Fight off the boredom with these five board game recommendations, from John-Paul Davies and Ben Woolhead

You’ve Got Crabs (Exploding Kittens)

This is a new one for us. A one-joke card game, with additional pieces, that somehow never loses its humour. The rules are complicated to explain for a game so easy to play. Individually you collect a hand of four punningly-named cards (Crabuccino, Taxi Crab, Crabrador Retriever etc.) from the deck, or The Ocean as it’s named. The USP is that you have to indicate to your partner, through some prearranged signal only known to each other, that you have a full hand. This should prompt them to point at you and shout: “You’ve got crabs!” Your glory can be stolen by another team spotting your signal or, of course, you can set others up with fake signals. Somehow, it works for all ages. JPD 

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Deep Sea Adventure (Oink Games)

The problem with collaborative games like, er, Pandemic is that one player tends to assume control, coordinating everyone else’s moves to the point that it just becomes an elaborate form of solitaire for one person and a spectator sport for everyone else. The genius of Jun and Goro Sasaki’s Deep Sea Adventure is that it combines the traditional dimensions of inter-player competition and antagonism with an element of shared jeopardy.

Admittedly, this makes the set-up somewhat contrived: you are all rival treasure-hunting divers, but forced by lack of funds to hire a communal submarine and rely on a single oxygen tank. The deeper you dive, the richer the potential rewards – but for every bit of treasure you recover, you lose one off your own dice roll as well as depleting the mutual air supply.

After a few games (and a few harsh lessons), you start to figure out that arguably the best tactic is not to risk plumbing the depths and instead to collect the rich stuff on your way back up to the sub. Gamble if you like, but it’s amazing how quickly the oxygen can run out, leaving you stranded far below the surface, using your last breath to curse your own greed – and that of your fellow divers.

With a box that’s barely bigger than a pack of cards, Deep Sea Adventure is as pocket sized and portable as games come, but the size of the counters and treasure tiles would make me nervous about taking it to the pub. It’s proved a real winner with family and friends, though, and at the present moment, in lockdown, it’s a rare evening when we don’t feel the lure of the sea. BW

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221B Baker Street (Gibsons)

This is a childhood classic, originally created in the late 70s, although it is pretty tricky and has a 10+ age guide on the new edition. Every player is Sherlock Holmes and the first to crack one of the 80 cases is the winner and de facto supersleuth. The action takes place around the 2D streets of London, beautifully illustrated and painted (depending on your edition). Clues are to be collected to find out whodunnit, why and with what. You can even use, or abuse, your PI powers by locking up the buildings you visit – tobacconist, museum, the docks etc – to stop others getting a clue or to entice them on a wild goose chase away from 221B Baker Street. Much better than Cluedo and fun in pairs if you want a Watson on your side. The game is afoot! JPD

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Kingdomino (Coiledspring Games)

They say an Englishman’s home is his castle, but one man’s place of sanctuary is another man’s prison. If you’re finding yourself frustrated at coronavirus confinement within your own four walls, tormented by an irrepressible urge to broaden your horizons and expand your little empire, then Kingdomino could be the game for you.

It starts with a castle, but from there you build outwards, constructing your own five-by-five grid by judiciously selecting and placing domino-style territory tiles. The objective is to connect squares representing the same type of landscape (lake, mountains, forest, etc), but these landscapes are only worth points at the final reckoning if one or more of the squares has a crown on it. Multiply the number of squares for each territory by the number of crowns on it, tot up the territory totals and you’ve got your final score.

Unlike other empire-building games, Kingdomino doesn’t demand mutual belligerence, though it’s not entirely amicable – nabbing a tile that someone else desperately wants to increase the value of their land is sweetly satisfying and merits a Schadenfreude cackle. A snappier, easier-to-grasp cousin of Carcassonne, it’s a former winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award, which reflects its perfect mixture of skill/tactics and luck and that it both works as a two-player head-to-head game and is accessible for kids. And if you get sick of playing against your immediate family, you can always compete against friends and the wider world on Board Game Arena (en.boardgamearena.com). BW

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Eyetoons (Ginger Fox)

A bit more niche, this is definitely one for those who know their music: being 30+ is an advantage, but it’s fine for a music geek of any age. Taking elements from Catchphrase, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Pictionary, Eyetoons is a great team challenge. There is a board involved but it’s the three different types of card that run the game. You either have to hum the tune, draw a picture that shows the title or decipher the cryptic picture clues for song and artist. It’s hard and has become known as “the game that no-one likes” in my house – but with the right crowd, it’s a party winner. So invite over your most knowledgeable musical mates and… oh, well it is definitely Skype-worthy. Self-isolation Eyetoons, anyone? JPD

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