13 of the Best Date-Night Board Games for Couples

Sometimes, deciding on what to play for your gaming date night can be hard - but don’t worry, we’re here to help! Below you will find a list of some of our favourites that will suit whatever mood you are currently in. You can find these games (and more!) at our Snakes & Lattes locations, so drop by and have a date night with us!

boop.

Competitive. Cute. Easy-to-learn

boop. Competitive. Cute. Easy-to-learn. Courtesy of publisher Smirk & Dagger Games.

In this deceptively cute game, you and your partner compete against each other to be the first to line up three cats in a row, on the quilted playing board. Sounds simple enough? Well, not so much! In order to do so, you must first graduate your starting kittens into cats by lining three kittens up. This is not as easy as it sounds, because kittens and cats can be rambunctious! Everytime you put a kitten or cat down onto the grid, it will “boop” every other kitten or cat away - sometimes even off the board itself.

This sweet little competitive game is easy to learn, and is a perfect board game for couples and date nights.

Codenames: Duet

Co-operative. Communication. Word Association

Released in 2015, the original Codenames was an instant hit amongst board game enthusiasts and casual players alike. While it is a fantastic word-association game for larger groups, it did not work as well for smaller, more intimate settings. This is where Codenames: Duet comes in.

In this game, you and your partner work together to identify your team of secret agents, known only by their codenames. It is your job to give single-word clues to help each other figure out which word in a 5x5 grid refers to the team’s agents - all the while avoiding the three secret assassin words. For those who are up to it, Codenames: Duet also offers a campaign-style series of challenges for you and your partner to overcome.

This game is going to test your deduction capabilities, teamwork, as well as your communications skills as a couple.

Concept

Co-operative. Communication. Deduction. Simple but challenging

If you want to take your communications skills to the next level, Concept is the perfect game for your next date night. Players are presented with a board of dozens of icons that represent various concepts, such as “creature”, “eyes”, “flat”, “small”, “spherical”, “red”. It is your job to draw a card, pick an item, and communicate it to your partner using these icons. Animal-round-water-red-arm-scissors might say to your partner “crab”, but how will you communicate deeper or more esoteric ideas, like “Kate Middleton”, or the phrase “Early bird gets the worm”?

There is nothing quite like the sense of connection you get when you work together and successfully figure out what the game is trying to get you to say.

Fog of Love

Roleplaying. Communication. Semi-co-operative. Story-telling

Fog of Love

Courtesy of publisher Floodgate Games.

Have you ever felt like you were living in a rom-com? Or maybe you’ve been hankering for a bit of drama in your life? Fog of Love brings all the ups-and-downs of a romantic comedy movie - all the awkward conversations, heartfelt laughs, and hard compromises - into a board game.

You and your partner take on the roles of interesting fictional characters with their own personalities and quirks - maybe you’re a pilot who likes to wear cute socks and keeps an old cellphone, or maybe a workaholic office manager who yearns for adventure. It is up to you to embody these characters and roleplay as you navigate through the game together, figuring out how each other would respond to the various situations, challenges, and events that might happen in a storybook romance - and ultimately, figure out if your characters are right for each other. Your characters’ happily-ever-after is not guaranteed, but whatever life brings for them will make for a great story full of surprises, and a fun bonding experience for the players.

Fog of Love’s gorgeous design and unique premise makes it a must-try date night game.

Forbidden Series

Co-operative. Challenging. Suspenseful.

You might know of designer Matt Leacock from his work on the critically acclaimed co-operative board game Pandemic. In that game, players take on the role of agents for the CDC, in order to work together to solve a global crisis of disease outbreaks. They will have to provide aid to various cities across the globe as they take on the daunting task of racing to discover the cure for the four different disease strains spreading rapidly through the world…

Hits a little too close to home after 2020?

Well, Matt Leacock has also created a series of exciting fantastical adventures that asks the players to work together in order to win, together, in his Forbidden series of games.

In Forbidden Island, you play as a team of daring adventurers on a mission to discover and bring home four treasures on a sinking island. Your team will have to maneuver through the locations while trying to shore up the island’s defenses before it sinks, and all is lost.

In Forbidden Desert, you will find yourself stranded as you try to survive through heat exhaustion, secure water, and navigate through the shifting sand dunes, in order to find the missing pieces of a legendary flying machine buried in the ancient desert city under the sands.

Forbidden Sky is a more sci-fi take on the series. In this game, you will explore a strange floating platform hidden in the eye of a raging storm. You will have to shelter from the wind and lightning, lest you be blown off before you can connect the series of circuits needed to launch the mysterious rocket on the platform.

Forbidden Jungle is a direct sequel to the previous Forbidden Sky. Your team has successfully launched the rocket, which has brought you to an unknown planet. You will have to dodge the menacing eight-legged towering aliens as you find a way to escape, before the whole landscape collapses into a giant sinkhole.

Get Closer

Conversation. Bonding. Positive Psychology.

Get Closer is a gem of a game designed to cultivate and grow your relationship with those who are around you.

What motivates you to get up every morning? What is your favourite memory? Who are the top three most important people in your life that you feel the closest to? Get Closer asks you to reflect, open up, and connect with your partner through carefully considering and answering a series of increasingly deeper questions designed to strengthen your bonds.

