Best Travel Board Games for Adults of 2022

Best Travel Board Games for Adults

Taking a trip by yourself or with friends and family? Heading for the national parks while staying at train stations just so you can see the country? You might be wondering what are the perfect games to take with you on your Road Trips? On this list you’ll find the full gamut of wonderful portable games, some that are teeny tiny, but infinitely replayable, some that are perfect for couples to share on a train ride.

Maybe one or two for larger groups heading in a nightmarish hoard to try and grab the last beer, and “beach” of an otherwise barren year. We’ve already covered lots of games that would qualify in previous lists. Small, simpler games, like love letter, the mind, six, nymph, or star realms. There are also travel specific versions of games we covered like Hive or Quirkle. Both of those are a great travel edition and easy to pack.

If we can talk about new games, we will, and so we shall. So take all the ones I’ve just listed as honorable mentions and on we go, Whether your traveling to different countries or seeing iconic landmarks, grab that travel bag cause here are the top 10 portable travel game and also, while you’re here, let us know in the comments if there is anything else we should add to this travel-sized games list.

Welcome to the Dungeon

Portability level, coat pocket.

We’ve got fun and games, well we got a popular game and it’s Welcome to the Dungeon coming in first on our Best Travel Games list. It’s the coat pocket W to the D and is a great game that works well with four players: three or even heads up with two! You start this classic game with a plucky adventurer, maybe the warrior if you’re basic or the barbarian if you’re horny, pick one and lay out all of their equipment. Your hero will be using this to fight their way through a dangerous dungeon full of horrible beasts.

Your turn goes like this.

You have three things you can do. You can look at the top card of the monster deck and put that monster in the dungeon face down. That means when the hero eventually enters a dungeon, they will definitely have to fight it. You can look at the card and decide not to put it in the dungeon, removing it from the game. But if you do that, you’ll need to remove a bit of equipment from your hero, making the dungeon easier, but at the same time making your hero weaker. Which is a problem because you don’t know exactly which monsters have already been put in the dungeon.

The third option is to pass, once all but one player has passed that player must take the hero and their remaining equipment through the dungeon turning over monster after monster and dealing damage to their hero. If the hero dies, you’ve lost that round, lose twice and you’re out. If the hero made it with health points to spare, you’ve won that round, if you win twice you win the whole game. It’s a tense juicy little bastard of a game, pushing your luck, the barbarians, bulging pecs, terrible failures and glorious gambles. An excellent example of the top travel games adults.

Harvest Dice

Portability level, coat pocket.

Next on the list for the best board games for travel is Harvest Dice! Roll and write games are a great way to bring a strategy game on your next trip and not need extra luggage! For anyone not familiar with them a roll and write game is when you roll dice and use those random results to try and solve a little puzzle in front of you. Chain combos perhaps, tick off objectives, take risks.

Yahtzee is a simple game of roll and write and also a bloody lovely little travel game if you ask me. We very much like Yahtzee here at Puzzle Beat, but if you’ve played it to death, why not try harvest dice?

Look how small and lovely it is! Look at this little pig. These are the components in the game. It is mega simple. You roll your dice red dice are tomatoes, green are lettuce and orange are carrot, or if you’re color blind circles, squares and triangles. This is also a game that should be added to Best board games for children 6-8 years old.

At the start of a round all the dice are rolled and players take in turns to take a die from the pool and plant it in their garden in the column that matches a number on the die. As your garden fills up the game becomes harder as you run out of viable spaces to put new produce because your neighbors keep taking all the carrots you desperately need and feeding them to their pig because and I’m quoting the game here. “If you feed your pig enough, you can activate one of your piggy powers to help you out of a tight spot.” Oh, I love it!

It’s peaceful, yet tense, solitary, but with loads of ways to screw each other over and the theme is purely joyful. An excellent party game in a tiny box!

Sprawlopolis

Portability level, trouser pocket.

You heard me right Sprawlopolis is a tiny game and will fit in just about any pocket invented by man or beast. It’s a game, that’s very simple, very powerful and I’m currently addicted to playing it by myself. That’s right! It plays up to four, but if you’re traveling alone, this game still rules as a first player game. That is quite rare making in into my best games list because it’s so versatile.

The aim of the game involves taking cards from this deck and laying them down to build a city. You’re trying to connect roads, connect city blocks of the same color, maybe overlap cards to make the perfect free real estate. It’s a lovely little puzzle. What really makes the game work though, is that all the cards are double-sided with city bits on the front, but different scoring conditions on the back.

