4 Fundamental Types of Board Games Everyone Should Know About

Shawn Davison
3 min readApr 23, 2018

The board game industry continues to grow each year. The creativity and choices of games are blossoming but there are some basic game types that are really getting a hold on the market.

Thankfully, you are lucky enough to live in an era where there is no dearth of choices. But before you make a pick, you need to learn about different types in detail. Below you will find a list of popular types of board games to have a better insight and make a good choice for your tastes.

Roll and Move Games

Almost everyone is familiar with these types of games. Basically, it involves rolling dice, spinning a wheel or drawing cards. It is done in order to determine the number of spaces one needs to move in a primarily linear direction. Whatever the game is, the ‘roll’ plays a large role in deciding whether you win or lose.

The best examples for this type of games include “Classic” Board Games, such as Clue, Monopoly, Candyland, and The Game of Life. Being fallen out of favor, these are often connected largely with the luck of the player as compared to role of strategy.

Worker Placement Games

When it comes to a bit slower and more strategic games, this is the right genre. Here among so many spaces you need to get to yours before someone else does. For instance, in Agricola, the players take turns placing their family members on action spaces. It is an attempt to grow more food, acquire more resources, and raise more animals than your competitors. This means you need to get to the prime real estate results to choke your competition off. Worker placement games call for strategic blocking which can get quite competitive and heated.

Cooperative Games

While those worker placement games is all about the cutthroat dynamics, in cooperative board games, it is all about teamwork. Simply, everyone works together as a team, and collectively they either win or lose. Early examples of cooperative games include Arkham Horror and Lord of the Rings. Later it was Pandemic which sky-rocketed this tabletop category into the mainstream.

As far as Pandemic is concerned, here players work together to save the world from a series of deadly diseases. In the game, each character has a unique role and skill set. These characters take every ounce of coordination to avoid an extinction-level-event to save the human population from destruction.

Secret Identity Games

Deception is the name of the game when it comes to this category. There has been a giant surge in Secret Identity Games such as Coup and One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Secret Hitler, etc. which are becoming immensely popular. Being aided by technology, these involve memorization of rules and scripts.

So, which one is your favorite type? Which games do you prefer playing? Leave your answers in comment section below!

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Shawn Davison

Shawn Davison is co-owner of Level One Game Shop . Level One is a small game store devoted to board, tabletop, and card games located in Kansas City.