Less Respawn, More Recycling: Six of the Best Board Games Based on Video Games | games

VIntellectual games have always been heavily inspired by physical games, from chess and Scrabble to Dungeons and Dragons. For example, the deck-building collectible card game has become hugely popular in digital form, thanks to hits like Slay the Spire, Marvel Snap, and Balatro. Now, a growing number of games are going in the opposite direction, replacing pixels with blocks and screens with spinners. Here are six of our favorites.

Company of Heroes 2nd Edition (Bad crow games£119.70)

The World War II-based video game series uses well-tested real-time strategy elements such as conquest, resource management, and leveling up to create ever-changing battlefields. This board game mimics the mechanics with a handful of custom dice and a set of miniatures to put a frenetic war zone on your kitchen table. When played with additional vehicles or terrain from the expansion packs – and there is a mouth-watering scope – it’s a board game that not only looks and feels like the original.

Slay the Spire: The Board Game (Competition games£91)

Mega Crit’s hugely successful deck-building roguelike has players fighting their way to the top of the titular tower, facing off against strange creatures by playing, trading, or redrawing their initial hand of cards to improve their abilities. It’s a testament to the simple, solid core gameplay that the board game doesn’t change any of that. While monster encounters are perfectly translated into colored cards, the game’s dungeon path is represented on a large board, where tokens are used to add random stopping points like shops or campfires. The board game also adds four-player co-op, introducing a tense team element (this will also be part of the video game sequel). It’s currently one of the highest-rated video game mods on boardgamegeek.com, and it’s worth the hefty price tag.

The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Age (Chip theory games, £138.14)

The Elder Scrolls role-playing adventure games have been winning fans and awards since the 1990s, so physical spin-offs were inevitable. Perhaps the most famous is Betrayal of the Second Age, a co-op adventure with a core collection box crammed with a 90-plus page rulebook, 167 dice, neoprene map mats, and bags of enemy tokens and spells. These mimic the open worlds of video games to provide an intricately designed sandbox that provides hours of gameplay. For example, five “lexical” books allow players to choose multiple branching, interconnected adventures that last an hour or two each. Supported by expansions, it’s not a board game, it’s a way of (fantasy) life.

Stardew Valley: The Board Game (The monkey in question£49.94)

Based on the beloved rural life simulator, Stardew Valley: The Board Game challenges one to four players to make their valley a better place through farming, fishing, and making friends. While the original game had a few specific goals, the board game puts the tractor’s pedal to the metal by providing only one game year to complete an often bewildering array of socially virtuous tasks. The relaxed pace of the original work is replaced by a collaborative, highly objective approach. Either you all work together or you all lose. However, the colorful cards, panels, and icons all capture the relaxing aesthetic of the video game, so you won’t feel too stressed.

Gate: The Uncooperative Cake-Getting Game (Cryptoentertainmentout of print, available on eBay)

While Portal and Portal 2 take place in abandoned Aperture Science laboratories, the board game focuses on the twisted pseudoscience of the company’s glory years. The palette of interlocking isometric rooms creates an ever-changing conveyor belt that shifts the rooms—and their occupants—toward clinical burnout. Players place worthless test subjects and valuable industrial-grade cake slices on portals, aiming to strategically eliminate one and store the other. Unusually for a board game, this was designed by the video game’s creator, Valve. As such, it is rich with the same biting humour.

This war of mine (Awaken the worlds£54.99)

Released in 2014, This War of Mine is a grueling but engaging survival game inspired by the Siege of Sarajevo where the goal is to keep a group of civilian characters alive in a dangerous and devastating war zone. A high-quality benchmark in screen-to-tabletop adaptations, the board game faithfully replicates not only the characters and events, but also the core game mechanics of each day/night cycle. The centerpiece of this is the text book, filled with moments written in the style of your choose-your-own-adventure. It’s so close to the original that you arguably only need to play one version, but long-term fans will appreciate the chance to experience the tense and exciting world with up to five friends.