At the top of the game you’ll, take three random cards and turn them over to reveal their scoring conditions and that’ll be it for the game. Add the numbers in the top left corner of these three cards. That’s the goal you have to reach to win have a big section of the same color. Perhaps you get points, fulfill one of the random objectives on the three cards, you get points, but do you have loads of disconnected roads that lead to nowhere? Suddenly, you’ve just lost all your points.

With loads of different combinations of scoring cards there is a lot of game in this little box. I love it so much, it’s hands down in my top 3 perfect travel game, perfect for long journeys making it the best board games to travel with.

Deep sea Adventure

Portability level, trouser pocket.

The micro games start coming and they don’t stop coming and in this one you get to drown in the sea! Isn’t that chipper! Deep Sea Adventure is a micro game from one of the industry’s leading micro game companies Oink. They’ve made a whole rainbow of travel version games this size from, Fake Artists goes to New York to other reclaimed games like Startup or Insider, but deep sea adventure is probably one of the best fun travel games.

You all play submariners journeying along this little track of chips that goes down to the ocean depths, on the hunt for treasure. You roll two dice to move a little piece further down the track hopping over other players as you go. When you come to a stop, you can choose to pick up one of these chips. These are worth points, but here’s the problem, the deeper tokens are worth more, but in order to cash in your chips and lock in those points you have to make it back to the submarine. Meaning at some point, you’re gonna have to turn around and start Heading home, but here’s the double problem, you’re losing oxygen all the time.

Do you only grab a few bits of treasure and hightail it back? Or do you go for the big score and risk losing everything if you don’t make it back alive? Agonizing choices in this game in only a tiny amount of space!

Mafia de Cuba

Portability level, hand luggage.

Going on holiday with a big group where there’s no easy way to seat people around a single table? Then Mafia de Cuba is for you as it’s the best travel-themed board games you can play! Best part is, no table required! Everything you need is this box. One of you is the godfather you’ve assembled together all the members of your family and decided to pass around your box of fine Cuban cigars. Only problem is that’s also the box where you’ve hidden your precious diamonds.

When the game starts, the box will contain between 10 and 15 diamonds. Only the godfather knows how many. It will also contain character chips. The box will travel around the group being passed from player to player who will take it in turns. To secretly steal something from the box you can either take one or more diamonds, making you a thief, or one of the chips making you that character.

Take a white chip, you’re loyal to the godfather, but take a blue chip you’re an undercover agent, stuff like that. When the box finally comes back to the godfather it’s up to them to interrogate everyone. Sift through the thieves lies, work out who’s loyal, use their information of what was in the box and when to try and get all your diamonds back. When the godfather thinks someone’s a thief, they can say empty your pockets and if you’ve correctly identified them, they have to give you all the diamonds they stole. But if you tell someone who didn’t steal from you to empty their pockets, you lose a life, if you lose two and you’re out. Now that’s what I call quality time with “the Family”. There are very few games you can play on a big couch full of people but Mafia de Cuba fits that scenario perfectly.

A perfect blend of hubbub lies, funny voices and getting to walk around like your Puaro. Jacques!

The Crew Mission Deep Sea

Portability level, hand luggage.

All right this one’s a bit of a cheat as we have featured The Crew Quest for Planet Nine on our list of best co-ops but hey, the sequel’s just dropped. So let’s talk about it again. The game revolves around a series of missions, each one an individual game in and of itself. Starting easy and getting harder with new rules and complexities.

Everyone has a hand of cards in four suits: blue, green, pink and yellow, with a trump suit of submarines. It’s a cooperative game so you’ll be working together to contribute cards to a series of tricks, with the mission of each game likely revolving around a certain player having to win a trick containing a certain card. Maybe for the first mission all we have to do is make sure I win. Whichever trick contains the blue four card, or I have to win the first trick – super simple missions, except that the players cannot talk about what’s in their hands. Instead using a communication token to impart one bit of info like “this is my lowest blue card”, or “this Is my only pink card”. Mission Deep sea is a truly fantastic and brain burning game for extended travel. Not only because it’s based around different missions, so each new game has a fresh feel. But, unlike its predecessor, far more attention has been paid to a wider variety of tasks to complete. The Levels of difficulty with tasks carefully ranked numerically based on how hard they are, so you never feel like the game’s leaving you behind.

If you only have room to pack one game, this box is possibly the most fun travel card game of any.

The Fox in the Forest

Portability level, hand luggage.

If there’s one disadvantage to The Crew is that it really requires three or more players to truly sing. It’s still one of the best board games. But if you love trick taking card games, and there’s only two of you, step right up! The Fox in the Forest, an amazing little card game where sometimes the key to winning is to lose.

