What are your favorite board games? I'm looking for games that are satisfying and lead to a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment or connection.

Nemesis and Dead Cells are the board games doing that for me right now. Nemesis is semi cooperative, but there are full co-op objectives if you don't wanna play versus. Dead Cells is completely co-op. Both have resulted in good stories and experiences that stay with you after the game is done in my friend group.

Arkham Horror 3rd Edition — NOT the LCG.

I recently got Moonrakers, and it is 10/10 in my opinion. It can be competitive, and the rules certainly support backstabbing and sabotage, but it can be played very cooperatively. There is a winner, but you could even modify the rules to "try to get everyone to 10 prestige in x number of rounds" instead of first to 10 wins.

Battlestar Galactica boardgame. It's mostly cooperative, with the chance of having one or two players being traitors, but even without them, it's very unlikely the humans win in the end. It's expensive and needs a lot of table space to play, tho.

Captain Sonar can be an interesting choice, since it can be played turn-by-turn or in real time, with two teams of 1-4 each. If you working with your team doesn't create a sense of connection, I don't know what will.

Spirit island is my favorite game to play with a group. It has you trying to protect an island from colonists who damage the island with their expansions. Each player has different abilities that force you all the work together & requires a lot of teamwork to win especially some of the higher difficulties.

Check out !boardgames@sopuli.xyz in case you're not aware. Lots of discussion happening there.

Regarding your question, it's hard to say since you don't mention any mechanics, or complexity level, that you prefer. Based on the couple of examples you provide, you seem to like cooperative card games. If so, you should check out 'The Crew'. It's the most popular of that genre in my game club.

Ranked #1 in family games on bgg

You’ll never perfectly solve the “no pissing people off” issue because in competitive games you necessarily have people benefit at the expense of others and in cooperative games you’ll fall into the trap of backseat-driver players telling you what to do on your turn.

That being said, here are some of my favorites I’d like to suggest:

Cooperative:

• Time Stories (kinda like a time-travel themed mystery-solving role-playing game where the pre-built deck is your DM. 1-4 players. You can buy more decks, each with a different setting and story.).
• Pandemic (Stop COVID a deadly disease from killing off the planet. Work together to limit the spread and find the cure before it’s too late) (1-4 players)

Competitive:

• The Settlers of Catan (claim resources and land strategically to build the most prosperous kingdom) (2-4 players but there are expansions and spinoffs so this could be like 1-6 players)
• 7 Wonders (draft cards to build the most prosperous kingdom) (3-8 players IIRC)

In-Between:

• Betrayal in the House on the Hill (explore a haunted house until you find a dark secret that turns one of you into a villain the rest have to fight) (3-6 players)

I really like Mysterium. It's kinda cooperative, but players also work independently. The premise is that one player is a ghost, and the rest of the players are psychic detectives who have their own vision of how the murder happened. The ghost gives out clues using surreal, dream-like cards for the psychics to figure out their personal guess on what the weapon, location and murderer was. At the end the ghost gives clues to which psychic was right.

I personally like it because it isn't just logic and strategic thinking, you have to use your creative/artistic part of your brain as well, if not moreso.

I guess it is better to go for games that are cooperative and where everyone can contribute how they can without pressure. So I would suggest strategy games where everyone decides together what to do and all the players are united against the game, but in a way that it's harder to put the blame on someone if they fail to do what's expected of them (Ex : Hanabi). Here are some of my favourites that corresponds to this :

Pandemic

Horrified

Forbidden Desert

Dead of Winter - The co-op variant of the game, without a traitor. Zombie apocalypse game.

Meeple Party - A co-op game about throwing a party and making sure personality types don't clash. Perhaps on the nose for your group, but I still recommend it.

Mental Blocks - Once again, play the variant without a traitor. This is a game about solving a 3D puzzle from different perspectives with limited abilities to communicate or touch certain blocks.

I don't know if I'd considered it a board game, but the Forbidden Island game (and the others like it) spring to mind. The idea is that you and the other players have to work together to gather everything you need including the treasure you came for before the island you're on sinks into the ocean.

It's fun working together and I always thought it did a good job of incentivising that.

We love Wingspan. Meadow is pleasant.

