12 Best Selling Board Games Of All Time Update 04/2024

best selling board games of all time

Jack won’t be happy if he doesn’t play. For this reason, we are always told to take a break from our busy schedules and do something fun. During their free time, some people go to the gym or play with their dogs in the park. Others prefer to do something that still uses their brains. Board games have been a favorite way to spend quality time with your family without having to spend money. With so many games to choose from, the sales also vary based on the preferences of the people who play them. There is a good chance that the global market for board games will reach more than $12 billion by 2023. A list of the top 20 best-selling board games of all time is shown in this table.

1. Connect four

Connect four

It is a game about connections that also needs two people to play. The player picks a color and then drops a colored disc from the top into a suspended grid. The grid is made up of seven columns and six rows, and each column has seven rows. The disc falls down and takes up all the space in the column. Everyone on the team will try to make four discs that will make a line that is either horizontal or vertical, but not both at the same time. The moves that a player makes will help them win the game. Only 4 million copies had been sold around the world as of 2018. Most of them had been sold in Finland, which is where the game came from.

2. Cranium

Cranium was made by Richard Tait and Whit Alexander in 1988. It is a game that people can play together. Richard came up with the game because he likes to play games with friends on the weekends. He saw that there was a need for a game that required a lot of different skills. He left his job at Microsoft to work on the game with his friend Alexander. A lot of thought goes into the game, unlike other board games that only need one skill but are still fun. People who make the game package and brand it are Giorgio Davanzo. In 2001, it sold more than a million units, making it the fastest-selling game in the United States. $77 million was sold in 2008.

3. Blokus

Blokus

There is a board game called Blokus, which was made by Sekkoia. It came out in 2000. By 2008, it had already been called the best board game of the century. It sold more than a million copies each year. A lot of copies were sold by the end of 2007. Games Industry says it sold at least 3 million copies by the end of 2007, which means there are more sold now.

4. Mancala

It is one of the games that has been around for a long time. It began as a game where stones or seeds were placed in holes. The goal of the game is to take the opponent’s stones or seeds. As time went on, it was changed into a board game and is still very popular today. During the 7th century, there were different types of the game in Egypt. Spread to other parts of the world as people moved around. In the US, it was the 4th largest board game brand in 2013. Over 18 million copies have been sold around the world, which means they’ve made more than $80 million.

5. Stratego

Stratego

It is a game played by two people on a board with 10 by 10 squares. In this game, each player has 40 pieces that look like officers in an army. The player will move the pieces so that the opponent can’t make any more moves. The game has simple rules for kids and more complicated rules for adults. This is how it works: In some versions of the game, you can use only a few pieces, with some even having 10 of them. With its knowledge of battlefield strategy, the game has become very popular. It has sold more than 20 million copies around the world.

6. Catan

People at Let’s Prowess have said that this game is the best board game of all time. The first 5,000 units sold out so quickly that the inventor Klaus Teuber didn’t get one for himself. Walmart had already sold out at one point. As of 2015, the game had sold more than 22 million copies around the world. In 2009, there were 15 million copies sold.

7. Risk

Risk

Albert Lamorisse, who is a movie director, came up with the idea for the game in 1957. In computer games like Age of Kings and Empires, it is the main thing that makes them work. In the game, dice rolls are used to take over 42 territories on each of the six continents. Each player in the game must have a strategy and know how to negotiate in order to get a good score and to win. The player who has the most territories at the end of the game is named the winner. It is a game that looks much like a political struggle, and in its first year it sold more than 100,000 copies, and according to Games Journal, it has sold millions of copies for the past decades and continues to be a success.

8. Pictionary

Robert Angel came up with the idea for this game in 1985, and Gary Everson helped him make it look good. It is a game where you play around with words. Teammate’s words will be drawn on the board, and the player will have to figure them out. To play, the players should be able to draw and figure out the patterns of words. To play this game, you need to have a lot of words. It also gives you a chance to learn new words. For a long time, Western Publishing made it. Hasbro bought the company in 1994. This game went from a board game to a TV game show so well. Over 3 million copies have been sold by 1988, and by 2001, when Mattel bought it, sales had reached 38 million. Rob Angel, the person who came up with the idea, doesn’t give an exact number, but he thinks that tens of millions more have been sold since.

9. Othello

Othello

In Othello, you have to be very alert and watchful when you play. This is a board game. It has been around since 1883. This game is called “Reversi,” and it’s a lot like chess. The player tries to turn the pieces of the other player’s color to their own color. Different but unique colors are given to each player, and they will be trying to get rid of their opponents’ colors in a game called “chess.” If you have many pieces of the same color when the last square is played, you’ve won. In 2016, 40 million units will have been sold.

10. Children’s Favorite: Candy Land

We think of games as something that kids do, even though many board games are meant for people who are older. So, there is one board game that kids love that was made in 1948, called Candy Land.

This is a simple game that only needs a basic understanding of how to count. It’s great for kids who just follow the directions on the cards. For $60 in 2009, the game had sold 40 million copies. This is 60 years after it first came out.

11. The Ultimate Guessing Game: Battleship

Battleship

In Battleship, you have to guess what the other person is going to do. The goal of the game is to figure out where your opponent’s battleships are and try to destroy them, so that you can win. Even more interesting, Battleship was already a popular game when it came out. It was played with pencil and paper in the 1930s, before becoming a board game in the late 1960s.

Today, there are a lot of different types of battleship, from video games to apps. Sales have now topped 100 million units.

12. It Pays To Be Knowledgeable: Trivial Pursuit

As far as games go, Trivial Pursuit is the one that pays to be smart. Scrabble was the inspiration for this game, which was made by two Canadian journalists. They added categories to the questions in order to break away from Scrabble. Over 20 million copies of Trivial Pursuit were sold in just one year in 1984 alone.

Today, there are a lot of different versions of Trivial Pursuit, from Disney Trivial Pursuit to the Baby Boomer Edition of Trivial Pursuit. For $80 million, Hasbro bought the rights to the game in 2008. It’s one of the best-known games in the world. People thought that sales would be $2 billion by 2010.