cEverything gets better if you put it in space! Well, okay, maybe not everything, but entert♔ainment products genꦇerally do, including board games.

Part of the point of gaming is to escape, to leave this world and escape to another, and there’s n🅘o setting better suited to that than a science fiction one, where you can literally leave the earth. If you’re looking to blast off, to leave this dull world and escape to the star💜s, then these are the games for you.

Updated July 14, 2024, by Davis Collins: Though we stand by our assertion that the vast majority of things are better if you put them in space, the original version of this list was a bit too focused on large-scale, space opera games that put players in control of organizations and civilizations rather than ordinary people. We've come back to this list to add a bit more variety in scope, tone, and setting to the games it showcases.

We begin with 168澳洲✤幸运5开奖网:one of the best survi𓃲val horror games out there. Nemesis casts its players as the crew of a spaceship that is being stalked by a dangerous, predatory monster. Unfortunately for them, this creature is not a mindless brute, and is capa🤡ble of sabotaging t♏heir ship in its efforts to kill them.

The characters in this game each have their own skills, their own weaknesses, and their own agenda. The special thing about it is that, unlike in 168澳🀅洲幸运5开奖网:games like Betrayal🐟 at House on the Hill or Dead of Winter, where the role of defector is assigned, this game allows each player to choose whether to work with the group or defect and follow their own agenda. For groups whos🍸e players are all especially sociable, this might just mean that no one ever defects, but with the right group, the resulting social dynamics can be amazing.

This is another superlative game. Scythe is a eurogame about managing a series of nations in the aftermath of a dieselpunk version of World War One. The mysterious organization that provided this technology throughout the war has left, and the nations find themselves "fighting" for scraps just when they're exhausted by war and fresh out of any ability to actually fight.

This game is well-designed and fun, but the most remarkable thing about it isn't its gameplay, but its art. Its grimy, gritty, ugly world is beautifully brought t🍒o life by amazing illustrations, some of the best ever to be fe🎐atured in a board game.

Snap Ship Tactics is an amazing game about leading a squadron of fighting ships in battle against your opponent's forces. It's a miniatures wargame, complete with terrain tiles and real-distance-based movement. Like many such games, there is a strong emphasis on the different types of units and their different abilities. Unlike most, you have a role not just in painting the miniatures, but in actually building them, a process during which you customize them to your liking.

This results in a ton of strategic depth at every level of play, both in the assembly of the ships and their tactical use. Some gamers might find the time it takes to set up and build ships to be a turn-off, but viewing this phase of the game as a "long set-up time" isn't really correct. Like with a TCG, the process of setting the game up is itself a phase of the game that involves strategic decisions and plays a major role in determining the outcome.

The simplest and quickest game on this list, Coup is a satisfying bluffing game that puts players in charge of a group of sci-fi aristocrats reminiscent of those living in the Dune universe. In this game, you’re dealt a couple of cards, each with different character types on them, such as a Duke, a Captain, or an Assassin. Each of these characters allows you to use different abilities, and it’s your job to figure out how to use the ones you𒉰 get to outmaneuver and kill off your opponents.

Except, you’re not really restricted to the cards you have. Your cards are hidden, and you’re free to pretend you have cards you don’t have. If someone calls you out, yo▨u’ll be punished for it, but if someone calls you out when you really do have the card you say you have, they ge♔t punished instead!

Another deception game, set in the same universe as Coup, this slightly-longer and slightly more intricate game is still a very fast, simple, and newbie-friendly 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:take on the hidden-identity genre. In it, players are members of a resistance, whose self-appointed duty is to stand up to the corporations and aristocrats that control their world (whose i💃ntrigues were explored in Coup!)

The rebels must have some of their number to go on a variety of missions for the resistance. Unfortunately for them, not everyone at the table is a loyal rebel. A couple of the players are enemy spies, and if they get sent on missions, they have the option to sabotage them. Of course, t𓄧he traitors risk revealing themselves by sabotaging missions, so they must balance the need to hide their identities with the need to prevent the rebels from succeeding in enough missions to win the game.