Just One was a great game for 4 people. Three people have to get the fourth person to guess a particular word. They each write down a one-word hint. If any two (or more) players write the same word hint, they don't get to show that word to the guesser. It's a lot of fun when you see the different ways people interpret words to come up with hints and how two (or more) words can work together to make you think of the answer.

The pandemic board games, either one of them can give that feeling.

Here’s some great cooperative games that either have big groups working together OR have the whole groups:

Escape from the Dark Castle - a fun little dungeon crawler where you flip cards and roll against dangers as you try to overcome obstacles. Completely cooperative but mechanically simple.

Wavelength - the base way to play is technically a ‘competitive’ in that there are teams and points but it’s relatively chill and I’ve often played this at parties with large groups cooperatively cause it just makes for a great conversation starter.

Phantom Ink - two teams but the mechanics are very fun and the game overall has a great tone.

Ravine - cooperative game where you try to survive after a plane crash.

I would also maybe recommend looking into some light roleplaying games like The Zone or Fiasco. These are almost always gm-less or easy to run and focused on building a fun narrative together.

Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne for me. I play those with my wife and we don't really get in each other's way. She usually wins but I don't care.

Mansions of Madness. It's my wife's new favorite game. The game has many different scenarios and they play out pretty differently each time. The game is almost all co-op, so it's players VS. the game. I was actually against the need for an app at first but it simplifies a lot and helps keep track of a lot of the mundane stuff.

In order to get good recommendations you're going to need to provide additional information. How many people are playing? How complex can a game be? What games have you tried and loved? Is there a favorite mechanism? What is the game duration you're going for? 10 min? 30? 3 hours? What's your budget?

Generic recommendations based on my library:

• Just One - Favorite party game
• Brass Birmingham - My favorite; Beware it's quite complex and lasts around 3 hours
• Blood Rage - Cool dude's on a map game with very nice minis
• Turing Machine - Good puzzle game
• Slay The Spire - If you love slay the spire, you'll love cooperative slay the spire as well
• Menara - Favorite dexterity game

boardgamegeek.com is the imdb of boardgames, check it out.

Carcassonne.

I find it quite fun to play semi-collaboratively too.

We got Tokaido for Xmas a few years back and it’s super chill to play with others

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123540/tokaido

Betrayal at the House on the Hill has about 50 different scenarios so almost every playthrough is different. But it's best to have at least 4 players to be more fun

Imagine is one of the favourite games in my IRL friend group whenever we get together. It's basically Alias, but instead of explaining the word verbally, you use transparent cards with shapes drawn on them that you can overlap and move around. It's chill, fun, and fits any group size.

Calico is my personal favourite, because the concept of making a kitty blanket is just too cute to pass on.

P. S. The link isn't where I bought the game - I just googled the English version and posted the first link I found.

Here’s some suggestions, just games I find I get lots of play out of and people are always willing to play.

Dune Imperium is probably my favorite. It’s a deck builder with worker placement. It’s got a lot of different strategies you can take to win, there’s not one set way. Dune Imperium: Uprising is an updated (for the 2nd movie) version of the game that fixes some things from the first one, tho I think I still prefer the original. This one is a bit more serious, but I’m including it because it’s my favorite.

Everdell is a great game and very easy to get into. Mostly worker placement with some engine building. Cute theme and it looks great on the table. Definitely recommend giving it a look. Avoid the expansions when buying, they might add too much to the gameplay. There is an updated version Everdell: Farshore, which I’ve heard is better, tho I haven’t played it.

Clank! And any in that series are also super friendly and easy to get into. It’s a dungeon exploration deck builder. Personally I’d recommend going with Clank! Catacombs, which is the updated version that adds a tile based map so each play through is a little different. I have not played Clank! In Space or any of the others.

7 Wonders is a fun pick and pass type game. You build up your city and try to win via military, economic, or scientific power. Easy to pick up, and has more strategy in it than first glance. The 2-player version 7 Wonders: Duel has to be my favorite 2 player game. Note on Duel, if you get it, the only expansion I’d pick up is Agora, Pantheon just isn’t as impactful.

Black Hole Rainbows, absolutely ridiculous game, everyone scoffs at it at first and then has a stupid good time playing it. It’s stupidly colorful and definitely over produced but that’s part of the charm. If you can find a copy, buy it. Hard to get right now.

