There are a ton of well known board games out there. Some of them are games that are in the mass market, Monopoly, Ticket to Ride, Catan, or Wingspan that you find at Target or Walmart. Others are well known board games in the gaming space, like Gloomhaven, Brass Birmingham, or Spirit Island. But every gamer has some games that they like better than most people do. So what board games do I want more people to know about.

5 Hidden Gem Board Games

This list is in no particular order. Maybe towards the top it’ll be games that I want people to know about more, but overall, these are board games that I wish more people knew about and were playing.

5. Ice Cool

Let’s start out with a really light board game with Ice Cool. Ice Cool is a flicking board game of flicking penguins and is just fun. Like I said, in this game you flick your penguin around a a penguin high school (ice cool get it) to try and collect all your fish. All the while the hall monitor, for that round, is trying to catch those naughty penguins that are skipping class.

This is a game that is fun for families but it is also fun for everyone. It’s satisfying to get a good shot and go through multiple doors. It’s frustrating to get stuck in a room. But everyone does it. And when you pull off a great shot, everyone is excited. It just needs more people to play it

4. Sonora

Another game with a flicking element to it. Don’t worry, not all of my board games are flicking games. Sonora is a flick and write game. You shoot discs onto the board. And depending on where they land you fill in four sections of a roll and write board. The play is simple and clever and it’s a nice twist on the classic roll and write system.

This is one that I think works well with more casual gamers and more serious ones alike. You play with strategy in this game, trying to knock your opponents pieces off of areas that they want. And how you fill out your score sheet is an interesting puzzle. I think this one is overlooked because of that flicking element making people think it’s less of a game or strategic than it is.

3. Lands of Galzyr

For Lands of Galzyr, it is a game that is overlooked because it’s from a small publisher. It is not a game that had a wide release and that’s a shame. I think that a lot of people would like this simple story driven game. In it you play as a woodland creature going around and having adventures. You score points depending on how well those adventures go, and then you have another adventure. And the whole system is simple dice rolling.

I like Lands of Galzyr as a cooperative story game that you can play whenever. It’s not a big campaign game so it won’t take up your life for a year or two. It’s a simple and light game that would provide story for newer games who aren’t ready for a bigger challenge. Or it is a story driven game for a game group that can never nail down a schedule.

2. Xenoshyft

This is an older game on the list. The other board games are within the last few years, though some of them a bit older. But Xenoshyft is one that has been out for a few years. And I’m not sure why it’s loved less. My guess is that it comes down to how hard the game is.

Xenoshyft is a deck building game, a popular mechanism, and a cooperative game. I like how it does deck building because it tries to do a few unique things. Or, at least, things that are less common. Firstly, it gives you money to purchase each turn. You draw your hand, and then add money to it, so you never have a dead turn. And as it is tower defense as well, you help support your teammates in their areas. That might even include adding cards that you don’t need to their side of the base to help protect it and into their deck.

This one is for people who like a challenge as a cooperative game. I like how I often get close to winning but rarely win. For me that is a good cooperative game, and I think that is probably why it’s overlooked. It is fairly hard and you need to be prepared to lose, sometimes maybe earlier on than you’d want, just because of a bit of bad luck. But supporting each other really is how you win the game, so you need to truly cooperate.

1. Floriferous

Finally we have Floriferous. This is a drafting game with pretty artwork. And I only can suspect it’s and overlooked game because it’s in a small box and not on a ton of shelves. But it is a great game.

In it you draft cards, but not in the typical, I have a hand of cards and I pick one way. There is a grid of cards on the table. Players select a card from that grid, a column at a time and place their piece where the card they took was. And how high you are on the grid determines who drafts first in the next column. I love that mechanism for drafting.

Then you add in scoring. In Floriferous, you score your flowers based off of the scoring cards you draft. So each time you draft, unless someone took it already, you choose, do I get more flowers to score points off of the scoring cards I have, or do I get another scoring card. It’s a good and clever system.

This one I think that most people can handle. There are a few other scoring rules in there, but it’s a pretty game that more people should play because it’s simple enough to learn. And there is good strategy in there for gamers and non-gamers alike.

Final Thoughts

Part of what I like about board games is hearing about a game that might be overlooked. What game is out there that you really love and you only seem to be the champion of? I know that I buy games from time to time because someone who my tastes overlaps with really champions a board game.

Snow Tales, Miskatonic School for Girls, Medieval Academy and more make the list for me. Are all of those games for me, nope, not all the time. But those are some of the board games that caught my eye because someone championed them. Hopefully there is a game like that in my list.

And let me know what your list is, I’d love to find new games to try.

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here