Writing this blog on a Monday morning, I know how hard it can be to motivate yourself to go to work. Another week of tedious emails, Teams meetings and phone calls can prove a very dreary thought, especially when all we really want to be doing is playing our newest board game.
So why not bring the board games to your work?
Showing your colleagues an excellent board game can be great for team building and breaking the sometimes monotony of working life, something to enjoy with people during your lunch break in the office kitchen, or perhaps with a little board game group once 5pm finally hits.
These 5 games are all quick to setup, teach and play, as we all know time is of the essence at work! But most importantly, they are fantastic board games that will have you and your colleagues actually enjoying your working week!
1. Flip 7
Flip 7 labels itself as the ‘The Greatest Card Game of Al Time’, and whilst this might seem like an overly confident boast, it’s a difficult statement to argue!
Only released last year in 2024, Flip 7 has quickly become a staple card game of any board game loving household.
Its premise really couldn’t be simpler. You have a deck of cards with a variety of numbers. There are Twelve 12s, Eleven 11s, Ten 10s and so on, along with a handful of power cards. Your aim is to, as stated, flip 7 cards, without ever flipping a duplicate card. If you flip the same value twice, you’re out of that round.
At any time before you flip, you can bow out of the round, and score the value of the cards in front of you. So if you have a 12, an 11 and a 10, and are worried that you have the common value cards, you can cash out and score 34 points. If you ever do the magical play of banking 7 different valued numbered cards, you bag yourself a bonus 15 points, which can make a huge difference in winning and losing. The first player to 200 points, wins!
It works so brilliantly as a workplace game, whether you take it into the office over lunch or at the pub after a stressful day at work. The push your luck element means every round feels important and exciting. It can be over in 30 minutes, so you still have time to gossip about your colleagues or moan about an annoying customer before, during or after the game.
I still think 6 Nimmt or No Thanks could battle Flip 7 to the crown of ‘The Greatest Card Game of All Time’, but in the two months I have owned it, it’s become a staple in my office as well as at home. Those I have shown it to have gone and bought it for their families and friends, and I do think in ten years Flip 7 could be as common in a household as a Cluedo or Monopoly.
2. Sounds Fishy
When thinking of great games to bring to work, your first thought might immediately be a party game. What I have found over time though is actually a lot of the time, its so dependant on the personalities around the table, that party games can prove divisive.
Games like Cards Against Humanity, Poetry for Neanderthals or Monikers might seem like sure bets, but if you’re dealing with people with a different sense of humour to others, it can make usually fun experiences quite awkward.
Sounds Fishy though has always been a crowd pleaser. (Despite the fact you should never bring in fish for lunch at work!).
In this bluffing game you compete against your colleagues to come up with some believable, but crucially incorrect answers. One player reads a suitably strange question, and around the table all the other players get a fish. If you get a true blue kipper, you have to give the correct answer to that question. (Everyone knows the answer except the player asking the question). Everyone else will get a red herring, and have to come up with their own plausible enough sounding answer.
The player asking the question then goes around the table hearing people’s answers, trying to weed out all the red herrings and get the correct answer.
And this is where proper hilarity can commence! You have 15 seconds to come up with your answer, and the thought processes that somehow are deeply embedded into people’s minds you won’t believe! Its fantastic watching your usually mild mannered manager quickly trying to bundle their way to an answer half believable, only to blurt out something so ridiculous that’s its too much even for Sounds Fishy!
Even if you get the true blue kipper, you have to play a mind game with the other player. How do I make it sound like the answer I am giving, I have come up with on the fly in 15 seconds. Its silly fun for a quick little board game at work, a nice ice breaker with some potentially new team members, and importantly not as potentially socially awkward or controversial as other party games. Sounds Fishy is perfect for your next work board game session.
3. Skull
We’ve talked about great games you can bring round to the coffee table in your work kitchen over lunch time, but how about one which you can bring to the pub 5 o’clock on a Friday to celebrate another working week being over with your workmates?
The quintessential bluffing game, in Skull you have four disks, three of which have flowers on them, one has the namesake skull. Each player chooses one of their disks to play face down, and the starting player can either choose to put another one down, or make a bid. If you bid, you need to decide how many flowers you can flip over without flipping a single skull. If your bet is correct, you earn a point, and its only two points to win. But if you flip over a dreaded skull, you lose one of your discs.