Ticket to ride is really fun. You kind of do your own thing building train routes the whole time. Not too much overlap to block other people unless you know the routes super well, and even then you don't know what people are going for based on the routes they have to complete. All in all, it's one of my favorite board games.

I don't hear about this one often but it is always the first game I bust out for newbies.

Camel Up!

Players place bets on little camels that run around the track. The turns move quickly, people love gambling, and you some strategy will help you win, but it's random enough that everybody has a chance at coming out ahead.

Someone might get the bet you had your eye on, but there's no direct "attacks" on other players.

Ok, if you are against hard feelings, cross off anything that is directly competitive, that would be any game where players directly and willfully interact with each other in a way where one gains while another loses as part of the core gameplay. To varying degrees things like blood rage, root, monopoly/solarquest, everdell, 7 wonders, clank, carcassonne, ticket to ride, dominion, etc.

If your group must have competition, you'll need to stick to independent competitive games, this is anything where players are primarily taking actions in their own space and are progressing largely independent from each other. Example recommendations include things like Quacks of Quedlinburg, Shifting Stones, most roll and writes (welcome to series, cartographer with a minor exception), cascadia, verdant, etc

If you can do without competing with each other, cooperative games are definitely the way to go to minimize hard feelings (it'd only come up then if someone thought another player did something suboptimal causing a loss). The variety here is actually pretty large: simple trick taking games like The Crew series Information sharing games, like Mysterium "Combat" games of all complexities (generally ascending: Lord of the rings storybook, marvel united, D&D board games, Heroquest, Stuffed fables, Atlantis Rising, legends of andor, horrified, Arkham horror, marvel champions, mansions of madness 2nd edition, spirit island, Gloomhaven) Mystery/puzzle games (Adventure Games series, Exit The Game series, Animals of Baker Street)

I'd also like to call out 2 other games specifically: Stella, while it is a 1 winner competitive game where your score depends largely on other players, the push your luck and prisoner's dilemma aspect of how you earn points I think largely removes the feel bad aspect of competition. Kitchen Rush: pure cooperative, but it's also a real-time game where everyone is taking simultaneous actions to run a restaurant in 4 real time minutes stretches.

One I haven’t seen mentioned is Puerto Rico. One thing I like is there is essentially no random chance to this game; everything that happens is a result of choices you or your opponents make.

• Tiny Epic Zombies is a cooperate, often hilarious, always satisfying zombie survival simulator.
• Tiny Epic Dinosaurs is a mildly competitive, generally delightful Jurassic Park / Petting zoo simulator.
• Tiny Epic pirates is a crunchy but quick pirate simulator where most interactions are your human controlled pirates evading the automated Navy while racing for loot.
• The Fast and the Furious (board game) is a fantastic quick co-op romp.
• Here to There is a story driven light economy game ever the focus is on building your economy engine to unlock the next interesting story twist.
• Machi Koro lacks a co-op variant, but it's pretty chill and it's easy to house rule the aggressive competitive cards to pay out from the shared bank.
• The Book of Madness is a fantastic light Co-op deck builder with great positive interactions and a fantastic theme (students at Hogwarts trying to close an evil book)
• Caverna is a robust building game with chill interactions.

Already mentioned, but worth reiterating:

• The Crew
• Tokaido
• Ticket to Ride
• Forbidden Island/Skies/Dessert/Forrest
• Pandemic

And he sure to check out Rhado Runs Through for game reviews. He plays mostly with his wife, and so always reviews how the game feels to play together without backstabbing.

Key Flower Gaia Project Brass Dune Imperium Ark Nova Terraforming Mars

The problem with monopoly is that it fits your description....BUT!!! nobody actually plays it the right way. House rules are so ingrained into monopoly culture, that I've incorporated my own house rule. Anyone who puts money under free parking gets stabbed with a knife. When they tell me that's not in the rules, I tell them to show me where money under free parking is in the rules. There's so many of these house rules that people legitimately think are in the rulebook. They aren't. So if you want to put money under free parking, I want to stab your hand with a knife. House rules and all.

One time I was playing monopoly with my mom. She had 53 dollars, and landed on boardwalk. It was unowned. I yhen said "I bid $54. She said "you can't do that....". I showed her in the rule book where I could, and she got angry at me.

