10 Best Selling Board Games That You Should Know Update 04/2024

Best Selling Board Games

There are a lot of happy memories (and a few fights!) that can be made with board games. The people who came up with the world’s most popular board games deserve a lot of credit for coming up with products that can make so many people feel happy. When a board game is very popular, the creators get a lot of money.

During the 20th century, some board games were made for the first time. Others can be traced back to the days of the pharaohs and even further. People still love them even after all these years. Keep reading to find out which board games are the best-selling in the world right now!

1. 10th Best-Selling Board Game Ever: The Game Of Life

the game of life board game

It’s the 10th best-selling board game of all time, according to Money Inc. The Game of Life, which was made by Hasbro in 2002, came in at number 11. Other board games don’t make you think about real life like The Game of Life does. Players have to choose between getting a job or going to college and then complete a series of goals with cards.

It sold 45,000 copies in its first year. By 2015, it had sold 50 million copies. Rob Daviau, the person who made the game, has a pretty good figure for himself.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 150 Million Units Sold: Clue

Clue

Anthony Pratt came up with the game Clue in 1949. It’s great for people who like to solve mysteries. In the game, you play Nancy Drew and look for the weapons that were used to kill the victim, Dr. Black, by moving to different rooms on the board and going through them. Find the weapons first, and you’ll win!

If you look at Mental Floss, they say that Clue has been sold about 150 million times. Also, there are a lot of different editions of the game for people who are really into it.

6. Connect four

It is a game about connections that also needs two people to play. The player picks a colour and then drops a coloured 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.

7. Cranium

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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.