2025 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide + Black Friday Deals

Welcome to the official Bitewing Games 2025 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide! Few moments are better than gathering friends and family around the table for wholesome gaming — that’s why we started Bitewing Games as a way to create and share classy board games that bite. And there’s no better time for tabletop gaming than the holidays. As is tradition, we like to create and share a Board Game Gift Guide to kick off the holidays.

As always, our selection criteria for this guide include the following:

• The games have been tried, tested, and approved by us and/or trusted critics
• The games are generally available to purchase (links will be provided below to sites where you can purchase them—click the $)
• We won’t recommend anything from our past Holiday Gift Guides, but we still fully endorse those previous guides, so if you need even more recommendations then check out our 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Guides.

For your information, we receive no financial compensation, sponsorship, or advertisement money for this guide or these recommendations except for 8 of the 24 games which Bitewing Games directly publishes — noted below. At the end of the day, these are simply 24 games we genuinely believe are great Holiday gifts. If you find value in our content, then we’d love to have you join our Bitewing Games newsletter! We use our newsletter to send regular updates regarding our latest content (like this gift guide) and publications (such as our 2025 releases featured below).

This guide is divided into five sections for your convenience (scroll at your leisure or click to jump straight to the section that interests you most):

• Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer
• Gifts for your Significant Other
• Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)
• Perfect Games for you Holiday Party
• Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer
• Black Friday Deals

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Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer

Botswana | 2-5 Players | $25

Botswana is one of the highest ranked card games on our Ultimate Knizia Tier List, and for good reason! This simple box of wildlife and shared incentives is a hoot. All you do is play a card to change an animal’s value and then take an animal token. When all six cards of one animal have been played out, the round is over, and your animal tokens are worth whatever their last card played was. It sounds too basic to be fun, but you’d be surprised how much mileage Dr. Knizia gets out of a tight game of hand management and stock manipulation. Botswana just got a gorgeous new edition illustrated by Weberson Santiago, so there is no better time to pick up a copy.

ORBIT | 2-4 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

Speaking of approachable hand management games by Reiner Knizia, ORBIT is a brand new design by the good doctor featuring cosmic competitive tourism among orbiting planets! In the vastness of space, your ship moves rather slowly, which is why it helps to jump on a planet and surf its orbit to your next destination. Your turn consists of playing one card from your hand to take its actions (like flying your ship, regaining energy, and advancing a planet along its orbit) and then refilling your hand at the end of your turn. Easy as that. Meanwhile, you’ll want to upgrade your ship to increase your hand size and energy capacity. You’re gonna need it, because your opponents will try everything to slow you down in this tactical space race.

Bohnanza | 3-7 Players | $19

Nothing like a classic bean trading game to get the group going. Bohnanza has been in print for decades and continues to delight both hobbyist gamers and casual gamers. Your hand will become cluttered up with beans you do and don’t want, and the best way to get things in order is by trading with other players so you can all plant what you want and harvest your crops for money.

Gazebo | 2-4 Players | $39

From Bitewing Games

There is something about dominoes that makes them universally appealing. They are fun to handle, easy to understand, and interesting to orient. Gazebo takes that elegant simplicity and fleshes it out into a full blown area control strategy game. You’ll be establishing nooks, connecting to patios, and overtaking opponents, all in the name of putting out your titular gazebos first. It’s abstract yet addicting, and the variety of maps are a joy to explore.

Magical Athlete | 2-6 Players | $30

When you first dive into the hobby of board games, you learn that a lot of the mechanisms and types of games you grew up enjoying are actually taboo among hobbyists. These include things like Monopoly’s roll-to-move (where the dice dictate how far you move instead of your own decisions) or Uno’s take-that (aggressive effects that target another player). It makes sense why these generally are frowned upon — they take away player agency, undermine strategic decisions, and generally aren’t used in particularly interesting ways. Magical Athlete is a game spits in the face of these hobbyist taboos. It’s a game of rolling dice to see who reaches the finish line first and sabotaging your opponents with wacky abilities along the way. The difference here is that Magical Athlete understands that dumb luck is exactly that — silly, dumb fun. By cranking the hijinks up to eleven, it breaks the mold of established gaming and turns the experience into something that everyone can enjoy.

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Gifts for your Significant Other

Crisps | 2 Players | $20

Card shedding and ladder climbing games have been around for ages. They’re all about playing a set or run of cards that is stronger than the last one played to empty your hand first. Crisps doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel here, but it does turn this formula into a compelling 2-player-only experience. Much like its name implies, it’s an addicting little snack of a card game. 

