The most anticipated new board games of 2025

The board game industry is facing a tough challenge. The 2024 release slate was incredibly strong, and it’s hard to imagine this year’s upcoming games being able to meet that established bar. There’s always hope, and every year I’m continually amazed by at least a few high-concept games that deliver a unique and visceral encounter.

It’s impossible to predict what the year will look like before it’s even started, but that won’t stop me from presenting some highly anticipated titles. These nine games caught my attention and promised a variety of immersive experiences. With any luck, some of my expectations will be fulfilled and we will talk about these titles again at the end of the year.

Here are the most important board games to keep an eye on heading into 2025.

Cyberpunk 2077: the board game

Designer: Łukasz Woźniak

Take on the role of an Edgerunner and fight your way through Night City by rolling dice and performing actions in real time. That’s a hard sell, and it sounds great. This narrative adventure game is app-driven, where your phone or tablet handles enemy actions as well as unexpected events and twists. You have to act quickly, roll dice on your turn and then spend those dice to move around the board and hurt your enemies.

The real-time format has been successful before and could be a perfect fit for the frenetic action of the video game. Cyberpunk 2077: the board game hopes to capture this spirit and offer a unique tabletop design that offers drama and cinematics. There’s enough going on here that I’m worried it could all fall apart, but that’s part of the joy of finding out.

Don’t Starve: The Board Game

Designer: Rafał Pieczyński

Video game adaptations have been very successful in the board game hobby lately. Not until 2024, Kill the Spire: The Board Game And Dead cells: the board game proven convincing translations from digital to tabletop. Don’t Starve: The Board Game now gets its chance, coming from the board game publisher that brought the fantastic adaptation to life Frostpunk: the board game.

Don’t starve features up to four players exploring and surviving a nightmarish, procedurally generated world. You can experiment with both magic and science, intertwining the two as you attempt to survive against both the elements and the terrifying creatures that populate the realm. Part horror and part survival game, this should be a gripping experience on the tabletop.

Prolific designer Reiner Knizia has designed hundreds of games over the past five decades. Publisher Bitewing Games has published a number of its recent releases and has just announced that it will publish three more in 2025. The most alluring of the trio is Iliada 30-minute tile-laying game for two players set against the epic backdrop of Homer’s poem about the Trojan War.

This has the look shared by Knizia’s classic work, with a minimalist ruleset with strong emerging nuances. The goal is to place your soldier tiles in specific rows or columns so that you have the most power and can earn tokens that represent the favor of the gods. It promises a tense affair with painful trade-offs and hand management. How deep the decision-making goes remains to be seen, but I’d like to experience the battle firsthand.

Designers: Leo Cunha, Nicole Lobo and Daniel Pettersen de Lucena

Curse asks the question: What if the beings you summoned into Magic: the meeting actually appeared on a battlefield and could be manipulated? This upcoming card game combines elements of miniature skirmish play with two-player card battlers. Both genres are intertwined in a sultry and evocative setting full of details.

The concept is ambitious. Each asymmetrical faction is individually packaged and includes everything you need to play, including a full set of character stands for all your monsters and warriors. However, those with the necessary hardware and initiative can 3D print detailed miniatures for their warband, as each box set includes access to official STL files for the faction. Malediciton will debut on Gamefound soon with a relatively quick turnaround as the game is expected to be fully available in the second half of 2025.

Designers: Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle

Molly House is an unusual game that touches a unique part of history. Players take on the role of gender-defying mollies in 18th-century England, attending social events while avoiding moralistic cops. These activities are represented by a hand of vice cards representing encounters and desires frowned upon by the Society for the Reformation of Morals. Players work together to organize parties, but they must be careful. An informant could have infiltrated the group and threatened the entire community.

Part of the appeal of this game from first-time designer Jo Kelly is that it was a finalist for the 2021 Zenobia Award. Another feather in the cap is that it’s produced by Drew and Cole Wehrle. Cole has obviously engineered hits such as Root: a game of might and law in the forest And Arcs: Conflict and collapse within reachbut the Wehrle brothers jointly produced second editions of Pax Pamir And Johannes Companytwo modern classics that are some of the best historical board gaming has to offer. Molly House seems to be this publisher’s next big hit.

Designer: Bernard Grzybowski

This is one we won’t have to wait long for, like Purple haze is currently being fulfilled to crowdfunding supporters and will hit retail stores shortly after. On the surface, this is a squad-based war game in which players control a United States Marine unit that embarks on missions in the terrifying jungles of Vietnam. However, it has an eye that goes beyond irregular combat and attempts to support a rich emerging story with scripted story passages. There’s a spirit here that harkens back to the classic 1983 Avalon Hill title Ambush!where text paragraphs are referred to at important points in the mission. This flourish adds life to the environment and attempts to achieve something meaningful by stringing together a larger, coherent story.

This game seems experimental for the wargaming genre, but is actually indicative of current narrative gaming trends from the hobby as a whole. The potential is huge for a crossover hit, and fans of films like Platoon And Full metal jacket will find a tone and attitude that is very appealing.

Revenge leads with images and story. An ancient cosmic threat has awakened and players are tasked with carrying out humanity’s last hope. They must maintain and guide the Revenant, a revamped Imperial flagship that holds the secrets of their civilization. Loyalties can change at any time and what remains of society is vulnerable.

This is a direct sequel to Void trapan expansive 4X board game originally published in 2023. It continues the story from the previous release, allowing a group to re-enact the last days of an abandoned people.

Mechanically, this is an advanced game of competitive worker placement, using the various ships in the fleet to battle the void and gather resources. It seems like a fascinating and complex strategic matter, one that is certainly worth delving into.

Designer: Jarrod Carmichael

Shadow Moon Syndicates is a beautiful card game. Players take on the role of various crime bosses from the Criminal Syndicate, each vying for control of the Shadow Moon mining colony. Cards are used each round to influence regions of the colony, conduct high-stakes operations, and build teams of specialists. Managing your hand of cards is central to the game’s strategy.

With such a cool and stylized setting, this game looks vibrant and evocative on the tabletop. It has a gripping concept and pits players against each other as they carry out nefarious deeds and underhanded black-ops.

Shadow Moon Syndicates seems to exude cool, and it’s another game I’m eager to see how it lands.

Designer: Jamey Stegmaier

Advantage is the most mysterious entry on this list, as details are still scarce. What we do know is that the publisher of Wingspan is releasing an open-world cooperative adventure game in 2025, and it will likely be something entirely unique.

Up to six players are spread across the world and must explore their surroundings. There are nearly 800 interconnected locations on 400 maps, while over 900 other discoverable maps are waiting to be discovered. These numbers are staggering, but it’s hard to know what this actually looks like. Advantage is based on freedom, giving each player full authority to interact and explore their own location from a first-person perspective. The more information is discovered about this game, the more unusual it sounds. It will undoubtedly be one of the most talked about releases of 2025.