range from winning a certain number of tricks to winning a trick that contains a certain card.
Later chapters introduce complications to overcome or add new cards to the deck. Despite a simple set of rules, my game group never grew tired of The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game and joyously jumped into its sequel, which got an early release at PAX Unplugged.
Vantage
A tabletop take on open world games, Vantage puts players on a strange alien planet with limited resources and no real direction. At the onset of the game, players are assigned a mission and are scattered to different corners of the world. Players look at cards depicting the alien landscapes to determine which direction they’d like to move in or what actions they’d like to complete.
Any checks are completed by rolling dice and utilizing limited resources they have on hand to improve their chances. One interesting part of Vantage is that success is almost always assumed, although it may cost valuable time, life, or luck to complete. While there are plenty of attempts to build an open world-style tabletop game, Vantage is one of the most freeform and natural I’ve played in quite some time.
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Faerun and Adventures in Faerun
As Dungeons & Dragons jumps into its revised 5th Edition, it brought back its signature Forgotten Realms setting back in a big way with a pair of sourcebooks released this fall. Heroes of Faerun and Adventures in Faerun are not only valuable expansions for D&D’s 2024 edition, they’re also two of the strongest sourcebooks released by Wizards in recent years. With these two releases, D&D has recaptured the magic of the Forgotten Realms and showcased the new setting ahead of the eventual release of a Netflix series set in the world.
Bomb Busters
Fuzzy animals attempt to work together to disarm bombs in the Spiel des Jahres award-winning game. The cooperative game has a simple premise. Players are randomly assigned a collection of numbered wires, and they attempt to identify matching wires using only the scantest of clues.
Helping players are various items that can lessen the blows of failures, but players can lose instantly if they accidentally cut the dreaded red wire hiding in plain sight. Bomb Busters comes with a campaign mode with dozens of scenarios, which makes the game an easy choice for loads of replayability.
Leviathan Wilds
This Shadows of Colossus-inspired game sends players climbing up the side of massive leviathans to cleanse them of corruptive crystals. Each player controls a unique character with a small deck of cards that represents available actions they can take on their turn. Players need to traverse giant monsters to break binding crystals precariously positioned along the monster, while also dodging attacks and navigating various kinds of obstacles.
Not only does Leviathan Wilds capture the puzzle-like qualities of rock climbing, it’s also an entertaining cooperative game with increasingly wild and more difficult creatures that can be played standalone or as part of an interconnected campaign.
Daggerheart
Critical Role has created a viable alternative to Dungeons & Dragons with Daggerheart, an RPG that combines improvisational shared narrative building with a beefy combat system built around synergies and explosive moves. The game’s core check mechanic involves two D12s, which are referred to as the Hope and Fear dice. Players add the dice results together for a numerical result, but the higher die also determines additional narrative success or failure outside of the roll.
Although Critical Role is sticking with D&D for its fourth campaign, Daggerheart certainly has legs to it and seems to have been embraced by Critical Role’s fanbase as the strongest of a series of D&D alternatives released in recent years.
Hot Streak
Bet on shenanigan-filled mascot races in Hot Streak, a lightweight party game that’s a ton of fun. Instead of controlling the mascots themselves, players collectively build a deck of cards that determines how far the mascots run, whether they careen into other lanes or fall down and crawl to the finish line. Players then bet on the results of the race, deciding whether to attempt riskier bets or safer bets that pay out on a podium finish.
The player with the most money after three rounds win, with the race changing every game. Although Hot Streak is extremely lightweight, the component quality and laughs it provides is hard to beat.
Super Boss Monster
A new version of the competitive dungeon-builder, Super Boss Monster upgrades to 16-bit graphics and adds a few new wrinkles to the popular card game. Although the core gameplay of luring heroes to deadly dungeons remain intact, Super Boss Monster introduces a new town board and minions that grant minor boons before heroes eventually make their way out of the town.
These little upgrades can make all the difference in a round and also minimize the number of “wasted” rounds, even when players can’t quite get the rooms they want in their dungeon. Plus, Super Boss Monster is fully compatible with previous Boss Monster expansions, meaning that the game feels more like an upgrade rather than a replacement.
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