My Top 5 Underrated Board Games

Welcome to this week’s gaming post! This week I’m discussing my favorite underrated gems and have ranked them below in terms of their ranking on BGG. So without further ado, let’s jump into the games!

Forbidden Desert is a cooperative game where each player takes on the role of an explorer searching an ancient desert city to recover a legendary flying machine. The goal is to find all of the parts of the machine, assemble the plane, and leave the desert before the team becomes trapped. While challenging, this is an excellent cooperative game that doesn’t seem to get nearly the same love and attention as Matt Leacock’s other extremely popular cooperative game, Pandemic.   

Lacrimosa is a gorgeous euro game loosely themed around the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There is an interesting hand building mechanism along with multi-use cards, which is always a highlight for me in games. Personally, this euro stands above a lot of other similar but bland games in the genre.

Sushi Go! is an excellent gateway game due to its introduction to the closed drafting mechanism while retaining a cute theme. The game is pocket sized, making it easy to travel with, and games take less than 20 minutes to complete. I’m surprised this game is so much farther down in the rankings compared to other gateway games like Azul and Cascadia.

Sleeping Gods is one of the most praised adventure, exploration games out there. Which is why I was surprised when I saw that the sequel, Distant Skies, is currently ranked over 1000 places lower on BGG. The only reason I can think of to explain this enormous gap is that not enough people have played Distant Skies yet, even though it was released back in 2023. However, I’m happy to report that for anyone who played and enjoyed the first game, Distant Skies is a worthy sequel and improves upon many of core mechanisms. If you want to read about my thoughts on my first play through, you can do so here.

It seems like there was a lot of hype when Evenfall first came out in 2023, but these days I rarely hear anyone talk about the game. Evenfall is an innovative card-driven, engine-building game that builds on some of the ideas from Elysium, another underrated game. The card system is really enjoyable as you have to decide how to best utilize the multi-use cards as well as timing when to transfer cards between your outer and inner player circles. The artwork in the game is also gorgeous, and for anyone who is a fan of the card-driven engine-builders, I definitely recommend giving this game a look.

Another beauty of a game, Tribes of the Wind, has fallen under the radar even though it received positive reviews when it came out in 2022. There’s an interesting element of player interaction where the backs of other players’ cards can have an effect on the strength of the card you play. The game is also relatively quick and fits nicely into that mid to light complexity range. Another card-driven game with an innovative twist on the genre, Tribes of the Wind deserves more love.

With that, I’ll wrap up my top 5 underrated games! Which games do you consider underrated or hidden gems? I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the games I’ve mentioned. Happy gaming!

If you liked this post and want to be notified when new content is released, then follow me on Instagram @themeepledigest.