Betrayal at House on the Hill ($33 at the time of publication)

Player count: 3 to 6

Duration: 60 minutes

Rules: website (PDF)

Ages: 12+

Why we love it: Betrayal at House on the Hill is what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft wrote a Scooby-Doo episode and turned it into a party game. Each player is assigned a character with different traits, including sanity, knowledge, might, and speed. As they explore a spooky mansion, they collect items and experience wacky, atmospheric events, from running into spiders to playing games with a creepy child who gets aggressive with his toys. The strategy in Betrayal at House on the Hill is minimal, but the camp factor is high, so players can get goofy. Because more than 100 different scenarios can ensue (all reminiscent of your favorite horror/sci-fi movies or TV shows), this game has great replay value.

How it’s played: In the first phase, players collaboratively build and explore a haunted mansion by placing room tiles. In the rooms, players may acquire an event, item, or omen card. The players read the cards out loud—silly voices encouraged, in the spirit of telling a ghost story with a flashlight under your face around a campfire. For event cards, players may face a dice challenge based on their traits. Players can also acquire magical items around the house to help them later on, but discovering omen cards has a chance of triggering the second phase of the game. In the second phase, called the Haunt, one player turns traitor and is assigned one of more than a hundred unique scenarios. The traitor faces off against the remaining players in a dramatic final battle until one side emerges victorious.

—Marni Kostman, software engineer

Mysterium ($38 at the time of publication)

Player count: 2 to 7

Duration: 60 minutes

Rules: website (PDF)

Apps: Android (mobile game), iOS (mobile game)

Ages: 10+

Why we love it: Part Clue and part Dixit, Mysterium turns players into psychics who must work together to solve a murder case based on ambiguous, beautifully illustrated “vision” cards that are open to interpretation. While some people love the collaborative feel and mystery of the psychic role, I’m all about playing the ghost who delivers the visions. Mysterium requires you to find the subtle connections between cards and consider how each person is most likely to read them. It’s even more fun—or frustrating, depending on how far into the game you are—when people wildly misinterpret your message.

How it’s played: One player takes on the role of the ghost, who tries to convey the details of their murder via vision cards illustrated with objects, characters, and dreamlike landscapes. The remaining players are psychics who must solve the murder case using the vision cards to pick out the correct person, place, and thing cards—each psychic must solve a different facet of the case to advance. A common color, shape, or theme might be the only connection between a set of vision cards and a person card. The psychics bet on who they think placed a correct guess each round, and whoever wins the most bets has the greatest advantage during the final round. In the last round, the ghost gives the psychics one final vision, and any psychic who guesses correctly wins.

—Signe Brewster, staff writer

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 ($45 at the time of publication)

Player count: 2 to 4

Duration: 12 to 24 sessions, 60 to 120 minutes each

Rules: website (PDF)

Ages: 13+

Why we love it: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is an amazing step up for people who love classic Pandemic but want more of a plot and more of a challenge. You’ll need a dedicated crew of friends to play, though. The game takes place across 12 to 24 sessions, during which you’ll mark up the board, change cityscapes, and tear up and destroy rule cards. Every session adds new elements. Pandemic Legacy is also radically harder than its progenitor, with rules that dynamically increase the challenge if you’re having a victory streak. I don’t think we won a single game that wasn’t down to the wire.

How it’s played: As in the original Pandemic, each player in Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 takes on a specific role to limit the spread of four viruses across the globe and research a cure. But then things … change. As you play more games in the season, the viruses mutate, rules change, cities rise and fall, and new character options and abilities (and penalties) come into play. Each session is different from the one before because game modifications are permanent and carry over between sessions. The continuous gameplay creates the feeling of a coherent, evolving story, and we were always curious (and terrified) to find out what would happen next.

—Tim Barribeau, editor

Star Wars: Outer Rim ($52 at the time of publication)

Player count: 1 to 4

Duration: 2 to 3 hours (or more or less, depending how you play)

Rules: website

Ages: 14+

Why we love it: Set in the “Original Trilogy” era of Star Wars, Outer Rim lets you play as a smuggler, scoundrel, bounty hunter, or all three as you travel between wretched hives of scum and villainy in search of “Fame.” Playing as classic Star Wars characters is obviously a treat, but our favorite aspect of Outer Rim is that it doesn’t promote the cutthroat, relationship-destroying competitiveness of games like Catan or Risk. You’re all playing for Fame, but it’s not a zero-sum resource. There’s no need to attack other players. You can if you want—you are a scoundrel, after all—but there’s equal benefit to helping others. Despite its complexity, the game is also easy to pick up and exceptionally well balanced; over a few dozen games, the winners never finished more than a few Fame points higher than the “losers.”

How it’s played: Each player gets a basic starter ship and chooses one of eight characters. Options include Lando, Boba Fett, Jyn Erso, and even Doctor Aphra from the comics. Each has special skills that benefit different styles of play. (For instance, Han Solo provides a bonus to your ship’s speed, letting you complete missions faster.) The goal of the game is to gain Fame points, which you can earn in a variety of ways: collecting bounties, delivering illegal cargo, and more. As you make money from these jobs, you can upgrade your gear, and even replace your starter ship with the famous Millennium Falcon, Slave I, and others. During each turn, a player can choose to move their ship between planets, purchase upgrades, and then do jobs, collect bounties, and so on. Jobs are games-within-the-game: multistep activities like heists or the infamous Kessel Run, requiring multiple dice rolls, with wins based on your character and crew’s skills. Although the game can run long in its standard first-to-10-points mode (especially with four players), we found that it can be equally fun with a set time limit. In that case, the winner is the person with the highest Fame when time expires.

—Geoffrey Morrison, editor at large