Best Kickstarter Board Games of 2024 – Top 10 Review and Comparison

Without the constraints of the corporate world, some of the best Kickstarter board games are often passion projects that have innovative play styles and interesting themes that intrigue the masses.

This interest often translates to a massive amount of funding from backers. For instance, Exploding Kittens became the most funded Kickstarter board game in 2015 at $8,782,571 despite it being a very casual card game. Some heavier games like Massive Darkness, Gloomhaven, and Zombicide: Black Plague made upwards of $3,500,000 – not bad for tabletop games catered for real board gamers.

That being said, even the most successful Kickstarter board games can be hit or miss even if you get enough backers to help you achieve the project goal and bring the board game into the masses.

Bears vs. Babies – A Card Game project, delivered by the creators of the phenomenally successful Exploding Kittens, suffered a slew of bad reviews from multiple tabletop reviews sites despite getting $3,215,679 from crowdfunding.

In fact, the most funded Kickstarter board game to date, Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5, hasn’t even been released yet even though it had generated $12,393,193. No one knows if it will live up to the hype until it is actually released. It will also be the most expensive board game Kickstarter has ever seen. The project is loaded with challenges especially with board gamers’ expectations, component quality, and the overall thematic of the game. We hope that it does not happen, the project is a success and the expectations of the long wait are well worth it.

To help you make the wisest investment picking the top Kickstarter tabletop games, here is our top 10 list of Kickstarter projects that will live long and prosper on your gaming table.

Top 10 Kickstarter Board Games – Quick Comparison

1. Best Overall – Gloomhaven

If you are looking for a box you can barely carry and a tabletop game you can enjoy for months, this is as close as it gets.

In the game, players take on roles as one of the four heroes to complete quests on their adventure to explore the dark corners of the fantasy realms.

Gloomhaven is made with a lot of world-building in mind featuring exquisite details both in physical components and campaigns. With 95 scenarios to go through in the base game, Gloomhaven has epic stories upon stories to keep you occupied for a while.

Every character has a unique and compelling backstory and motivations. Even the miniatures designs fit into the beautifully complex world of Gloomhaven. Moreover, picking characters with complimenting skills brings the gameplay out to the whole new level. They support each other to create a balanced coop team and create a feeling of a joint dungeon crawler adventure.

Besides that, Gloomhaven also deviates from the manic dice-chucking combat system that is typical of dungeon crawlers. In Gloomhaven, players use cards to resolve battle encounters. Your adventure starts with a finite amount of cards determined by your character but you earn more as you progress throughout the campaigns, which makes it feel like character progress in a classic RPG tabletop game.

However, you win some, lose some. The cards you play might be discarded temporarily or removed from the game altogether. As a legacy board game, every change you make is permanent. We loved how this forces you to be tactical and strategic, as your future self might give you a side-eye if you make the wrong decisions now.

The tabletop game has also introduced an innovative concept of character exhaustion. As you level-up your characters throughout the campaigns, they become more experienced and skillful, yet there is a time when they get thematically old and you have to replace them with a different character starting its development from scratch.

Lastly, Gloomhaven is the most awarded tabletop game on our list. With dozens of international awards and nominations, extremely positive community reviews, and number one board game rating from BGG – this is a Kickstarter gem everyone should try.

2. Best Card Game for Small Party – Exploding Kittens

It is essentially a simple card game featuring a cat-themed Russian Roulette. With exploding kittens hidden in the deck, your job is to avoid them at all costs for as soon as possible.

The gameplay is simple: you play a card (or not) and draw a card. But as soon as a draw an exploding kitten, it’s game over for you unless you have a defuse card.

The defuse card is an absolute godsend. After you defuse an exploding kitten with the defuse card, you slot the kitten back into the deck and discard the defuse card permanently.

Power cards are also littered all over the drawing deck among other absurdly cute felines whose jobs are to look cute. These power cards give you powers to dodge the dreaded exploding kittens. You can look into the future, rearrange the top cards of the deck, or even force your opponents to draw cards.

With no limitations on your hand or the cards you can play, you can hoard power cards and defuse cards to guarantee your own safety, or sabotage your friends.

Our personal favorite is the ‘nope’ card, which is a huge game-changer. You can go in with a powerful hand of cards, only to be ‘noped’ out by other players. You can try to predict where the game goes. But with so many interesting cards, the only thing you can be sure of is that every round of Exploding Kittens can be a twist.

The exploding kittens always go back into the card deck unless they got someone in their Kamikaze suicide mission. This means that your chances of survival get slimmer when the deck does. You have to be quick on your feet, or risk dying a cat-astrophic death.

3. Best Sci-Fi – Nemesis

Two noises from the same spot mean your spaceship has been invaded by an alien.

