The 5 Best Board Games Like 7 Wonders

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The best board game like 7 Wonders is It’s a Wonderful World — it is the only game here that keeps both halves of what 7 Wonders actually does: everyone drafts at the same time, and the cards you build make the cards you build later cheaper. If what you loved was the table itself — six or seven people, thirty minutes, nobody ever waiting — go to Between Two Cities instead. And if the real problem is that you keep playing 7 Wonders with one other person, the honest answer is that the base game is bad at two and 7 Wonders Duel exists precisely because of it. Below, five games ranked by how much of 7 Wonders they preserve, each with a plain note on who should skip it.

7 Wonders is four games at once. Work out which one you loved.

Ask this question in any board game group and you will get Catan and Splendor inside a minute. Both are wrong, and they are wrong in the same way: they are turn-based. In a five-player game of Catan you spend most of the evening watching other people take their turns. 7 Wonders’ actual innovation — the thing that made a civilization game fit in half an hour — is that everybody plays at once. Repos Production says it flatly on the game’s own page: there is no downtime whether you are playing with three or with seven. Recommend a turn-based game to someone who loved 7 Wonders and you have removed the engine and kept the paint.

Underneath that, 7 Wonders (Antoine Bauza, Repos Production — 3–7 players, 30 minutes, ages 10+) is doing four separate things, and most people who love it love one or two of them rather than all four:

• Nobody ever waits. Every player picks a card from their hand simultaneously and passes the rest. A seven-player game takes about as long as a three-player game. Almost no other civilization game can say that.
• The tableau chains. Building a card now can make a later card free. The satisfying part is not the card — it is watching your own cost curve collapse over three ages.
• Four scoring lanes at once. Military, science, commerce, civic. Everyone at the table is quietly playing a slightly different game, which is why nobody is sure who is winning until the scores come out.
• You only touch your neighbors. You trade with and fight the two people beside you and nobody else. It is interaction without a table-wide brawl — and it is the single most underrated thing in the box.

Every game below keeps some of these and drops others. None keeps all four, and any list that tells you otherwise has not thought about it. So the useful question is not “what is like 7 Wonders” — it is which of the four was yours.

1. It’s a Wonderful World — the closest thing to 7 Wonders that is not 7 Wonders

1–5 players — about 45 minutes — ages 14+ — Frédéric Guérard, La Boîte de Jeu / Origames

This is the pick if you loved the drafting and the chains, because it takes hook two and makes it the entire point of the game. Each of four rounds you draft a hand of seven cards. Then you decide, card by card, which ones to scrap immediately for the resources they are printed with and which ones to put into your construction zone as future buildings. At the end of the round, production runs in a fixed order of resource types, and finished buildings pay out — which can finish other buildings, which pay out, which finish more. The cascade is the whole feeling. It is the moment in 7 Wonders where four cards you built in Age I suddenly make an Age III card free, stretched into a mechanism you can plan around.

It also keeps the simultaneity honestly. Everyone drafts together, everyone builds together, and the game does not slow down as you add players. And unlike 7 Wonders, it has a real solo mode in the base box.

Who should skip it: anyone whose favorite part of 7 Wonders was hooks three and four. There is no trading, no military, and effectively no neighbor — you glance at other players to see which cards are coming back around and that is roughly the extent of it. Several groups describe it as multiplayer solitaire, and they are not being unfair. It is also more fiddly than it looks: the cube-cascade bookkeeping is the price of the combo you came for.

2. Between Two Cities — for the seven-player table that never waits

3–7 players (1–2 with the included Automa) — 30 minutes — ages 14+ — Ben Rosset & Matthew O’Malley, Stonemaier Games — publisher weight: light

Between Two Cities keeps hook one and then does something genuinely strange with hook four. You draft tiles simultaneously, exactly as in 7 Wonders, and it seats up to seven in half an hour. But your two neighbors are not rivals — they are partners. You build one city with the player on your left and a second city with the player on your right, and your final score is the lower of those two cities. You cannot win by pouring everything into one partnership, and you cannot be carried, because the friend building your good city is also trying to save their other city from you.

That single scoring rule turns the neighbor relationship from a background hum into the actual game. If the thing you liked about 7 Wonders was the low-grade diplomacy with the two people beside you — the trading, the “please do not build military” — this is the game that noticed and built around it. The Essential Edition consolidates the original with its expansion content into one box.

Who should skip it: there is no engine here at all. No chains, no growing cost curve, nothing that makes a later play cheaper — it is a spatial scoring puzzle, and if the tableau was your hook you will find it flat. It also demands conversation. Groups that want to optimize in silence will find the constant negotiating exhausting rather than charming. And a table that takes partnership personally can turn it sour.

3. 7 Wonders Duel — the one time buying the sequel is the right answer

2 players — 30 minutes — ages 10+ — Antoine Bauza & Bruno Cathala, Repos Production

Most “games like X” lists that recommend the official spin-off are dodging the question. This is the exception, for one specific reason: 7 Wonders at two players is the worst way to play 7 Wonders. The base game handles it with a neutral dummy city that somebody has to operate, and the drafting — the entire point — barely functions with one opponent. Duel is not a cut-down 7 Wonders. It is a ground-up redesign by Bauza with Bruno Cathala, and it is better at two than the original could ever be.

