A few months ago, I shared a Top 10 Sci-fi TV shows for Futurists and assessed how much they rank on the futuristic scale, along three dimensions: Worldbuilding, Storytelling, and Futures Thinking.
Friends of mine – who know that I love board games at least as much as I enjoy TV series! – have requested my opinion on so-called “futuristic board games”. As the Holiday season is already well-underway, I am overdue for a Top 10 Board Games for Futurists!
This time, I adjusted my criteria to board games and what future thinkers of any age might be looking for and enjoying in futuristic board games. Hopefully we can bring more young future-gazers to join our futurist community along the way!
- Futures Theme: While all the games selected take place in the future, this dimension measures how realistic the futuristic setting is. Is the future a key component, or is it just a tacky theme that was added last minute? We also evaluate how main trends identified in futures studies (sustainability, public health crisis, unemployment, mental health, aging demographics, international tensions, future of work, responsible innovation…) translate in the game design – and we like to scan the full STEEPLE environment (social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, ethical), not just technology, space conquest, and robots!
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: We assess the gameplay and player dynamics according to their innovation power – have we ever seen such gameplay before? We also consider how the gameplay engages skills that we favor in foresight and futures thinking such as mental stretching, planning ahead, creativity, collaboration, education, empathy, ethics, multi-disciplinarity, hope in the future…
- Adoptability: How easy is it to jump into the game and start getting a taste of the future? Too often, games which a futuristic setting tend to have a deterrent and unnecessary complexity, whereas a foresight approach favor accessibility, agency and empowerment towards future scenarios.
I most likely omitted a few and would welcome any addition! I recommend checking out Board Game Geek if you are looking for further inspiration as this has been my absolute reference in this building my top 10 futurists’ favorites.
Now let’s dive right in our countdown.
10. SiliconVania (2023)
2-5 players; 45-90 minutes; 14+ age; 2.00 complexity
In 2035, the Vampire Council is looking to hire a new city planner to turn Transylvania, the most legendary vampire town in the world, into the world’s newest tech haven! You and your rivals are competing to land a job that will ask you to create a diverse cityscape for vampire and animal life, provide plenty of blood banks for your citizens, secure contracts, and bring aboard the best specialists in the industry. The race is on to present to the Vampire Council the most organized plans for the city to renovate Transylvania into SiliconVania!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368464/siliconvania
- Futures Theme: 2/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 2/5
- Adoptability: 3/5
9. Raising Robots (2023)
1-6 players; 60-90 minutes; 14+ age; 3.25 complexity
Raising Robots is a competitive, simultaneously played, engine-building game.
In Raising Robots, you are a famous inventor seeking to assemble the greatest collection of robots. Each round, you simultaneously choose and perform two or more actions: upgrade, assemble, design, fabricate, recycle. Every action will be performed with a variable amount of power to make the action better or worse. However, the most powerful actions will also help your opponents.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366683/raising-robots
- Futures Theme: 2/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 2/5
- Adoptability: 3/5
8. Gizmos (2018)
2-4 players; 40-50 minutes; 14+ age; 2.00 complexity
The smartest minds of our generation are gathering together at the Great Science Fair. Everyone’s been working hard on their creations, but only one will be crowned champion. Contestants have to think on the fly to build their machines quickly and efficiently. Whose project will be the best? In Gizmos, you win the game by gaining victory points from building engines. And engines help you get things done faster. Whoever builds the greatest machine and collects the most victory points wins!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/246192/gizmos
- Futures Theme: 1/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 2/5
- Adoptability: 4/5
7. The LOOP (2020)
1-4 players; 60 minutes; 12+ age; 2.77 complexity
The LOOP is a quirky co-operative game in which you battle the evil Dr. Faux. The evil Dr. Faux has built a terrrrible time machine! With the help of the duplicates of himself that he is creating through the ages, he aims to carry out his Omniscience 2000 project to become master of the universe. But the rifts that he is opening in spacetime will probably destroy quantum space way sooner… You play a temporal agent in four different game modes, full of new challenges and replay value. You gather powerful artifacts, defy the Doctor’s duplicates, and sabotage his maniacal machine. Make the most of your cards and master the LOOP to use them multiple times in impressive chains — but the Doctor isn’t going to make this easy on you!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/316412/loop
- Futures Theme: 3/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 3/5
- Adoptability: 3/5
6. Terraforming Mars (2016)
1-5 players; 120 minutes; 12+ age; 3.26 complexity
In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/167791/terraforming-mars
- Futures Theme: 5/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 3/5
- Adoptability: 2/5
5. Mech a Dream (2023)
2-4 players; 45 minutes; 10+ age; 2.00 complexity
Can robot dream too ? With your workshop, take part in the wonderful MECH A DREAM project. Each day is divided into 3 shifts where you can use your workers
Depending on the time of the day, the workers will be more or less efficient.
