The Best Tabletop Games For Video Game Fans

Aug 16, 2023

Are you looking for some offline fun? Here are some great tabletop games for video game fans like you!

If you love video games, you might have also considered getting into board games. Whether you want your gaming to feel more tactile moving bits, chips, and pieces, or you just want to play in your house with some friends, the board gaming experience has a different feel from digital games.

Related: The Best Board Games For Adults In 2023

However, the feeling it's not too different since you’re still playing a game after all, and board games can feel quite familiar to longtime gamers. If you want to hop into the hobby but want to start with what you know, we present you with some well-trodden video game genres and board games that match them.

A narrative-focused card game, the Arkham Horror LCG casts you and up to three other players as Investigators, tasked with unraveling a conspiracy before the cosmic horrors fuelling it destroy the world across three Acts, with important decisions to make in each one.

Investigators are represented by unique decks, embodying one of five classes that broadly represent what they do for the group. After every Act, you gain experience that you use to buy more powerful cards and upgrade your deck, and any important decisions you make often have effects that carry over into later Acts.

A cerebral take on a kinetic genre, Heat: Pedal to the Medal is a racing game for up to six players, with a gameplay that mostly involves deck management where your goal is to stay ahead of the pack without pushing your luck too far.

As a racer, you choose what gear to shift to, or if you shift at all. This determines how many cards you can use, which in turn affects how fast you’re going. Higher gears mean adding Heat to your deck, while lower gears may allow you to cool off, and going for speed or safety is a choice you make every turn, which limits your options.

If you like to fight in the digital realm, then consider Exceed for your tabletop, as it distills important fighting game tactics and strategies into a card game format, featuring familiar titles like Street Fighter, BlazBlue, and soon, Guilty Gear Strive. Each player uses a deck that represents a character and the first player whose life goes to zero loses.

Fights are turn-based, and the effectiveness of each attack is based on its reach and how much defense it provides for your character. Correctly guessing your opponent’s next move is often the difference between landing a devastating blow or eating dirt, and you can also go for wild swinging, the game’s version of button-mashing.

If you like games like Evil Dead: The Game, Friday the 13th: The Game, and especially Dead by Daylight, then you and four like-minded individuals would love Dead by Daylight The Board Game. DBD The Board Game distills the original experience to a hidden-movement card game where survivors try to repair generators while the killer attempts to stick them on a hook.

Related: Dead By Daylight - Everything You Need To Know About The Board Game

In each round, the survivors pick where they go and what they do secretly while the killer attempts to predict where they’re going to injure and capture them. The game features six killers and seven survivors to choose from, and if that isn’t enough you can also get the special edition, which features every non-licensed killer and survivor up to Trickster and Yun-Jin.

Management of dwindling resources, fighting (or evading) an implacable monster, and the chance of a gory death– if you like Survival Horror, then Final Girl is for you. A single-player experience, each game of Final Girl pits one of the titular protagonists (you) against a movie-style slasher.

You have to rescue hapless survivors and find the tools that will help you beat the killer, while every kill they earn fuels their bloodlust and makes them more powerful. It all culminates in a final confrontation that ends in death, for you, the killer, or both. But watch out! Even if it seems like you’ve landed a lethal blow, the killer might come back for one last scare.

Not for the fledgling gamer, Twilight Imperium is an epic game of galactic supremacy for three to six players. It’s not for most people, but if you like grand strategy games like the Europa Universalis, Victoria, or Galactic Civilizations, then you should feel right at home here.

Related: The Best Grand Strategy Games Of All Time, Ranked

The game is staggeringly complex, featuring more than a dozen unique races that have unique playstyles. The roads to victory are many, from diplomatic, to economic, to military, and more, so you should set aside a day or plan for multiple sessions, especially if the whole group is new to the game.

If you like your strategy games at a smaller scale, closer to Starcraft or Age of Empires rather than Crusader Kings or Total War, then Root: A Game Of Woodland Might & Right is right up your alley. A game for two to four players, Root puts you in the role of the commander of a faction of woodland critters, and the goal is to score 30 Victory Points.

Each faction is wildly unique, to the point of each one having a different way to score points. The base game features factions of cats, birds of prey, assorted woodland prey, and a wily raccoon, while expansions add a host of creatures like lizard cults or ancap otters. But, don’t let the game’s adorable visuals fool you, Root is a cutthroat battle for woodland supremacy.

Next: Best Fictional In-Game Board Games

A Bachelor of Science in Journalism and lover of all games, Chris originally got into games journalism as part of the longest and least thought out scheme to get into E3 and has since developed a love for journalism and the written word. Never got those E3 tickets, though.