We just did a couple of fast and simple games, and we hope you got your fill🎉 of those, becauꦰse Twilight Imperium is anything but simple. It is one of the most ambitious and finely crafted tabletop games ever created. This 4-8 hour epic for 3-6 players casts everyone as the head of a different sci-fi civilization. Each civilization has different abilities and offers a completely different play experience, and their different abilities and tactics interacting with one another in different combinations makes for an incredibly rich experience.

This game has all the tools you need to find your own approach to becoming the dominant civilization in the galaxy. Trade, warfare, diplomacy, it’s all here, and it&rs🐓quo;s up to you to make the most of it 🅠as you struggle to become the undisputed master of the stars!

Just as its source material is a classic of science fiction, this board game is more than forty years old, making it a classic in the science fiction genre of tabletop gaming. Like its source material, Dune follows the intrigues of sevღeral factions, including the houses of Atreides and Harkonnen, as they vie for control of the planet Arrakis, and the spice mélange that it produces.

This game is old-school and very unforgiving, but if you’re smart and a bit lucky, there are numerous ways to get ahead. Every faction plays differently, so this game has a wide variety of experiences to offer, and you’ll be challenged not just by the other players, but by the harsh environment of the planet itself, including its ceaseless storms and giant sandworms. If you’re a 16♔8澳洲幸运5开奖网:ཧfan of this classic science fiction franchise, its intrigue, and its characters, or if you just want a brutal but rich strategic ex✱per🏅ience, this game is for you.

Another game based on a classic 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:science fiction franchise, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars: Rebellion is a strategic miniatures game about retaining, or toppling,👍 the Galactic Empire’s control over the ꦏgalaxy.

The galactic empire commands a superior military force, but the Rebel Alliance has loads of tricks and secrets upಞ its sleeve. Only they know the location of their hidden base, which the Empire must find and destroy in order to win the game. All the while, both sides are sending their factions’ leaders on missions to accomplish a variety of goals, and if the Rebellion completes enough of them, they win the game.

Like Twilight Imperium, Cosmic Encounter casts its players 📖as aliens of different factions, each with different abilities, and has them competing for galactic power. This time, the winner is the first 💙race to hold five colonies at once, though some factions also have alternative victory conditions they can pursue instead. The races will engage in diplomacy and warfare with one another to establish colonies and destroy those of their enemies.

This game is heavy on shifting alliances. Players will need to negotiate with each other in order to accomplish their short-term objectives, but only one of them can win in the end. If you’re looking for a strategy game of galactic dominance that’s stood the test of time, and probably won't take a full eight hours, this is the game for you.

Terraforming Mars is a strategic tile-placement and re🌄source management game that casts every player as a different corporation—and there are dozens of corporations to choose from—competing for the biggest role in terraforming Mars and resulting control over the planet. Each corpora🧸tion has its own flavorful backstory and personality. While most of them are still fun♈damentally out for profit, they all have their own plans for the Red Planet, and a few of them have plans beyond making money.

Terraforming Mars takes place over a long period of time, with each round corresponding to a generation, during which corporations will work to modify the planet’s environment to place lively green and 𝄹watery blue tiles and𒆙 use their various cards strategically to achieve victory.

ISS Vanguard is a cooperative space exploration game meant to be played in a long-term campaign🧸. In this epic story, you and your friends will take control of the titular starship, including the large cast of playable characters onboard. Each s🍸ession, these characters will use their skills to explore one of many, many planets this game has to offer. They level up and gain skills over the course of the campaign, and it’s good that they do, because they’ll need all the help they can get to accomplish the tasks before them. Beware, characters can also accumulate injuries over the course of this game, and if they take enough, they will permanently die.

Playing this game is a massive undertaking, but if you have the right kind of friends and the time to spare, you can get as much out of this as you would out of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:any fantasy dungeon crawler or Tabletop RPG.

FAQ

What is the most popular sci-fi board game of all time?

The most popular board game of all time is monopoly, so the most popular sci-fi board game🍎 is likely to be one of the more sci-fi monopoly variants. Alternatively, many of the games on this list are among the most popular sci-fi games of all time. Cosmic Encounter and Dune are both decades-꧙old classics, and Twilight Imperium is regarded by many as one of the greatest games ever made.