It can be hard letting go of our favourite shows and movies after the series finale or when the lights go up. The good news is, you can relive the magic with board and card games based on those same movies and TV shows!
With these games, you can be the characters you love and take control of the story as you put away your screens and reconnect with friends.
Board games have come a long way in recent years as they compete for your attention alongside multiple streaming services and PC and console gaming for your entertainment hours. The result is more engaging board and card games that are based on already beloved stories and characters that aren’t just for kids anymore.
At an online board game store with the right selection, you can find board and card games featuring movie, TV and video game titles that span mainstream to the most obscure titles to satisfy the nerdiest of super nerds. Below are just a few of the hottest new releases based on some of the more popular movie and television titles.
Marvel Dice Throne
It’s time to settle those arguments over which character would win in a fight between Marvel superheroes once and for all – or at least one game at a time. Choose between Loki, Scarlett Witch, Thor and Spiderman in a Marvel iteration of the wildly popular Dice Throne series of games and battle to take your opponents’ thrones.
Each hero has a fully illustrated character board, custom dice & token, basic abilities and superpowers you unlock by accumulating combat points and exchanging them for action cards. Playtime is around 30 minutes, which allows up to four players at a time to engage in one-on-one duels, team battles or winner-stays-on tournaments.
Clue: Friends & Clue: The Office
A classic board game meets a classic 90s sitcom in the Friends’ version of Clue. Get together with your friends and recreate the lost “The One with All the Secrets” episode. Two to six players can choose to be their favourite Friend and solve the mystery of which crew member is hiding a personal revelation, what it is, and the famous Friends’ landmark it will be revealed in. Just make sure everyone is clear when you’re “on a break” from gameplay.
While not new, there’s also The Office version where someone finally muckducks – er – murders Toby, and it wasn’t Michael Scott or the Scranton Strangler (ain’t Prison Mike neither.) Solve Michael’s “teambuilding” exercise of whodunit, where in the office (or maybe it was in the warehouse) it was done and which Dunder-Mifflin-specific weapon was used for an extra weeks’ vacation. Finger Lakes, here we come!
Stranger Things: Attack of the Mind Flayer
Considering the Duffy brothers et al. just started writing the fifth and final season of the wildly popular Netflix series, it can be 2024 before we get to witness the final battle for Hawkins and, ultimately, the world.
To help tide you over in the meantime is the Stranger Things: Attack of the Mind Flayer card game. Four to ten of your friends compete as characters from the show who are either “Sane” or “Possessed” by the Mind Flayer (decided at the beginning of the game by randomly drawn cards.) Players on the Possessed team try to convert Sane players or eliminate them from the game, but if a single one remains at the end of the game, the Sane team wins.
Squid Game
Speaking of games based on wildly popular Netflix series, one of the latest to drop (currently on preorder) is the Squid Game card game.
You and up to five of your friends arrange yourselves in teams to try and survive the six rounds of card games based on the deadly Squid Game challenges using deceit and luck to come out on top.
ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo
Based on the original 1979 Ridley Scott-directed classic, the Alien: Fate of the Nostromo board game features you and your friends as five crew members of the ill-fated spacecraft collecting scrap, crafting items and completing objectives before one final mission.
During the game, players draw encounter cards that can cause them to gain or lose morale. If team morale reaches zero, the crew succumbs, and the game is over. But if you complete your objectives and simultaneously complete the final mission as a team, you win!
