Abstract games

There’s no theme (or it is 99% irrelevant)

Quoridor

The abstract strategy game Quoridor is surprisingly deep for its simple rules. The object of the game is to advance your pawn to the opposite edge of the board. On your turn you may either move your pawn or place a wall. You may hinder your opponent with wall placement, but not completely block them […]

Qawale

Simple yet tactical, Qawale will rock your idea of strategy games. Lay stones on the path and try to line up four stones in your color. Qawale is inspired by the tradition of stacking stones along trails and paths in nature. As you drop these stones along your path, this incredible game will transport you […]

Quixo

Quixo bears a superficial resemblance to Tic-Tac-Toe – with one player being crosses and the other circles, and with both trying to create a line of their symbol – but that’s where the resemblance ends. The pieces in the game are cubes that have a circle on one side, a cross on another, and blank […]

Quarto Deluxe

Quarto has a 4×4 board and 16 pieces. Each piece has four dichotomous attributes — color, height, shape, and consistency — so each piece is either black or white, tall or short, square or round, and hollow or solid. The object is to place the fourth piece in a row in which all four pieces […]

GIPF

GIPF is a strategic game for two players based on a classic concept: In turns, players introduce one piece into play until achieving four-in a-row. Players then remove their row and capture any of their opponent’s pieces which extend that row. This principle of capturing pieces creates completely changed situations on the board. The purpose […]

Bandu

Players take turns choosing blocks and giving them to each other to place on their structure. A player may pay a certain number of ‘beans’ to refuse a block and it gets passed to the next player. When a player’s structure falls, they are out of the game. Last player standing wins. Description of Bandu […]

Blokus Trigon

Blokus Trigon is an abstract strategy game from the makers of Blokus. The board pieces have changed from square to triangular. Game play is similar to Blokus, as players try to get rid of all their pieces. There is a solitaire version where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a […]

SHŌBU

SHOBU is a beautifully crafted abstract strategy game for 2 players. The game features 4 square wood boards (2 of each color) and 16 natural river stones for each player, in two colors, with a rope dividing the play area in half. Your turn is in two parts. First, a player may move one of […]

Hive

Hive is a strategic game for two players that is not restricted by a board and can be played anywhere on any flat surface. Hive is made up of twenty two pieces, eleven black and eleven white, resembling a variety of creatures each with a unique way of moving. With no setting up to do, […]

Onitama

Onitama is a two-player, perfect information abstract game with a random starting set-up. On a 5×5 board, both players start with five pawns on their side, with the main pawn in the middle. Each player has two open cards that each display a possible move for any of her pieces. There is a fifth card […]

War Chest

War Chest is an all-new bag-building war game! At the start of the game, raise your banner call (drafting) several various units into your army, which you then use to capture key points on the board. To succeed in War Chest, you must successfully manage not only your armies on the battlefield, but those that […]

Nova Luna

The new moon is a symbol for a new beginning, the perfect time to start something new and to plan your future — and that is what Nova Luna (lat. for new moon) is all about. In each round of this abstract tile-laying game, you have to plan your future anew, developing a new strategy […]

Santorini

Santorini is a re-imagining of the purely abstract 2004 edition. Santorini is an accessible strategy game, simple enough for an elementary school classroom while aiming to provide gameplay depth and content for hardcore gamers to explore. Santorini features variable player powers layered over an otherwise abstract game, with 40 thematic god and hero powers that […]

Hanabi

Hanabi—named for the Japanese word for “fireworks”—is a cooperative game in which players try to create the perfect fireworks show by placing the cards on the table in the right order. (In Japanese, hanabi is written as èŠ±ç«; these are the ideograms flower and fire, respectively.) The card deck consists of five different colors of […]

The Duke

Levy. Maneuver. Conquer. The Duke is a dynamic, tile-based strategy game with an old-world, feudal theme, high-quality wooden playing pieces, and an innovative game mechanism in its double-sided tiles. Each side represents a different posture – often considered to be defensive or offensive – and demonstrates exactly what the piece can do within the turn. […]

Axio

In Axio, players take turns adding tiles to a shared playing area. Each time you play a tile — with tiles bearing one or two colored symbols — you score points for symbols of the same type that are in rows extending from the recently-placed tile. Tiles can be placed on other tiles in some […]

boop the Halls!

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players. The Mensa award winning, Game of the Year, boop, is back with a new Holiday edition and has really leveled up game play (literally!!). The hoomans are hanging ornaments on the highest boughs of the tree, but those clever cats are leaping up and […]

boop.

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players. Every time you place a kitten on the bed, it goes “boop”. Which is to say that it pushes every other kitten on the board one space away. Line up three kittens in a row to graduate them into cats… and then, get three […]

BOOoop.

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging & SPOOPY abstract strategy game for two players. Every time you place a kitten on the bed, it goes “boop.” Which is to say that it pushes every other kitten next to it one space away. Line up 3 kittens in a row to graduate them into cats… and then, […]