Iliad | 2 Players | $29

From Bitewing Games

Much like the stone-cold Knizia classics of Lost Cities and Schotten Totten, Iliad is a fire-cracker of a 2-player experience. You’ll take turns positioning your tiles on the board as you compete for the surrounding tokens. When a line is filled, the strongest player in that row gets to decide which player gets which token at either end. Your tiles also have special abilities that let you sway the odds in your favor. All the while, you are sweating over whether to compete for a knockout (exclusive favor of the gods) or compete for most points. It’s tense, it’s more-ish, it’s Iliad.

Zenith | 2 Players | $35

2-player-only games tend to come in a small box, but they can still pack a big punch. Zenith swings for the fences by being a multi-use card tableau building tug-of-war game. There is a lot going on, and thankfully some large player aids to explain what the heck all of those different icons mean on the cards. Despite how much content it flexes, Zenith still manages to play smoothly and quickly once you get into a groove with it. You’ll execute a lot of neat powers along your quest to pull the right planet discs to your side of the board.

Ichor | 2 Players | $29

From Bitewing Games

While Iliad is the more popular and immediate of our new Greek Mythology games, Ichor is undoubtedly the deeper of the two. It may take a bit longer to sink its teeth in, but the payoff is certainly rewarding. Here you’ll juggle 12-14 asymmetric character abilities layered on top of a sharp abstract game. Your figures move like rooks (in straight lines) and leave behind a trail of your tokens. The game is not about eliminating your opponent’s figures, rather it is about placing out all of your tokens first. The characters break these rules in all kinds of deific ways. Zeus strikes down tokens around him, Poseidon washes them away in a tidal wave, the Siren calls an opponent to her, Heracles pushes monsters out of the way, Cyclops goes out in a blaze of glory, and much much more.

Tag Team | 2 Players | $25

I grew up playing a lot of war. You know, the card game where you both flip a card from your personal deck and see whose is stronger, winner takes both. I don’t remember the name of it, but I recall having themed decks like animals (killer whales and humans were GOAT) and Lord of the Rings. Tag Team is a bit like war — flip a card and see what happens. In hobbyist terms, this is called an auto-battler. Although you’re not stealing your opponent’s cards when you beat them. Rather, this is a mind game of revealing cards, resolving their effects, and gradually inserting more cards into your sequenced deck. The challenge comes from guessing where your opponent will insert their next card as you try to exploit the chinks in their armor. This auto-battler is made all the more fun by a huge variety of characters you can pair up and pit head-to-head.

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Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)

Rainbow | 2-6 Players | $9

Recently, our friends at Allplay have started a Tiny Box line of games that are perfect for this kind of list. Rainbow is perhaps the best of this line so far. This lightning quick card game is about making bids (runs or sets of cards) to claim point-scoring cards from the middle. The twist here is that the cards you all bid with become the rewards that you fight over for the next round! On top of that, if you spend your cards too quickly then you might miss out on some juicy final rounds.

Bombastic | 2 Players | $19

From Bitewing Games

I see people ask all the time about great games they can play on the airplane or at the beach. Answers are always few and far between — probably because airplane tray tables or wet sandy beaches don’t usually get along with board game components. Bombastic is the perfect answer to this question — we’ve built this game to be something you can truly play with anyone, anywhere. Bombastic takes tic tac toe (something everybody knows) and makes it fun. Nine tiles are placed face-down — four Xs, four Os, and one bomb. You’ll use action cards and your cunning wit to track, rearrange, and align your tiles to reveal three-in-a-row and win. But if you accidentally reveal the bomb? … let’s just say that your opponent will be delighted.

Viking Seesaw | 2-4 Players | $21

Viking Seesaw is a delightful dexterity game that I’ve been praising for a few years now. The only downside is that it is published in Japan and much harder to acquire elsewhere. Fortunately, Allplay has come to the rescue and partnered with publisher Itten to sell their game in the US! In Viking Seesaw, players take turns adding items of various weights, shapes, and materials to an unstable viking ship. While you try to get rid of all your pieces, the ship will threaten to teeter-totter and force you to take more cargo. What a splendid time.

Linko | 2-5 Players | $13

Linko feels like a stone-cold classic that has been around for decades, but it’s actually only 11 years old (which admittedly is still pretty old in board game years). This card game of one-upmanship is all about playing stronger sets to steal opponent sets. Initially it may seem flimsy, but that is merely the outside of the onion. Peel back the layers and you’ll find a brilliant little card game with surprising depth and stimulating discoveries.

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Perfect Games for you Holiday Party

Hot Streak | 2-9+ Players | $45

Every now and then, a game comes along that feels like a revelation, an event, a masterpiece. Hot Streak might just be such a game, thanks in large part to its sublime production that complements a truly wacky experience. You’ll unroll a long race track from this vibrant box and place upon it four zany mascots. As a group of degenerate gamblers, you and your friends will place your bets on these unreliable mascots before watching the chaos unfold. It’s silly and raucous in the best possible way.

