Movie board games can be pretty hit and miss. It’s fun to immerse yourself in a story you’ve seen on the big screen, or experience your favorite film in a brand new way, but you need to find the right game to really enjoy it. Fortunately, we’ve played dozens of film tie-in games to bring you this list of the best ones that are worth your time.
While some have come close, board games based on movies are generally too niche to gain podium places in our guides to the overall best board games, or the current top board games for couples – but don’t discount them as stale popcorn just yet.
Our choices below are pure, fine movie board games that lovingly recreate a film’s characters, setting, aesthetic or themes, using well chosen mechanics from popular strategy board games, the ever popular social deduction mechanic, and – of course – trivia quizzes. There’s something for every tabletop game-loving cinephile to enjoy.
The best movie board games:
- Planet of the Apes – best adventure
- The Thing: Infection at Outpost 13 – best social deduction
- Jaws – best monster
- Firefly: The Game – best sandbox
- Unmatched – best movie mashup
- Blockbuster – best movie trivia
- Alien: Fate of the Nostromo – best sci-fi horror
Planet of the Apes
The best adventure movie board game.
Whereas some movie board games feel like you’re playing around in a movie-themed sandbox, Planet of the Apes wants you to stick to the script. It’s split into scenes you tackle in order. That might limit replayability, but fortunately Planet of the Apes is surprisingly strategic for what looks like a light dice roller game.
The description promises “unbridled psychological horror” and that seems to hint at one of the Planet of the Apes board game’s strangest quirks. You each play a different part of Colonel George Taylor’s brain.
Planet of the Apes is a visually beautiful board game, made with obvious care for its source material. If you squint a little you can see this fun dice game is basically fancy Yahtzee in a gorilla costume. But it’s packed with tense, make-or-break rolls and important decision making.
The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31
The best tense social deduction game.
Based on John Carpenter’s 1982 horror masterpiece, The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 is a tense and simple social deduction game. You play the crew of an Antarctic research base, but some of you are infected imitations.
This makes for just as tense a board game as it does a movie. The human crew members need to work together to complete investigations, while the imitations hinder them and work to destroy the compound.
The climactic ending of the board game has players race for the chopper, at which point the Thing team has one last chance to win the game – using fast-talking persuasive powers. If just one infected player tricks their way onto the vehicle, the humans lose.
While there are no gory practical effects, The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 is a very stylishly presented game, from the bold red blood sample cards to the black and white portraits on the player boards.
If you’re a Thing fanatic, there are actually two board games worth having on your radar. Ares Games has made a more complex social deduction game also based on this movie, with more options for both good and evil players.
Jaws
The best monster movie board game.
Disney Villainous and Horrified creator Ravensburger has a knack for making tie-in or movie board games that don’t feel like cheap cash grabs, and Jaws is no exception. This game has lots of interesting mechanics. For starters, it’s another asymmetric game, where one player takes on the sharky mantle, and the others have to hunt the fish.
It’s also split into two acts. At first, it’s a hidden movement game. The shark snacks on swimmers (dunn-dun… dunn-dun) while the humans try to track it down. Then you flip the board over, and move to act two aboard the good ship Orca for some shark punching action. Playing the shark is great fun, and you even get a lovely miniature reminiscent of the movie poster.
Firefly: The Game
The best sandbox game.
Based on the Joss Whedon TV series Firefly and later movie Serenity, Firefly: The Game sees players making their living among the stars. It has a lot in common with the best pirate board games. You get a ship, hire a crew, and sail the cosmos, taking on missions, facing threats, upgrading your hunk of junk, and picking up cargo to make a buck.
Some of that cargo can be contraband, which can land you in hot water if you’re ever boarded by the Alliance. And there are worse things in space (cough, cough, Reavers) to worry about.
The big sticking point with this game? Only one player gets to fly the Serenity, so you’ll have to arm wrestle or something to decide who that is. The game’s creator Gale Force 9 is putting out a Collectors’ Edition in 2024, with all kinds of extra goodies likely to please diehard fans.
Unmatched
The best movie mashup game.
Not strictly speaking a movie board game – or at least not tied to one movie franchise, Unmatched is an interesting character battler that draws its roster from all sorts of sources, from history, to literature, and of course the silver screen.
Unmatched is the Smash Bros of board games, featuring highly varied asymmetric warriors, who each battle with their own versatile deck of cards. You can pit Bruce Lee against dinosaurs from Jurassic Park , Buffy the Vampire characters, Marvel superheroes, and The Invisible Man. It’s fast-paced and fun, and the card art is smashing.
Blockbuster
The best movie trivia board game.
A slightly different take on ‘movie board game’, Blockbuster is one of the best trivia board games around, and the perfect gift for a film buff. Offering lots of different rounds and challenges, Blockbuster and its sequel Blockbuster Returns make for great party board games, while the third game in the series is for two players.
Whichever edition you choose, Blockbuster is one of the best trivia board games we’ve seen in ages, packing in loads of movie-buff value into a tiny box, at a low price. And what a box it is: a perfect recreation of a classic 1990s VHS tape case – exactly the kind we millennials used to browse on shelves of Blockbuster stores, to see what movie to rent for the weekend.
If movie nostalgia is the number one theme you’re after for game night, we can’t think of a better game to recommend.
Alien: Fate of the Nostromo
The best sci-fi horror game.
Given the role that treachery plays in the scifi-horror classic Alien, you might be expecting another hidden role game, but Alien: Fate of the Nostromo is purely cooperative. The humans must band together to survive their close encounter, completing missions while trying to stay out of the alien’s way.
That’s not so easy though, when the sleek black beast can pop through an air duct and ambush you at any moment. At least, in this retelling, Ripley isn’t the only crewmember with a good head on her shoulders. This is a fairly simple co-op board game, but it does a great job of replicating the slow, creeping tension of the movie.
In the film, an encounter with the xenomorph basically means certain death, but it wouldn’t be much fun for someone to sit out the rest of the game, so instead you take morale damage – a design decision we’re grateful for!
Read our Alien: Fate of the Nostromo review.
Now you’ve read all about movie board games, why not shake things up with a list of board game movies? Alternatively, for a more X-rated experience (adult gamers only) we have a full guide listing the best sex board games to try with your partner.