Each turn is super simple one player plays a card, then the other follows suit. Whoever plays the highest card of the chosen suit or the trump suit wins that trick. Each round consists of exactly 13 tricks, but here’s the problem, how many tricks you’ve won of those 13 determines how many points you earn for the round. Win all of the tricks you’re greedy, earning you zero points. Win none of them and you’re humble, boom six points for you! Which sees players more often than not competing to lose each trick, which is such an upside down concept that the game consistently makes.

You laugh throwing up your hands and shouting oh [, __ ]. I won again. However, you can also get points by winning between seven and nine tricks, which again makes the hilarious dilemma. Oh no, I’ve purposely structured my cards to be as bad as possible, but I’ve accidentally won too many tricks, and now I have to switch my style into playing well, but my cards aren’t good enough for that. The different ways to play this fun game makes this a must have in your simple card games collection.

It’s a brilliant puzzle that demands repeated play to get to grips with, and also it helps that it’s super small and super pretty to look at.

Condottiere

Portability level, hand luggage.

Speaking of small travel games for adults. Who says you can’t take war on holiday. Well, no one actually, that’s pretty much what war is. And this war is for Italy, home of pizza and men who are incapable of doing up the top button on a shirt. My friend Michael who is a type of mean but brilliant board gamer, who can absolutely go [, __, ] himself? Every round will be a battle for a region on the board. Win three regions connected to each other or five total and congratulations you’ve won Italy. Make sure you keep the receipt.

Battles go like this, every turn you can either play a card to your army or pass. When everyone’s passed the battle is over. Whoever’s got the best army wins the most cards. Just add the number on the card to the attacking force. But some have special powers like nerfing all the big guns, allowing you to take cards back into your hand, ending the battle early, lots of Fun stuff! But here’s the major Italian rub: you only get 10 cards and you don’t replenish them between battles. You can only get another hand of 10 when all but one player has run out of cards.

So it is an excellent game of literally picking your battles, making sure you fight for territory you want. But also not so much that it leaves you screwed for the next two three even four battles! Lots of crunchy choices in a travel sized box.

Second Chance

Portability level, hand luggage.

Time for another, wonderful, roll and write. It really is a style of game that shines on the go, instead of dice and farming.

This time around, it’s all about cards and Tetris. Need something to settle your nerves after a hectic day? This is your game, it’s also crazy, simple. Everyone gets a grid of paper, a pencil and their own unique card with a shape they have to draw in the middle of their sheet. After that, every turn two cards are flipped over and each player picks one of the two shapes to draw somewhere on their sheet. And if you run out of space, you’re out, simple.

The name of the game comes from a fun mechanic whereby, if you’ve been a spoon brain dingus, and can’t fit either of your two shapes on your sheet, you will get a second chance. You flip over one more card just for you, and if you can fit that shape instead, you’re still in the game.

It can be played solo or with as many players as you want! Slowly doodling away, making shapes fit together, forming order out of chaos. It’s the perfect antidote to airport mania making it on the list of travel size games for adults!

Hanamikoji

Portability level, hand luggage.

One of the best and most beautiful two-player games going. Hanamikoji is a fascinating little puzzle showcasing different cultures. The kind of game that keeps you coming back over and over trying to figure it out from every angle. The goal of the game, you’re trying to catch seven geishas each worth a number of points ranging from five to two. However, many points they’re worth that’s how many cards there are in the deck of their favorite items. Over the course of each round you’ll be playing cards to try and gain their favor, “notice me Senpai” by the end of the round.

Once all cards are played, whoever’s played the most cards to each geisha will gain their favor token. If you gain the favor of four separate geishas, you win. If you gain the favor of geisha’s worth collectively 11 points, you win! Fairly simple, but each round you’ll be second guessing which geisha your opponent is going for. Some cards are played in secret, some played openly. In some cases, you’ll be forced to offer your opponents cards for them to play.

Each round only consists of four actions and it’s possible to lose the whole game in a single round, resulting in a process of bluff, risk balancing, card counting, plate spinning. Deducing, which geishas are lost, causes which can be won away from your opponent. It’s an incredibly lean, fiendishly tight bit of design where each game you walk away with a new understanding of strategy and an “I’ll get you next time gadget” itch. It’s incredibly addictive and perfect for wiling away hours on a train.

That’s our list of good travel board games. What are your favorite portable board games to take with you on holiday, let us know in the comments! If you’re looking more for family board games suited for young kids then you’ll want to read this article.

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