Top board games & puzzles of the week: Tesseract, Race to the Raft & The Stifling Dark

Spend quality time with your family; get them to play these top board games and puzzles with you. From social puzzles to a dice manipulation game, your evening will be anything but dull.

Looking to have some fun with your partner or kids on a Sunday night instead of mindlessly surfing the internet? These top board games and puzzles of the week are the answer. They have you rescuing kitties from a burning island and manipulating a mysterious alien device.

Cooperative games are a great way to spend time with the people you love because they get everyone working together. One of our favorite cooperative games this week is Race to the Raft. Satisfying and social, this game has the feel-good factor of rescuing cats.

Then, The Stifling Dark will have everyone gripping their flashlight. Try to uncover the adversary and leave the otherworldly setting alive.

Treat your family to board game fun with these top games and puzzles.

Tesseract—A Cooperative Dice Manipulation Game

Save humanity from a strange alien device hovering over the planet in Tesseract. This cooperative dice game consists of a cube of 64 custom dice on a rotating platform and is suitable for 1–4 players.

The object is to remove, adjust and contain the cubes, placing them into a containment matrix. But be warned, the Tesseract primes itself at the end of every turn. The game fails if it breaches 7 times.

Back this project for $50 on Kickstarter.

Race to the Raft

Love cats and cooperative play? Then check out Race to the Raft, a social puzzle board game designed for 1–4 players. Here’s the premise: the Isle of Cats is on fire, and evil Lord Vesh is harvesting the island’s resources.

Any remaining cats must race to a rumored raft on the other side of the island. This colorful, imaginative game has you working with your group to build pathways that lead the trapped cats to safety.

The rules are simple to learn but can be made more complex. It’s one of our top board games and puzzles of the week.

Preorder it for $58 on Kickstarter.

The Stifling Dark: A Horror Board Game

Are horror-themed games more your cup of tea? Then The Stifling Dark is a board game worth adding to your family game nights. This game uses flashlights to simulate your line of sight in the 1-vs-many hidden movement game.

In The Stifling Dark, one player takes the role of adversary, preventing the others from leaving. Meanwhile, the other players (investigators) try to unlock doors or use their flashlights to uncover the adversary.

Preorder it for $50 on Kickstarter.

Mystery Puzzles by Odd Pieces: Series 2

Do you find jigsaw puzzles a little underwhelming? Mystery Puzzles by Odd Pieces: Series 2 is different. Never dull, it meshes the traditional jigsaw puzzle with storytelling comics, mysteries, and illustrations similar to Where’s Waldo.

To solve the puzzle’s mystery, players need to build the puzzle. However, you don’t know what you’re building, so each piece is a surprise. What’s more, each piece includes a clue or a part of the story, which is why it made our list of top board games and puzzles.

Pledge $25 on Kickstarter for 1 puzzle.

CUBED: NEXT LEVEL DOMINOES

Introduce your loved ones to a modern take on the classic game of dominoes with CUBED: NEXT LEVEL DOMINOES. Featuring 88 PVC game pieces in volumetric shapes, this game is dominoes enhanced.

The goal of CUBED is to be the first player to get rid of all their game pieces. How do you do this? By matching color and height to play a piece. You can also prevent other players from placing a piece with a blocking piece.

Preorder it for about $55 on Kickstarter.

What games are you playing now? Tell us about them in the comment section.