Awesome Card Games

Balatro is your next gaming addiction – but not because it’s a poker game. It merely uses the card game’s hands as a starting point, and then it quickly goes off the rails. Like fellow indie hit Vampire Survivors, this fast-paced roguelike keeps you hooked with lots of shiny rewards that will help you rack up scores on the edge of math.

This grim but funny card game challenges players to act out unusual ways of dying. One team chooses who died and how they died, and the other team must draw or act out their demise for their teammates to guess. For example: Who: Air Tube Dancing Man; How: Lawnmower Accident. It’s basically Charades or Pictionary but in a cemetery. For 4 to 6 players.

This challenging party game asks players to steal items from a museum guarded by laser beams. Only the laser beams are elastic strings, and the hands you’ll use to grab things are tiny. Tiny Laser Heist also incorporates strategic card game elements as players draw cards to recruit their team and plan the biggest heist possible.

Ready to chew bubble gum and kick ass, but you’re all out of bubble gum? We’ve got a game for you. Based on John Carpenter’s classic, They Live, this card game from Iconiq Studios has players teaming up to uncover the aliens hidden at the table. The upgrade pack includes Hoffman Lenses that reveal hidden words on some cards.

Après Hours’ ready-made espresso martinis make cocktails easy, and combined with the Drunk Après Hours Drinking Game, it makes happy hour even happier. This collaboration with Drunk in Love is a simple game for three or more requiring players to follow prompts correctly or take a sip.

The party game I Have This Friend is a great way to get to know people. It plays out much like “Never Have I Ever,” except with players picking cards from a deck of awkward or embarrassing situations, then asking everyone at the table to fess up when it applies to them. Mix with booze for added laughs.

From the makers of Exploding Kittens comes a fun card game with a deceptively simple set of rules. Using the colors and icons on the backs of cards as clues, players must figure out what cards to steal from their opponents to maximize their score. Each game takes about 10 minutes to play. For 2 to 6 players.

Pick Your Poison is an adult party game that asks players to choose from two very unpleasant scenarios to try and guess which one the rest of the table will go with. Players earn points each time they guess the majority answer. This edition includes some seriously NSFW suggestions, so it’s definitely not for the kids.

Apothic Wines double dares you to get the party started with Would You Dare? a conversational 21+ game for those who aren’t afraid to play without rules. The 54-card deck features bold prompts such as “reveal your deepest desire.” Guaranteed to make the night more interesting, especially after a bottle of wine.

Tabletop games are great, but keeping their cards and tokens from getting scattered all over is a pain. MagHolders are modular mini drawers perfect for holding game pieces and cards. They have multiple magnets, so they can be attached side by side, stacked, or inverted to hold extra cards. Sold in sets from 4 to 100 pieces.

Smashing Helmets is a unique tabletop game that asks players to build their own cardboard helmets, then battle by tearing apart their opponents’ armor. The game includes templates for crafting helmets, along with either plastic or aluminum hardware, and a set of game cards. For 2 to 6 players. BYO cardboard boxes.

Etsy seller Casiopea3D makes these 3D-printed trays for keeping your cards and tokens neat and tidy when playing tabletop games. Each one has three card slots and four token trays. Measures appx. 7.9″ w x 2.4″ d. Sold in sets of two or more in a variety of colors.

This asymmetric strategy game drops players into a world where deep space miners must gather crystals that happen to be inside of giant alien beasts. It can be played with 0, 1, or 2 players (yep, it has a no player mode). The miner’s goal is to gather all of the crystals, and the beast’s objective to digest the miner with bacteria.

Definitely not one for the kiddos, Joshua Mason’s sadistic strategy game is kind of like Hitman if you played it with cards. Except in Murder, Mayhem & Lollipops, you take on the role of a really bad assassin, who must use multiple weapons to take down each of their targets. Plus, you have an addiction to narcotic lollipops.

Tattoo Stories is a party game that gives players three minutes to doodle a design for a tattoo based on a selection of attributes. Each artist pitches their tattoo to the customer, who gets to judge and choose the winner of the round. For 4 to 6 players ages 12 and up.

Whiskers on kittens aren’t the only attribute felines share with humans. Gerrard Gethings’ animal portraits make the case. For the memory card game Do You Look Like Your Cat? Gethings found 25 people and their furry lookalikes. Just place the cards face down and collect pawsome matching pairs.

From the makers of Unstable Unicorns comes a card game about adorable dinosaurs attempting to avoid extinction. Players do their best to escape dino life’s little pitfalls ranging from hot lava to giant killer ants to dating disasters. Games last 30 to 60 minutes for 2 to 6 players. Good for ages 8 and up. Drops Spring 2021.

The objective of the adult party game Over-Rated is simple: players pick review cards and match them up with a selected location card. The person who comes up with the best/funniest/most inappropriate answer wins the round. The first player to collect five location cards wins. This one’s definitely not for the kids.

Toy company Funko teamed up with cereal company Kellogg’s to make a different kind of Pop. The official Pop-Tarts Game is a family-friendly card game in which 2-to-6 players collect breakfast pastries to get the highest score. Or maybe the highest calorie count. Best played with a snack of actual Pop-Tarts.

Dust off your knowledge of classic music videos with this blast-from-the-past party game. Players face off in a battle of musical knowledge from the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s to collect artist cards from each of the MTV Challenge categories. It’s basically The Blockbuster Game, but with music instead of movies.

Fans of Nathan Pyle’s Strange Planet will want to add Sweet Existence to their game library. The card game asks players to form connections with other beings while experience life and acquire delicious sweet disks (aka chocolate chip cookies). Just don’t perish, or your game will be over.

Rolling Stone’s party game isn’t a traditional music trivia game. Instead, it just requires basic memory of popular music. After a rapid-fire advantage round, players try to figure out a band or musician based on a single word, a lyrical quote, or by humming a tune.

Go back to the 1990s with this fast-paced party game inspired by the iconic video rental chain Blockbuster. The game asks players to act out, describe, and quote scenes from 200 classic movies. Naturally, it comes in a Blockbuster VHS tape case. For 4 to 12 players.