When you are young with plenty of time and want to play some games with your friends that are way better then monopoly and cluedo, What do you do? Here are 4 options for your next game night that are sure to impress.

Dead Of Winter: A Crossroads Game (2014)

Dead Of Winter Designers: Jonathan Gilmour, Isaac Vega
Players: 2-5
Game Time: 60-120 min
Age: 13+
There are board games based on The Walking Dead, but none so effectively capture the paranoia-tinged struggle to prevail in a post-zombie-apocalyptic world as Dead Of Winter. On the surface, it’s a straightforward cooperative game, with players taking the roles of survivors who must coordinate their efforts to gather resources, survive and protect their colony during a bitter, zombie-infested winter. But everyone also has a secret agenda to fulfil — one of which may well involve quietly working against the others and bringing about game-losing disaster.

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Mysterium (2015)

Mysterium Designers: Oleksander Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko
Players: 2-7
Game Time: 60 mins
Age: 10+
Like Cluedo, Mysterium requires its players to solve a murder. Unlike Cluedo, one of the players is the murder victim, now a voiceless spirit, trying to silently point all the others (each playing a psychic) to all the right clues via surreal dream-visions. With these visions represented by lavishly illustrated art cards, it’s a deeply atmospheric and handsome affair, with an against-the-clock, sand-timer element that injects a bit of party-game fun.

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Five Tribes: The Djinns Of Naqala (2014)

Five Tribes Designer: Bruno Cathala
Players: 2-4
Game Time: 60 min
Age: 13+
Involving rich oases, powerful djinn, deadly assassins and scheming viziers, you’re very much on Arabian Nights territory with Five Tribes. But what really marks it out is its interesting ‘seeding’ mechanism, whereby you seize territory and activate special powers by choosing a randomly arranged group of colour-coded agents (assassins are red, builders are blue, etc.), and dropping them off one by one, oasis by oasis, with the aim of creating a single colour set at their final destination. Weirdly, it’s easier to learn than it is to explain.

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Century: Spice Road (2017)

Century Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi
Players: 2-5
Game Time: 30-45 min
Age: 8+
The theme of spice-based commerce in the 15th century plays out through a smoothly conceived card game, where each player gradually builds up a hand of spice-trading action cards and has to play them to earn point-scoring combos. The four kinds of spice are represented by wooden cubes, which come in neat plastic bowls, adding a valuable ‘component feel’ to an already engaging system. There’s already a sequel (Eastern Wonders) out, which involves tile-based spice-island hopping, and is just as deliciously satisfying.

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