When a board game gets popular, it’s pretty often that a bigger game will get popular, but there are also a number of small ones too. Recently board games like The Mind and The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine have blown up the board community. I’ve played both of them, and let’s just say that one of them was for me another one wasn’t. But I want to talk about five small box games that you might have overlooked.

5 Small Box Board Games

Say Bye to the Villains

I think that I’m about the only champion for this game. Alright, that’s an exaggeration, the person who taught me the game really likes it too. Say Bye to the Villains is a small box card game where you play as Samurai who are trying to take down villains. I talked about it in my Top 100 2022 Edition recently.

Some people will find this a frustrating game. It is not an easy game to win. If I were to guess, I’ve played the game 15 times and I have yet to win. But it’s a lot of fun. Each Samurai plays differently, so they train differently. You spend time researching the villains and trying to get everyone set-up. But the game is just tight enough that you always feel like you just need a tiny it more information or time. One of these days I will win.

Mesozooic

Mesozooic is really cheap to find right now. I don’t remember when it came out, but there are copies floating around out there at a good price, and I see it on sale often. But I like this drafting and timed game, it just feels different.

In this game you draft cards to build a dinosaur zoo. This is not that unique. But then you put out the cards you drafted and create a sliding puzzle with them. You have 45 seconds, I believe, to get them shifted around, like a sliding puzzle, to score the most points possible. And the player with the most points after three rounds wins.

I don’t like real time games. But Mesozooic works for me. You get your points from drafting and the real time puzzle aspect is important, but also just light and fun. The real time works because it doesn’t feel like a pressure on the game.

Patchwork Doodle

Out of all of them on the list, this is the most likely to be heard of. Board Game Geek even did a video play through of it on their Game Night show. But I really enjoy Patchwork Doodle as a roll and write game. Mainly it is a very simple game. You are making a quilt in it by filling in Tetris polyomino style shapes.

I think that makes this one better for them than something like Second Chance, which I believe came out first, is this one offers you a few more choices. You use up to 4 powers throughout the game. And those can really save you from having to pass on a shape or to get that big square of your quilt. Fun and family friendly small box game.

Floriferous

This is a newer game on the list, but from a smaller publisher. And I want more people to know about it and play it because it does some cool things. Plus it’s a very pretty looking game with all the plants in it. But let’s talk about the two things that I like.

Firstly, I like that it’s drafting and drafting where you draft your scoring cards. So you can decide to get more flowers which might score you points for their symbols or other scoring cards you’ve drafted. Or you can draft another scoring card that might give you more points. It’s a fun puzzle.

I also like deciding when to draft something that’s less ideal. Why would you do that? Because there is an order that gets set by how far down the column you go for the next round of drafting. If I’m below you on the column you go before me next time. And maybe that scoring card or a planet is perfect for me in that next column. So do I hold out and take a worse card to make sure I get that really good one.

Age of War

And the last of the five games we have Age of War. This one is different from all of the others. It’s basically a Yahtzee style die rolling game where you are trying to collect different castles of fortresses. The ones you collect give you points.

This also has two different things that I really like. Firstly, you can steal buildings from others, it makes it a very in your face game. But it’s light and turns go fast, so it doesn’t feel as bad as a big game. I also like that you can try and collection castles of the same color. If you do, you flip them, they are worth a few more points. But the big thing is once you flip a full set, they can’t be stolen anymore. It’s simple but fast and fun.

Final Thoughts

There are always going to be small box games that are overlooked. There are a lot of reasons for that. Sometimes it’s just because you don’t notice them on a shelf. Put Age of War next to Wingspan and Wingspan is immediately going to catch people’s attention. That’s just because of the size of the box, so it’s naturally going to happen.

Other times and this is more just on some gamers, they ignore small games. The idea is that a small box can’t pack a big punch. Well, some of these games do pack a good challenge and a punch. So don’t just assume that a small box game is bad or simple because it’s in a small box. Give them a try too.

What are you favorite small box games? Which ones would you say are often overlooked?

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