Use your workers to collect steam and electricity; Use these resources to build machines. Use your machines to build dreams!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/365647/mech-dream
- Futures Theme: 4/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 2/5
- Adoptability: 4/5
4. Anachrony (2017)
1-4 players; 30-120 minutes; 15+ age; 4.02 complexity
It is the late 26th century. Earth is recovering from a catastrophic explosion that exterminated the majority of the population centuries ago and made most of the surface uninhabitable due to unearthly weather conditions. The surviving humans organized along four radically different ideologies, called Paths, to rebuild the world as they see fit: Harmony, Dominance, Progress, and Salvation. By powering up the mysterious Time Rifts that opened in the wake of the cataclysm, each Path is able to reach back to specific moments in their past. Doing so can greatly speed up their progress, but too much meddling may endanger the time-space continuum.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/185343/anachrony
- Futures Theme: 5/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 5/5
- Adoptability: 2/5
3. Futuropia (2018)
1-4 players; 90 minutes; 12+ age; 2.36 complexity
In this utopian economic game, players live in a future utopian society that possesses desirable lifestyle qualities for all of its citizens. For example, we all work much less. Our robots can do nearly everything already. There is no need for great envy. It is simply about equality, justice, and the fair allocation of the complete and still necessary work. Success means we have time for the activities we like the most: fishing, farming, fencing, flying, …, as well as gaming, building, painting, traveling, composing, and more. If somebody wants to work more than needed, they are welcome to. Joblessness is not a disgrace, it is the new goal! Players are members of a team striving to realize this utopian ideal, developing completely self-sustaining homes that function as efficiently as possible. Futuropia is a luck-free economic game. Game set-up variations ensure you always encounter new challenges, which create a variety of gameplay situations, new experiences and replayability.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/258389/futuropia
- Futures Theme: 5/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 3/5
- Adoptability: 4/5
2. Earth (2023)
1-5 players; 45-90 minutes; 13+ age; 2.87 complexity
Earth, the soil that supports and sustains our beautiful planet, Earth. Over thousands of years of evolution and adaptation the flora and fauna of this unique planet have grown and developed into amazing life forms, creating symbiotic ecosystems and habitats. It’s time to jump into these rich environments and create some amazing natural synergies that replicate and extrapolate on Earth’s amazing versatility and plethora of natural resources. In this game, you create a self-supporting engine of growth, expansion and supply where even your unused plants become compost for future growth.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/350184/earth
- Futures Theme: 5/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 4/5
- Adoptability: 3/5
1. Daybreak (2023)
1-4 players; 60-120 minutes; 10+ age; 2.83 complexity
Daybreak is a co-operative game about climate action. Each player controls a world power, deploying policies and technologies to both dismantle the engine of global heating and to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises. If the global temperature gets too high, or if too many people from any world power are in crisis, everyone loses. But if you work together to draw down global emissions to net-zero, you all win!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/334986/daybreak
- Futures Theme: 5/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 4/5
- Adoptability: 4/5
The Special: Back to the Future! (2020)
2-4 players; 50 minutes; 10+ age; 2.41 complexity
The photo of the McFly family is slowly fading… It’s 1955, and you’re wrapped up in a time paradox with Biff, Lorraine, George, and Doc Brown! You cooperate to move around Hill Valley to get the DeLorean ready, avoid Biff and his gang, help George and Lorraine fall in love, and crank the DeLorean up to 88 MPH — all just in time for the lightning to strike the Clock Tower, sending you back to the future!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/302388/back-future-back-time
- Futures Theme: 5/5
- Futures-Thinking Gameplay: 5/5
- Adoptability: 4/5
Just missed the cut
Fallout (2017) is a great board game inspired from the video game, but I’ll spare you from depressing post-apocalyptic disasters in this Holiday season! In the same space, we prefer Anachrony (see above) which plays with the time-space continuum and displays a sense of agency as to how to change a dark future that we foresee!
I imagine Express Route (2023) can raise a futurist’s interest with its punch line “Deliver the Future”, but it ends up being a rather old-fashioned setting with trucks and planes delivering mail.
I considered Power Grid (2004), an all-time (or old-times) favorite in which you bid, network, and manage resources in a race to supply the most cities with power, but also towards the most sustainable sources of energy!
Silicon Humanism 