Most of the aliens you encounter are tough to kill. You roll a die and hope your attack lands. Besides refusing to die, these aliens might infect you and clog your deck up with infection cards. If you are really sick, an alien might even burst out of your chest!

While you are getting to the escape pods, you might stumble across Exploration Tiles that cause special effects. We loved these special effects as they add so much tension to the already-tense atmosphere.

Speaking of the tense atmosphere, can’t your crew help you out? You won’t be completely alone since Nemesis is a semi-cooperative game. However, every character has to fulfill a secret objective to win. Let’s just say you should find the escape pod as soon as possible when you find your mechanic tinkering in the engine room.

At the same time, the survival adventure allows for backstabbing and bluff, so make sure you are fine with it and pick your company wisely. 

4. Best Kickstarter War Game – Rising Sun

You can move your army, recruit monsters, battle, or worship a Kami among some of the things you can do with your mandates. With 7 mandate spots on the board, some players can use two mandates in the season, which gives them a huge advantage.

The reason is that alliances are exceptionally important in the game since it can only be done at the beginning of the season. Having the advantage to use two mandates makes you a very favorable ally, so make that count for you! When you don’t get the mandate you want, you can also devise a mutually beneficial plan with your ally to progress.

Even though you can officially break an alliance with a “Betray” mandate, we all know real politics isn’t always played on the table. Throughout the game, you can get ahead by bluffing and making grand promises to other clans. Just make sure it doesn’t come back to bite you.

Rising Sun isn’t a typical war game that is based on ‘move your army on the map’ sort of mechanic. It is more about talking and utilizing all the components to become the most honorable clan in Japan, whatever it takes. You get to fine-tune your experience in becoming a skilled and successful negotiator, leader, and strategist.

5. Best Kickstarter Zombie Game – Zombicide: Invader

It takes on a tiny planet in the universe, where you have to fend off swarms of infected Xenos to escape death. You have to decide between slaughter and survival, often with minimal help from your teammates who have their own hidden agenda.

On your turn, you can move, attack, or search. Combat is dice-based, so be prepared for some randomness. You can’t defend against attacks though.

Searching is an interesting phase of the game since it nicely relates to the storyline. You have to look for resources like oxygen tanks to explore the map. You can also research weapons to make more powerful ones to win the war against the Xenos.

Seeing mold appear in this game gives you the same skip in your heartbeat as the terrifying battle piano tinkle in Breath of the Wild. Mold not only obstruct your vision, but it also spawns Invaders. We loved how it creates urgency and speeds up the mission. If you go too slow on the mold, you are going to get overwhelmed.

As you grow stronger, you also gain power-ups and abilities. But how will you deal with the Xenos, who are also growing in strength and numbers? The way the Xenos scale with you is pleasantly frustrating and proves that nothing is easy in this game.

Compared to previous games in the franchise, Zombicide: Invader has much more streamlined rules and AI spawning. These rules and mechanics balance the game. More importantly, they focus your attention on the story and playing the game instead of a tedious piece moving.

6. Best Card Game For Large Groups – Secret Hitler

Nobody but the fascists know who anyone is. Trust is expensive in this twisted game of political chaos and distrust where anybody could topple your party.

As a liberal, you have to pass 6 liberal policies to win. If you can work out who the Secret Hitler is, you can assassinate him and end his reign of terror. As a fascist, you have to pass 5 fascist laws. Alternatively, you can elect Hitler as the chancellor once you have established political power with 3 fascist policies.

The catch is that the chancellor must be approved by everyone after the president’s nomination. If everyone votes ‘Nein’, the president loses their presidential powers to the person on their left. As president, you discard a policy card from three random policies and hands the rest over to the chancellor. The chancellor then enacts a policy after discarding one.

The seeds of distrust are sown by the randomness of the policy card deck. Is the chancellor a part of the fascists, or is it just dumb, bad luck? This opens up a lot of room for bluffing (“They were all fascist cards!”) and manipulation.

As more fascist laws are adopted, the government gains abilities like peeking into other players’ cards or even ‘making them disappear’. The card game is constantly shifting depending on who sits on the most powerful seat, which makes it interesting to play, especially with a large party group.

7. Best Dungeon Crawler – Massive Darkness

In fact, if you have ever experienced playing Zombicide, then Massive Darkness has borrowed its original gameplay system and introduced the dungeon crawl adventure and role-playing elements to it.

Unlike most dungeon crawlers, where one of the players takes on the role of the overlord, Massive Darkness features a mechanic that does not require a game master to control the enemies.

You start with your favorite hero class, get loot and XP points from defeating monsters in the dungeon, and upgrade your skill tree. We loved that you don’t need a game master for Massive Darkness. Everyone can play!

