Top board games of the week: Moon, Halves, and Weird Little Elf

Looking for games to liven up your get-togethers? Check out this week's top board games from Kickstarter to get the competition started.

Sunshine City is one of the week’s best games

Want to throw better parties? Maybe Thursday nights at your local hangout could be more fun. Whatever your situation, get everyone to ditch their phones and interact with each other by preordering some of this week’s best board games on Kickstarter.

Overall, this week’s titles are super fun to play in a group and include a game about strange Christmas elves and a print-and-play where you create a solar-sustained city. Let’s discover them.

Moon

Love base-building games and space exploration? Then check out Moon; it’s the third game in a trilogy from Haakon Hoel Gaarder and Sinister Fish Games. Designed for 1 to 5 players, this pick-and-pass base-building game has you and your fellow players compete to build a capital city on the Moon.

The setting is 100 years into the future. You and your opponents must develop infrastructures and plan resources as you construct your base over 3 phases. The objective is to own the most popular base by the game’s end.

Superbly designed with an excellent scoring system, Moon keeps players engaged and has great replay value.

Get Moon for about $36 on Kickstarter.

Halves: a word game for the ruthless

Are you the wordsmith of your family or group of friends? Test your verbal guessing skills with Halves: a word game for the ruthless. Created by Frank Carter and Dean Richardson of the English punk rock band The Rattlesnakes, this game is a fun, competitive way to pass the time on planes, at the office, in a bar, etc.

In Halves, you use your smarts to guess a word on your fellow players’ cards to win. The only trouble is, their clues can be misleading. Meanwhile, you want to prevent them from guessing yours. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

One of this week’s best board games, Halves is suitable for 2–8 players who are at least 7-years-old.

Preorder Halves for about $18 on Kickstarter

Weird Little Elf

Start your 2022 Christmas shopping early with the Weird Little Elf party game. This tiny party game makes a great stocking stuffer and is guaranteed to liven your holiday gatherings.

Here’s the storyline: it’s the night before Christmas, and Santa’s Elves are acting strangely. The rumor is that an evil imp has snuck into the workshop to destroy the toys and Christmas along with it. However, Elves can be sly, too, and Santa can’t tell who’s who. He gathers the elves to ask them a simple question.

In this game, players take turns being Santa, asking a question for the other players (the elves) to answer. One of the elves is secretly the imp who must follow a special rule that could give away his identity. The first player to correctly guess the imp 3 times wins.

Get a single copy of Weird Little Elf for $13 on Kickstarter.

Wyrd Science Issue 3

A magazine that celebrates board games to RPGs, Wyrd Science has a third issue available for preorder on Kickstarter. While it’s not a board game, this premium print magazine made our list of the week’s best board games for its insights into the history and future of tabletop games.

Issue 3 delves into horror games with a tour of the history of horror-themed RPGs by Shannon Appelcline, the author of the Designers and Dragons series. You’ll also hear from other horror RPG experts like Stuart Martyn and Nils Hintz.

What’s more, linocut art by Mat Pringle helps set the tone for incredible reading about some of the best board games to play.

Want to help Wyrd Science Issue 3 come to life? Subscribe for about $11 on Kickstarter.

Sunshine City

Frustrated by governmental inaction on climate change? Take matters into your own hands when you play Sunshine City. In this roll-and-write print-and-play game, you’ll upgrade your fossil-fuel-reliant city into a solar-powered metropolis.

How will you do it? By upgrading your buildings, creating new technologies, and informing the public about the benefits of solar, of course. The first player to upgrade their city wins.

Meanwhile, you can print the entire game at home since the rewards are digital. No pieces will be shipped, making it a very sustainable game. All you have to supply are 2 dice, a pencil, and 3 colored tokens per player, which can be anything including Skittles, pebbles, and thumbtacks.

Get the Sunshine City PDFs for $5 on Kickstarter.

This week’s board games definitely have a party-game flair to them. Want to see more board games we love at Gadget Flow? Check out our listings or Magazine for new accessories, games, and suggestions. We cover many sorts of games, and you’ll want to read about all of them.