So, the problem with monopoly is that most people assume they know how to play, and also assume they know the best stratagies. They don't.

The best stratagy is actually to buy 1 of each property that can have houses built on them. Prioritizing the low cost properties first. Make THEM buy 2 of each, thinking they'll get the monopoly, thinking they'll get a trade. Then drain them further with the railroads and utilities. Eventually they'll run out of money. Just NEVER trade them a property that would allow a path to them getting a monopoly.

Of coarse, all of that is easier said than done. That's what makes it a game. But it all falls apart if people aren't playing the same game.

I will always recommend base Catan. It's simple enough that anyone can learn to play fairly quickly, and moves quickly enough that no one gets that mad if they lose. If anything, I find losing a game usually coincides with people understanding it better and being open to playing another round so they can demonstrate that understanding.

Cottage Garden is very satisfying. You Tetris together garden pieces to fill plots and you can cover a single spot with a sleeping kitty. There’s scoring and competition, but it’s not antagonistic in any way.

I’m also a big fan of cooperative games in general.

I'm sorry, but if you have this problem, it's entirely caused by who your players are as people, not by the games itself. Even cooperative games leave people that get pissed, pissed at each other. For example, if one person wants to do something that another person finds suboptimal, and then the cooperative game is lost some time later.

I love Deep Rock Galactic, Terra Mystica, Mysterium.

Honestly, it depends

My favourite board game without a doubt is diplomacy, but those games go for like 6+ hours and requires 7 people. Also everybody will be yelling at everybody at some point, so yeah probably not a good pick lol

That being said, my favourite game to bring out for people not too into board games is wingspan. Fairly simple board game with enough depth to it. Also it has cute drawings of birds

Zombie Kidz is quick, cooperative, and has plenty of achievements (with a sticker book to record them) as well as unlockables through gameplay. You get to use teamwork and planning, and turns occur in quick succession.

I think it might tick every box you mentioned.

Waaay obscure, but one of the few board games I've ever really enjoyed is solarquest.

I've played plenty of the usual board games over the years. They just weren't anything I ever played because I wanted to play them. It was something to do, and people seem to naturally gravitate towards card and board games.

I had a chess phase in my younger days. I still play checkers checkers from time to time. "Chinese" checkers too, along with go. But those are still things that I'll suggest when I'm with someone and looking for something to do while bullshitting.

I hate Life, and only play monopoly with the understanding that when I'm done with it, I'm going to give everything I have to whoever is the most behind. Sorry is okay, as is parcheesi.

But solarquest, I'll find people willing to play with me because I like it. That and heroquest, but heroquest isn't really a board game the way I think of the term, it's a constrained ttrpg.

Both of those, my mom got me for Christmas after I begged for them, and I've never once been disappointed with them. I got both of them the year they came out, so we're talking decades of play with both.

Heroquest, I used as a board with the figures good my d&d play for a long time as well as playing it as its own game.

Heroquest is cooperative, so I can definitely recommend it for low to zero conflict play. You're uncovering a map, finding treasure, building a character. It's d&d lite, in the best way. Original versions are expensive, but there's a ton of printable versions out there, and it was rereleased in 2021.

Solarquest is essentially space themed monopoly on the surface. But, beyond your pieces being rockets and the concept of buying up parts of the solar system, there's the flight mechanics where you have to have the fuel to go from one planet to the next. It adds a layer of thought and fun to it. Plus, you're learning some local astronomy.

There's rules for laser fights, and special roll actions, available as optional rules. It's just fun. There's an updated version available with more recent astronomy, fancier supplies and such, but I haven't bought it yet.

Both of them are games I play with other old farts, as well as kids of all ages. I genuinely can't recommend either of them enough.

micromacro crime city is fun. It's kinda like a giant Where's Waldo map except you solve mysteries as a team.

Tsuro is a very quick, Zen game. It's tile placement and stone movement.

Obviously if you don't like S.H., you probably won't like The Resistance or Avalon. But from the same publisher, there's Coup (a game of creative lying), and Grifters (an engine-builder made up of resource collection with a crime theme). I like them both and they're very quick.

I don't think Fluxx could lead to long term frustration, because it's just so wild.

Catan is a classic and it's never caused tempers in my group.

I think it really depends on how many people are playing. I'm not up on my board games but maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in