In this simple premise hides an incredible back and forth game that gets everyone around the table hooked immediately. It feeds on the adrenaline rush that people can get from gambling, as when you pull off a huge number bid without pulling a skull you feel incredible, similar to how you feel in Flip 7 when you get that magic number!
Its literally designed to be played in a pub, as its based on an old bar game with the discs replacing the pub coasters that would have been used, and with beautiful artwork on the box and discs it just has this lovely, almost nostalgic feeling playing it.
I brought this to a gaming work session with about about ten people, and even those who had to sit out a game were engaged with the action round the table. With a few alcoholic beverages, some bar snacks, and a group of people celebrating not having to take another phone call for two days, Skull is a perfect, post 5pm game.
4. Fun Facts
Icebreakers used to be something I dreaded more than anything when I started a new job. I found them awkward, tedious, and often felt forced.
If I ever had to put a group of people through that painful experience, I would ensure I would make it a lot more fun with the help of the brilliance of board games, and one game that would be perfect for this is Fun Facts.
Fun Facts isn’t a competitive game or one with a variety of mechanics, its as perfect for old friends as it would be for people getting to know each other in a working environment.
The group is asked a question, such as ‘How Long Should a Film Be’. Each person has their own coloured arrow, in which they right their answer in secret. You then go around the table putting your arrows face down in the order YOU THINK your answer would go.
So if you think the perfect film is two hours, you might put yours somewhere in the middle. But differing opinions and ideas soon come to the forefront in Fun Facts. While Gary from Marketing was confident his idea that four hour long epics are the best film length so he put his highest, Angela and Tim from HR all thought much shorter films were superior. And can’t work out what you would think!
It’s a game of simply getting to know people’s ideas and debating the rights and wrongs of inconsequential but incredibly important things. You score points as a team the more arrows you get in the correct position, but honestly you could play this game without any form of scoring and it would still be a riot.
Whether you’re getting to know someone new or understanding your old colleagues even more than you already did, Fun Facts is a fun, simple little party game that you could play at a team meeting or after work, and you would still get great value out of its fantastic premise.
5. Avalon
So you’ve had a few board game nights at work now, and you have introduced many of your colleagues to the wonderfully silly world of board games. You’ve shown them party games and bluffing, simple mechanics to get them understanding what board gaming can bring.
Now, its time to introduce them to something a bit more meaty. A perfect combination of party and bluffing game, with some extra dose of backstabbing, lying. Its time to bring Avalon.
This entry could be any social deduction game, like Secret Hitler or One Night Ultimate Werewolf, but for me the best of the bunch is easily Avalon.
Set in the world of King Arthur, you and up to 10 people each get a role. The majority of you will be good, Arthurs allies going on quests to spread good throughout the land. However, some of
you will be minions of Mordred, an evil force looking to overcome good and ensure darkness prevails.
If you’ve seen Traitors, you get the idea. Just add some Excalibur and Lancelot in there.
Social deduction games are probably my favourite genre of board games for the sheer fun they bring, always getting people around the table engaged in the game and talking. Avalon does this better than any other.
No one feels like a spare part, with everyone affecting the outcome of the game. You have characters like Merlin for the good team who knows who evil is, but can’t make it obvious, as if the evil assassin deducts who Merlin is, they kill him and evil win. Everyone has the opportunity to take part in discussions, and while these can get heated, it always lead to end game discussions of how well the evil team lied, or what tells they gave away to the good team in order to be deduced.
It works from 5-10 people, and with the big box edition I own, you can add as many new roles as you want if people want the game to be a bit more complicated but that more interesting after a few plays of the game.
Its not always easy to get a big group of people together for board gaming, so getting your colleagues in on the game is the perfect excuse for a bit of social deduction. And if they’re already fans of The Traitors, trust me it’s an easy sell.
If you can get a group of your workmates together, order some pizza and organise your office, play a game of Avalon. It can get tense, it can get heated, and it might prove a little more complicated compared to other games on this list, but it provides a level of fun and excitement unmatched by other board games, perfect to bring you and colleagues together for an amazing time, outside of the usual doldrums of office life.
Paul Websell is a freelance contributor for Zatu who spends his time either playing board and video games or talking about them. While he’s not on social media, you can view his other blogs right here on Zatu!
