Game Guide
An editorial overview of every game in our library: a short summary of each, a side-by-side comparison table, and recommendations for where to start.
Where to Start
New to games entirely
Simple rules you can learn in a couple of minutes, with enough depth to stay interesting.
Hosting a group tonight
Games built for more than two players, with room for everyone to jump in.
Want a deep two-player challenge
Games with real, lifelong strategic depth for a serious one-on-one match.
Just a few quiet minutes
Short, low-equipment games perfect for a short break.
Compare Every Game
| Game | Category | Players | Play time | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chess | Classic Board Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 30 to 90+ minutes | Advanced |
| Checkers | Classic Board Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 20 to 40 minutes | Beginner friendly |
| Backgammon | Classic Board Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 30 to 60 minutes | Intermediate |
| Nine Men's Morris | Classic Board Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 15 to 30 minutes | Beginner friendly |
| Hearts | Card Games, Party & Group Games | 3 to 4 players (4 is standard) | 30 to 45 minutes | Intermediate |
| Gin Rummy | Card Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 20 to 30 minutes | Intermediate |
| Cribbage | Card Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players (variants for 3 to 4) | 20 to 30 minutes | Intermediate |
| Solitaire (Klondike) | Card Games | 1 player | 10 to 20 minutes | Beginner friendly |
| Charades | Party & Group Games | 4 or more players, in teams | 20 to 40 minutes | Beginner friendly |
| Dots and Boxes | Logic Puzzles, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 10 to 20 minutes | Beginner friendly |
| Dominoes | Classic Board Games | 2 to 4 players (4 is common) | 20 to 30 minutes | Beginner friendly |
| Go | Classic Board Games, Two-Player Games | 2 players | 30 to 90+ minutes | Advanced |
Every Game, Briefly
Chess Full guide
Chess is a two-player strategy game played on an 8-by-8 grid of squares, with each player commanding an army of sixteen pieces. Unlike games of chance, chess has no dice, no hidden information, and no shuffled deck — both players see the entire board at all times, and the outcome depends entirely on the decisions each side makes. That transparency is part of what has made chess endure for well over a thousand years: every game is a puzzle both players are solving in real time, move by move.
Checkers Full guide
Checkers, known as draughts outside North America, is a two-player board game of diagonal movement and capture played on the dark squares of a standard 64-square board. It is far simpler to learn than chess, since every piece moves the same way, yet the game still contains enough depth that it has been studied seriously by mathematicians and computer scientists — a fully solved version of the standard game, confirmed through years of computer analysis, ends in a draw with perfect play from both sides.
Backgammon Full guide
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games still played in its recognizable form, combining a race to move all your checkers around the board with genuine strategic decisions about which risks to take. Two dice govern how far you can move each turn, but the way you use those numbers — which checkers to advance, when to leave a piece exposed, when to play safe — separates strong players from weak ones far more than luck alone would suggest.
Nine Men's Morris Full guide
Nine men's morris is a two-player strategy game played on a board of three concentric squares connected by lines at their midpoints, creating 24 points where pieces can sit. Each player has nine pieces, and the entire game revolves around forming a straight row of three pieces along any of the board's lines — a formation called a "mill" — which allows you to remove one of your opponent's pieces from play.
Hearts Full guide
Hearts flips the usual goal of a trick-taking card game on its head: instead of trying to win tricks, players are actively trying to avoid certain cards that carry penalty points. Every heart card is worth a point, and the queen of spades is worth thirteen points on her own, so a large part of the game is steering dangerous cards away from your own hand and, when you can't avoid them, timing when you play them to do the least damage.
Gin Rummy Full guide
Gin rummy is a two-player card game built around drawing and discarding cards to assemble your hand into sets and runs while leaving as few unmatched cards as possible. It plays faster than most other rummy-family games, since a player can end a hand as soon as their unmatched cards total a low enough value, rather than needing every card perfectly matched.
Cribbage Full guide
Cribbage is a card game built around a distinctive scoring system: players earn points not just for winning hands outright, but for specific combinations of cards — pairs, runs, and combinations that add up to 15 — tallied both during play and when hands are counted afterward. Scores are traditionally tracked by moving pegs along a dedicated cribbage board rather than writing numbers down, giving the game its recognizable physical centerpiece.
Solitaire (Klondike) Full guide
Klondike is the single-player card game most people simply call "solitaire," and it remains one of the most widely played card games in the world, largely because it needs only one player, one deck, and a flat surface. The challenge is to unravel a shuffled deck by moving cards according to strict rules, gradually sorting all 52 cards into four ordered piles by suit.
Charades Full guide
Charades is a team party game in which one player silently acts out a word or phrase using only gestures, while their teammates race the clock to guess it correctly. With no speaking, writing, or pointing at objects in the room allowed, the game turns communication into a physical puzzle, and it reliably produces some of the more memorable, laughter-filled moments at a family gathering or party.
Dots and Boxes Full guide
Dots and boxes is a simple pen-and-paper game built on a grid of dots, where two players take turns drawing single lines between neighboring dots, trying to be the one who completes the fourth side of a small square. Despite needing nothing more than paper and a pencil, the game hides real strategic depth in its endgame, where an experienced player can force long chains of boxes to fall to them in a row.
Dominoes Full guide
Dominoes is a tile-based game played with small rectangular pieces, each marked with two halves showing a number of dots (called "pips") from blank up to six on a standard set. Players take turns matching the open ends of a growing line of tiles, and the simple act of matching numbers hides real decisions about which tiles to hold back and which to release.
Go Full guide
Go is a two-player strategy game in which players alternate placing stones on the intersections of a grid, aiming to surround more territory than their opponent by the time the board fills in. Its rules are famously simple to state, yet the sheer number of possible positions on a full-sized board makes go one of the most computationally complex games ever studied, and it remained a serious benchmark for artificial intelligence research long after computers had surpassed top human players at chess.