There are also specific versions of the game designed for friends, fresh relationships, as well as couples looking to enhance their emotional intimacy.

Hanabi

Cooperative. Easy-to-learn. Deduction.

You can put on a fireworks show with Hanabi! In this co-operative game, named after the Japanese word for fireworks, players are working together to put together the best fireworks show using a deck of cards that consists of five different colours, each numbered one to five. Your goal is to collectively play your cards in order, from one to five, without making too many mistakes. This might sound simple at first, but there is, of course, a twist!

In this game, players hold their cards backworks, facing out. Each player will be able to know what cards everyone else has, but not their own! In order to help the other player(s) play the correct card, you must give each other hints about what they have in their hands. This creates a unique tension where players must figure out what each hint means. Are they telling you about the blue card in your hand because it should be played right now? Save it for later? Or are they trying to tell you to ditch it for another card?

This game is deceptively simple to learn, but winning will be a true challenge for the couple that wants to make some fireworks for their date night.

Kluster

Dexterity. Casual. Simple.

Sometimes the vibe is just to have a pleasant time in each other’s company, without a game that would take too much brain power away from the conversation. Kluster is a fantastic game in that regard.

Your goal is to get rid of your stash of magnets by placing them within a playing area bordered by a loop of string. You must do this carefully, however, as any magnets that snap together must be taken back to your stash as penalty, to be gotten rid of on a later turn. 

This simple game provides something to interact with, without being too much of a distraction from the present. 

Menara

Co-operative. Dexterity. Challenging.

Akin to Jenga, Menara tasks you to build a soaring, precarious structure that might be moments away from tumbling. But unlike Jenga, you will be working together in this game in order to avoid mistakes. As you build floor upon floor upon floor of this mysterious temple, the construction plans shift and change, and the temple demands more floors with every misstep. Would you and your partner be skilled enough to finish rebuilding the temple to the satisfaction of the cursed construction plans’ demands before you run out of materials - or, worse yet, before it all comes tumbling down?

Patchwork

Chill. Competitive. Satisfying.

Courtesy of publisher Lookout Games.

Did you know that competitive quilting is a thing? In this game, you and your partner are competing with each other in order to collect fabric pieces to make the perfect quilt.

Each turn, you may choose from a selection of three different pieces of Tetris-shaped fabric, purchase it using buttons (of course, what else could it be), and place it onto your board. All the while you will be trying to earn more buttons, in order to buy more fabric. Be careful, however, as an unkempt quilt full of holes will end up losing you points instead!

This game is a lovely 2-player competitive experience, without being confrontational, as each player can only influence the other’s gameplan in very limited ways. The cozy vibes don’t mean the game is easy though! Creating your quilt is enough of a challenge that it will still take careful consideration in order to win.

For those who prefer something sweet, there is also a Valentine Edition of the game, where you are competing to try and fill up your perfect box of chocolates for your sweetheart.

Similo

Deduction. Suspenseful. Easy-to-learn.

Another co-op game on the list, Similo takes the classic Guess Who?, and amps it up by injecting an element of suspense to the game.

The game comes in different flavours, each a deck of 30 cards, depicting things from a central theme. It could be animals, historical people, characters from mythology, etc. Your goal is to help the other player guess who the secret character is, out of 12 displayed on the table. The only clue you’re allowed to give each round is a single card from a hand of five of the remaining cards, and you may tell your partner whether the character card you are playing is similar or different from the secret character. It is then their job to remove “wrong” characters from the board - one for round 1, two for round 2, and so on, until hopefully the correct character remains. As the game goes on, tension rises as it becomes more and more difficult to eliminate the less obviously-wrong characters. This is a perfect board game for couples who would like to challenge their non-verbal communication skills.

Unlock!

Co-operative. Challenging. Puzzling.

Unlock! is a series of games that are designed to capture that intense excitement of solving through an escape room. Each experience comes in the form of a deck of cards that are full of various puzzles that will have you guessing throughout the hour-long adventure. There are a huge variety of themes and settings to choose from, and each has different puzzles with unique solutions. Best of all, the game comes with a play-along tutorial that will teach you the game itself as you start to play. This is a fantastic series of board games for couples who love to overcome challenges by working together.

Unmatched

Competitive. Exciting. Easy-to-learn but complex.

Fighting is a healthy part of any relationship - or at least it is with Unmatched. In this game, you can let off some steam by fighting a deathmatch using different characters with various skills. These characters can come from film, TV, classic works of literature, mythology, and even real life historical figures. Each set has a few of them to choose from, and when combined with other sets, forms a wide array of heroes and villains in the roster. You may choose to fight as Alice and the Jabberwocky from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, pitted against Medusa and a team of harpies, from classical mythology. Or how about Buffy the Vampire Slayer against Bruce Lee (yes, the Jeet-Kune-Do and film legend, because why not)? Dracula versus three raptors (yep, three dinosaurs)? Each character has an unique ability that adds flavour and fun when you fight to see who is the best. The wild matchups keep things interesting as you scheme and maneuver your way through the battlefield.