Board Game Collection at Swarthmore: Games by Type

Classic Games: These games have been around for a while and may be the inspiration behind some more modern board games.

Light Strategy Games: These games have strategy to how they're played, but they are relatively quick to learn and relaxed to play

Strategy Games: The strategy in these games goes a little deeper than the instructions. New players may struggle playing against more experienced players, and it might take a game or two to figure out techniques.

Cooperative Games: While these games could be in any of the other categories, the fact that they are cooperative is a key feature to their gameplay.

For this guide, we have ranked the difficulty of games by placing them into 4 categories:

Straightforward, A Bit Complicated, Moderately Complicated, and Complicated.

These rankings describe the rules and systems of the game, and how easy it is to learn and understand them.

When playing a game for the first time, we suggest assuming some extra room in your play time to learn and get used to playing the games. We suggest:

10 extra minutes for Straightforward games

15 extra minutes for A Bit Complicated games

25 extra minutes for Moderately Complicated games

40 extra minutes for Complicated games