Alibis | 2-6 Players | $19

Fans of the widely loved Codenames or similar games will find much to enjoy in Alibis. This cooperative challenge has virtually no downtime because players all think of their own clues and then guess each other’s words at the same time. It feels good when another player guesses your two words, and it feels amazing when you guess everything else correctly.

Ito | 2-10 Players | $18

Ito is like a faster, leaner, cooperative version of Wavelength — a party game of relativity along a topic spectrum. Players are dealt a secret card from 1 to 100 and must play their cards facedown in order based on the clues everyone gives within a spectrum. It’s portable and moreish, making it a great game to travel with for the holidays.

Tearable Quest | 1-99 Players | $9

Tearable Quest asks the question that everyone has been dying to answer: Who among you is the best paper tearer? With a timer counting down and a small sheet of paper pinched between your fingers, you must carefully rip out sets of symbols to complete quests and defeat monsters. One slip up could cost you dearly, yet time is of the essence. It’s the kind of novel stress that won’t be for everyone, but it comes with tons of sheets and works with any size group.

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Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

Leviathan Wilds | 1-4 Players | $74

For my tastes, great big box cooperative games are very hard to come by. Either they get bogged down with too many rules and systems, or they lack the allure to keep me coming back for more. Leviathan Wilds finds a perfect balance by marrying smooth, engaging gameplay with thrillingly meaningful variety. You must work together to scale a massive leviathan, survive its attacks, and rescue it from its curse. The game features a large spiral bound book of different scenarios and a cornucopia of character combinations.

SILOS | 2-4 Players | $55

From Bitewing Games

It’s a rare treat to come across an experience as unique as SILOS. Even in Reiner Knizia’s catalogue of over 800 board games, there is really nothing like it. SILOS is a tactical area majority slot machine of abducting humans and cows during an alien invasion. On your turn, position your figures wisely, reveal a card, and resolve the event. There are many incentives and possibilities pulling you in different directions, but it helps to keep your cool and play the odds. If you happen to distinguish your alien-in-disguise with a graduation cap, then they’ll be all the more influential in human society. 

Calimala | 2-5 Players | $50

Calimala just got a lovely new edition thanks to Ian O’Toole and Alley Cat Games. While the core gameplay was always compelling, it now looks prettier than ever. Calimala has an interesting worker placement twist where you’ll stack a tile between two actions to perform those actions, and when later players go to that same spot they’ll activate your worker for you again. You can even bank actions as cards if you can’t or don’t want to do freebie actions. And rather than let the stacks of workers get too high, Calimala solves this problem by kicking out the fourth worker in a space to trigger an area majority scoring event. It’s a super clean and satisfying system that has been a hit with my group.

EGO | 2-5 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

The more I play EGO, the more I realize it is one of my all-time favorite games. This epic push-your-luck auction competition sees players acting as human ambassadors who traverse the galaxy together in a bumbling quest to befriend alien civilizations. Along the way, you’ll encounter various intelligent species who are quick to take offense, especially as you push-your-luck to gain more cards. Growing and managing your hand is key to success, because you’ll desperately need cards during the game of chicken auction events where ambassadors try to outshine each other. While there are plenty of electric moments and swings of fortune, the game remains highly strategic by letting you see the entire sequence of events and plan your moves carefully.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game | 1-4 Players | $27

The Crew is a cooperative trick taker that has cemented itself as a card game classic thanks to the addicting series of missions. But that doesn’t mean it has to hog all the spotlight. For those who want even more of its card play goodness, or if you prefer a more thematic touch, then The Fellowship of the Ring is a great alternative. You’ll get to play as characters from the beloved fellowship as your progress through Tolkien’s adventurous tale. 

Gingham | 2-4 Players | $39

From Bitewing Games

Gingham might be the most clever strategy game I’ve ever signed. Players are connecting, stockpiling, and claiming sweets as their ants sprawl across the picnic blanket. It’s a game of jockeying for turn order while you chain together your pieces. It has everything: careful long-term planning, spicy tactical pivoting, and powerful ability triggering. After dozens of plays, I still enjoy the tough tradeoffs and tense interaction it presents. I’m excited for more folks to sink their teeth into this sweet new release.

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Black Friday Deals

Starting Friday and continuing through Monday, Allplay is hosting a HUGE Black Friday sale featuring 10 Bitewing Games titles and over 100 other games and products from a dozen different publishers. Good luck finding a better place to shop board games this weekend than that. Check it out here (live Friday through Monday).

Here are some deals you can look forward to specifically from Bitewing (for our base games and their add-ons):

• Shuffle & Swing
• Cat Blues: The Big Gig
• Cascadero
• Cascadito
• Spectral
• Gussy Gorillas
• Soda Smugglers
• Pumafiosi
• Hot Lead
• Trailblazers: Sasquatch Expansion

Happy Holidays and Happy Gaming!