Besides that, the monsters in the game feature a tailored design that works perfectly with the overall feel of the game.

First of all, we can’t get over how diverse they are. You will find every kind of minions like orcs, human agents, and cockatrices featuring exuberant attention to details and build quality.

Secondly, the Guardians, who are a special monster type spawned by any monsters on the field, elevates the feeling of the game. These guardians use equipment that could be difficult to counter, but once you get there, you will get a piece of valuable loot as a well-deserved reward.

Moreover, we also liked how random the mob spawning AI is. The monsters seem to be everywhere. Sometimes they jump out from a room you were exploring. Sometimes you run into them as they patrolled the corridors of the dungeons. These surprise attacks seal in the feeling that you are trespassing on their home turf, which makes it super exciting to play.

8. Best Kickstarter Theme – Scythe

You need to figure out what your opponents are doing and deliver fatal blows. Flailing around trying to get lucky is not going to cut it.

The aesthetics, component design, and build quality are sublime. Everything feels crafted, yet remains highly functional delivering the epic thematic and strategic feel not many other tabletop games could match.

If your regular gaming group is not into brain-burning puzzles, Scythe comes in a handy solo mode for you to explore at your leisure.

Overall, highly praised board gamers reviews, production quality, and how well the game manages to integrate the array of different mechanics with the theme make it one of the best Kickstarter board games of all time.

9. Best For 2 Players and Couples – Santorini

The idea is to build the tallest (level 3) house and win, right? Well, kind of.

The houses are built in three phases – the first, second, and the third floor. You can build any floor from any height. For example, you can build the third floor even if you are standing on the ground.

The catch is, you can’t jump to the third level from the ground floor. It is like taking the stairs. You have to work your way up to win.

But don’t worry if your opponent is getting close. You can also put the blue dome on the 3rd floor to effectively block your opponent from jumping onto it.

Besides that, you can also block your opponent from building anything to win.

So at first glance, it is a simple game that doesn’t require a lot of brainpower.

But when you delve deeper into it, you can sabotage your opponents to the brink of tears with the right play.

If you want to make it harder, you can also try the Advanced mode. This time, a Greek God bestows their powers upon you via powerful God cards, which makes it more interesting to play.

10. Best Complex Coop – Spirit Island

Spirit Island also scales quite nicely the longer you play the game. Over time, you can expand your presence on the island and get more potent powers. However, the invaders scale accordingly as well, making it harder to defeat them despite your improvements.

Even though the invaders’ movements are quite predictable, they are ruthless and merciless. In every turn, more of them will come. The longer you drag on the game, the more dangerous it gets.

It doesn’t help that there are so many ways to lose in Spirit Island. You lose when one of your fellow spirits are killed. You lose when your island is overrun by blight brought by invaders. You even lose when you run out of invaders!

The overwhelmingly unbalanced nature of the game puts you in a precarious position. But it all makes sense to the story, which makes it that much more satisfying.

Think about it. You have never had to use your powers to destroy as a spirit of an undisturbed island. So when you are faced with enemies, the only thing you can do is to grind, persevere, and fight back the hardest you could.

More than a themed strategy game, Spirit Island is a journey of endurance and personal growth. You would love it if you are a fan of underdog stories and strategy.

So Which Kickstarter Board Games Should You Buy?

Kickstarter board games are rising in popularity and now there is something for everyone starting with fun and quick card games and ending with complex strategy games projects. Every game we have reviewed here is great in its own way for its targeted audience. To summarize the above review, here is a quick recommendation on the top card games and the best board games Kickstarter has brought to life over the last couple of years:

Spirit Island and Gloomhaven are easily some of the best cooperative Kickstarter games ever released. There is really not much to nitpick – both games have beautiful themes and great game mechanics that work well for hardcore cooperative players. If you like campaigns and dungeon crawl, go with Gloomhaven for immersive narrative, otherwise Spirit Island.

Exploding Kittens is a great example of a card game everyone can play since it is so easy to learn. It also does exceptionally well in small parties up to five players, especially if you have fun-loving and easygoing guests.

Alternatively, if you are looking for a larger group of up to ten players, Secret Hitler is a card game of chaos, fun, and laughter. It can help you with exploring your scheming side on the tabletops.

If the blend of the legendary feudal Japan theme and an element of war and destruction raises your eyebrows, Rising Sun is one of the best Kickstarter games of strategy, politics, and warfare.

Lastly, if you are having a fun board game night with your partner, the latest version of Santorini is a great choice for quick and competitive fun. It is as simple or as complicated as you make it.

No matter what you are looking for, we hope amongst our list of the top Kickstarter board games, you found the one that ticks all the right boxes for you and you are ready to add it into your tabletop collection!

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