3) Star Realms

Build your space empire, unite the alien races, and assimilate their technology with your own to increase your intergalactic renown in this tiny deckbuilding game.

In Star Realms 2-4 players  will slowly build upon their meager fleet of Star Vipers and Scouts into an empire by purchasing new space vessels from the many factions in the Star Realms universe.

Each faction will have a speciality mechanic for you to specialise in or maybe diversify and synergise different factions. Regardless of how you build your fleet, the goal is always the same, reduce your enemies health to 0 before they can reduce yours.

To protect against yourself, build large space bases to act as a blockade and eat any damage your opponent throws at you on their turns.

On your turns, switch it around and go on the offensive by strategically chaining you action cards.

This is done by playing cards with a secondary ability that is activated by playing another card of a specific faction. So race to build your armada, your defenses, your economy and your realm. 

Check out Star Realms Here 

4) Hive Pocket

A pocket sized version of the wonderful abstract game “Hive”, the pocket edition provides players with a smaller bag, a smaller price tag and 2 free expansions.

What’s not to love?! Hive itself is a wonderful two player, abstract game where players will control two competing Hives. The aim of the game is to encircle the opponent’s Queen Bee in pieces.

To do so, players must move their many different insects around the table. In Hive, there is no board, the pieces players move and use, act as the structure of their hives and must move around already placed pieces.

This is an incredibly interesting concept as the landscape of the game will constantly change as players try to entrap their opponent’s queen and protect their own. Hive utilises many different insects for players to use and so, different insects will move around completely differently to other pieces.

For example, the beetle is able to climb on top of other pieces to completely immobilize them and grasshoppers can jump over sections of the hive.

There are many more insects to play and master in this head-to-head fight for survival.

Check out Hive Pocket Here  

5) Spot It

We could not talk about pocket games without talking abou SPOT IT, the family game for 2-8 players.

If you haven’t heard of Spot It before it is an incredibly easy, fun, and versatile game with many different ways to play.

The core basis of this card game is each card depicts a wild array of individual pictures, almost always any 2 cards will share a specific image on them, and most ways to play will revolve around “spotting” the matching images.

As there are many different game modes to play, it would be incredibly difficult to fit them all in this small blog but a common and (in my opinion) the most fun way to play is the following: deal 10 cards to all players, who will hold them in a stack with the images face up.

Play one card from the remaining cards in the centre. Players must now look to see if the card on top of their stack has any matching images with the centre card, if so, they play their card in the centre.

If not, the players will cycle their top card to the bottom on their stack and continue. The first player to empty their stack wins the game.

This game mode is fast paced with players shouting the names of the matching images in a chaotic mess of excitement and laughter, perfect for any family.

Check out Spot It Here

6) One Night Ultimate Werewolf

A game of both figurative and literal witch hunting where players will band together to find the figurative and literal wolf hiding amongst them.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf (ONUW)  is a dastardly game of villainy and deceit as players will try to all convince each other they are on the same team, each with their own secret motive and equally questionable credibility.

To play, players will all be dealt a secret role, which will provide them their ability, their team, and thus their motive.

The Villager team seeks to find the Werewolves and the werewolves seek to remain hidden, usually this will end with the villagers accusing one of their own by mistake.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf plays in a single round, making it one of the quickest games to play, but don't worry  with its super simple,and satisfying gameplay, the small game time only supports the game's wonderful replayability.

In the round, players will close their eyes while the assisting phone app, names different roles one at a time, when a role is called out the player will open their eyes and perform the ability. 

The fun in ONUW is in the way these abilities interact with each other. A Seer may look at someone's hidden role and accidentally find the werewolf but a Troublemaker could throw a wrench into their strategy by switching roles with them.

Maybe a specific player is suspicious so you all accuse them of being a werewolf but in reality they’re a Minion of the werewolves and seeks to be a scapegoat for them.

The many roles in this game greatly alter how the round will play out. And with a dozen unique roles in the best game alone, makes this game you won’t be able to get tired of too quickly.

Check out One Night Ultimate Werewolf Here