/ LISTS / Award Winners / Spiel des Jahres Games of the Years
The Spiel des Jahres is a prestigious and longstanding award for board and card games. As you may have guessed, the name is German and means Game of the Year. It's been going since 1978 with the purpose of rewarding family-friendly game design, and promoting excellent games in the German market.It's a really useful way of finding some amazing games for your family, whether they are new or released many years ago. They include awards in the following categories that increase in complexity:
This list includes 21 games from the last 27 years, with 66 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to play award winning board games.
We have other Award Winners lists of games:
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2014, updated in 2019
Genres: Fighting, Sequencing and Traversal
Pieces: Cards, Figures and Tokens
Developer: Asmodee (@Asmodee)
Players: You can play with 2 to 6 players in the same room
Colt Express is a traversal game where you move a bandit along an express train in the Old West to collect the most loot. Each player pre-selects moves, attacks and pick-ups that then play out together. Unusually, play becomes about planning, predicting...
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Release Date: 27/06/2007
Genres: Creative, Strategy and World Building
Pieces: Bag, Figures, Placeables and Tokens
Developer: Z Man Games (@ZManGames_)
Players: You can play with 2 to 5 players in the same room
Carcassonne is a strategy game where you lay tiles to create a medieval landscape of farms, rivers and cities. Each new tile must match the roads, rivers, farms and cities of those around it. As you place it you can claim one of these elements that...
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/1995, updated in 2013
Price: 34% off
Genres: Collecting, Communication, Strategy and World Building
Pieces: Bag, Cards, Dice, Figures, Placeables, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Asmodee USA (@Asmodee_USA)
Players: You can play with 3 to 4 players in the same room
Catan is a strategy game set on an uninhabited island where you accumulate, spend and trade resources to build the biggest kingdom. Players must compete for space, resources and ultimately for ten victory points to be crowned the winner. What starts as...
Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/03/2017
Price: 15% off
Genres: Collecting, Sequencing and World Building
Pieces: Figures and Placeables
Developer: Blue Orange Games (@BlueOrangeGames)
Players: You can play with 2 to 4 players in the same room
Kingdomino is a kingdom-building game where you place domino tiles to match terrain types and score points. As you play, you build a territory in a grid that requires careful consideration of where dominos are placed to maximise points. What makes this...
Release Date: 01/01/2004, updated in 2020
Price: 8% off
Genres: Strategy
Pieces: Board, Cards and Figures
Developer: Days Of Wonder (@Days_Of_Wonder)
Ticket to Ride is a railway-themed strategy board game where players compete to earn the most points by collecting cards, placing trains and completing journeys. It is an easy to learn game that can be gently competitive and has become a popular classic.
Release Date: 30/05/2016
Genres: Dexterity, Push-Your-Luck and Traversal
Developer: Brain Games Int (@BrainGames_Int)
Ice Cool, and the follow-up Ice Cool 2, is an action game where you flick plastic Penguins around cardboard school rooms to collect points and avoid the Catcher. Like a cross between Subbuteo and Cluedo, you slide, jump and barrel your penguin through...
Skill Rating: 8-16 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2020, updated in 2021
Genres: Brain Game, Narrative, Puzzle and Sequencing
Pieces: Board and Cards
Developer: Spiel Wiese (@SpielWiese)
Players: You can play with 1 to 4 players in the same room
MicroMacro: Crime City is a puzzle brain game where you are solving crimes by discovering clues hidden in black and white pictures. You solve a series of cases that relate to different large pictures you lay out on the table between all the players. The...
Release Date: 01/01/2017
Genres: Brain Game, Collecting, Sequencing and Strategy
Accessibility: 26 features
Azul is a tile laying collection and sequencing game where you help the king decorate their palace with Portuguese tiles. You aim to gain tiles on your game card that form patterns to score the most points. What makes it unique is it's balance between...
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2014, updated in 2018
Genres: Push-Your-Luck and Race
Pieces: Board, Dice, Figures and Tokens
Developer: Pegasus Spiele (@PegasusSpiele)
Players: You can play with 3 to 8 players in the same room
Camel Up is a crazy push-your-luck game where you bet on and influence camel races. Each turn you can move the camels, bet on which will win or place tokens to slow or speed things up. It's clever because it rewards players who make bets early and it's...
Release Date: 01/01/2008
Genres: Communication and Push-Your-Luck
Pieces: Board, Cards, Figures and Tokens
Players: You can play with 3 to 6 players in the same room
Dixit is a communication game where you guess which Picture cards related to someone's clue. Each round you each pick a card to match the Storyteller player's clue and then try and guess which one was the Storytellers. It's clever because of the scoring...
Skill Rating: 4-9 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2020
Players: This is a single-player game
Dragomino is a matching and collecting tile game similar to Kingdomino but tuned for really young players. You take turns to pick and add a domino Land card to your growing grid, and earn dragon eggs. It works for youngsters with...
Skill Rating: 8-11 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2018
Genres: Brain Game, Communication, Push-Your-Luck and Puzzle
Pieces: Cards and Pen and Pad
Developer: Repos Production (@ReposProduction)
Players: You can play with 3 to 7 players in the same room
Just One is a communication party game where you guess words based on one word clues from the group. You work together to help the guesser by writing one word clues on the wipeable easels. Unusually, if the clues are the same they are removed before the...
Skill Rating: 5-16 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2006
Genres: Brain Game, Puzzle, Sequencing and Strategy
Pieces: Placeables
Qwirkle is an abstract sequencing puzzle game where you compete to create rows of matching (or series of) colours and shapes. You score more points by matching multiple directions, but need to be careful not to leave points for other players to...
Skill Rating: 10-14 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2015
Genres: Collecting, Communication and Push-Your-Luck
Pieces: Cards
Players: You can play with 2 to 12 players in the same room
Codenames is a team communication game where you play two competing spy networks. One player in each team gives clues to help them find the cards that are their agents without hitting the assassin. It's a novel combination of push-your-luck, clue giving...
Skill Rating: 10-16 year-olds
Genres: Collecting, Fighting, Push-Your-Luck, Sequencing and Strategy
Dominion is a medieval theme strategic card game where you collect and refine a hand of cards to build the most powerful kingdom. The goal is to gain the most victory points and to avoid curses. It stands out for the wide variety of strategies and play...
Skill Rating: 8-10 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2010
Pieces: Cards and Tokens
Hanabi is a cooperative game where you create a firework show by placing the cards in the right order. Your goal is to organise all the suits of cards in ascending order like Solitaire. The twist is that only other players can see your cards and you...
Release Date: 01/01/2011
Genres: Strategy and World Building
Accessibility: 20 features
Pieces: Board, Dice, Placeables, Score Pad and Tokens
Developer: Real Queen Games (@Real_QueenGames)
Kingdom Builder is a strategy world-building game where you create a kingdom by placing settlers' houses. You work to build settlements with positions and orientations that meet three specific criteria chosen at the start. This, along with special...
Genres: Communication and Creative
Pieces: Bag, Cards, Placeables and Score Pad
Developer: Rio Grande Games (@RioGrandeGames)
Players: You can play with 3 to 5 players in the same room
Pictures is a puzzle game about recreating pictures with everyday objects. You are assigned a picture from a grid of cards on the table and given a set of materials (cubes, sticks and stones, cards) to make it with. How well you do is determined by how...
Skill Rating: 3-7 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2019
Genres: Action, Dexterity, Sequencing and Traversal
Pieces: Board, Figures, Placeables and Tokens
Speedy Roll (also known as Hedgehog Roll) is an action dexterity game where you roll the hedgehog (a fuzzy tennis ball with eyes) to collect woodland items that stick to it. This determines which path you can take through the forest to get back home...
Skill Rating: 4-7 year-olds
Release Date: 01/01/2009
Genres: Brain Game, Push-Your-Luck, Puzzle, Race, Sequencing and Traversal
Accessibility: 23 features
Pieces: Bag, Board, Figures and Tokens
The Magic Labyrinth (also known as The Magic Maze) is a traversal puzzle game where magician apprentices retrieve magic objects from their master's maze. However, there are invisible walls in the maze that you have to avoid. The walls are setup under...
Skill Rating: 5-10 year-olds
Genres: Dexterity, Sequencing and Traversal
Developer: HABA USA (@HABA_USA)
Valley of the Vikings is a dexterity traversal game where real barrel bowling fuels a race for gold. Along with the fun of knocking the barrels over is a looping scoring track where sequence is all important and strategy abound. It's a great balance of...
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