It trades simultaneity for a face-up card pyramid, so you can see part of what your opponent is about to get. The tension moves from “what will come around to me” to “what am I about to hand them”, which is a sharper, meaner feeling. The chains are still there, the four lanes are still there, and it adds two instant-win conditions — military supremacy and scientific supremacy — that give every game a live threat you have to answer. It is the best two-player game we regularly recommend from this whole family; more of them in our ranked two-player board games roundup.

Who should skip it: anyone with a group. It plays two and only two, with no variant that changes that. And if hook one was your hook — the crowded table, the seven hands moving at once, the noise — Duel is the opposite of what you want. It is a quiet, alternating-turn knife fight.

4. Sushi Go Party! — the draft with everything else taken out

2–8 players — 30 minutes — ages 8+ — Gamewright

Sushi Go Party! is hook one in its purest form, and with a fraction of the teach. You take a card from your hand, pass the rest, and repeat until the cards run out — the same pick-and-pass skeleton as 7 Wonders, with the civilization, the chains, and the neighbor conflict removed and set-collection scoring left in their place. It seats up to eight, which is one more than 7 Wonders manages, and it will teach in three minutes to people who have never drafted anything.

The Party edition is the one to get, and not for the components. It ships with a menu board and a pile of card types, and you choose which scoring cards are in the deck before each game. That choice is what gives it legs: a night of Sushi Go Party! can be three genuinely different scoring puzzles. We have written up the original in our Sushi Go review, and if it is the drafting specifically that you are chasing, Draftosaurus does the same trick with dinosaurs and a placement puzzle.

Who should skip it: anyone who came for the feeling of having built something. There is no tableau, no arc, no city at the end to look at — you score, you shuffle, you go again. It is a filler and it is honest about being one. At the full eight players the passing also becomes a lot of hands in motion, and the downtime-free promise starts to fray simply because eight people are slower than four.

5. Fantasy Realms — the chains, with the drafting deleted

3–6 players — 20 minutes — ages 14+ — Bruce Glassco, WizKids — released August 2017, 53 cards

The deliberate twist at the bottom of the list. Fantasy Realms throws away drafting entirely and keeps only hook two — and it may be the most concentrated version of that hook ever printed. You hold a hand of seven cards. Every card is worth points, and almost every card modifies other cards: bonuses for the right neighbor, penalties that another card cancels, cards that wipe whole suits off the table. Turns take seconds — draw one, discard one — and the game is over in twenty minutes. Then you score, and scoring is where the game actually happens.

That final tally is the same sensation as a 7 Wonders chain paying off, compressed into three minutes: oh, that is why I kept that. If you want more games that deliver in under half an hour, our best short board games list is the place to go next.

Who should skip it: the interaction is nearly nil — you are watching a discard row, not a neighbor. There is no board, no build-up, no visible empire, and the epic sweep that makes 7 Wonders feel like more than a card game is entirely absent. Some players also find the scoring round a spreadsheet exercise rather than a climax; a scorepad and a phone calculator are not optional at six players.

The five at a glance

Game	Players	Play time	Age	Which 7 Wonders hook it keeps	Best for
1. It’s a Wonderful World	1–5	~45 min	14+	Simultaneous draft + chains	the closest overall match
2. Between Two Cities	3–7	30 min	14+	No downtime + neighbors	the big table
3. 7 Wonders Duel	2	30 min	10+	Chains, lanes, conflict	couples and duos
4. Sushi Go Party!	2–8	30 min	8+	The pick-and-pass draft	families and fillers
5. Fantasy Realms	3–6	20 min	14+	The combo tableau	twenty minutes, all payoff

What nothing on this list replaces

Be straight about the gap. The specific thing 7 Wonders does — seat seven people, give each of them a civilization that visibly grows over three ages, and be finished in thirty minutes — is not matched by anything here. Between Two Cities gets you the player count and the speed but hands you a scoring puzzle instead of an empire. It’s a Wonderful World gets you the empire and the engine but tops out at five and turns inward. Nothing gets both, which is a decent argument for keeping 7 Wonders on the shelf and buying one of these to sit beside it rather than to replace it.

Two honest footnotes. If what you want is simply more 7 Wonders, Repos publishes four expansions — Cities, Armada, Leaders and Edifice — and adding one of those is a cheaper and more reliable fix than buying a new game and hoping. And if the problem is that your table skews young or impatient, 7 Wonders Architects (2–7 players, 25 minutes, ages 8+) is the family-facing version from the same publisher: you pick one card from three decks and build a wonder, with the drafting removed. It is a different, simpler game wearing the same clothes, and that is either exactly what you need or exactly what you do not.

What not to buy expecting 7 Wonders

• Catan. It comes up constantly and it shares almost nothing beyond “resources” and “civilization.” It is turn-based, dice-driven, and an hour and a half. If Catan is what you actually want, our games like Catan list is the right page.
• Splendor. The other reflex answer. It has a lovely cost-curve collapse, which is a real point of overlap, but it is a quiet four-player turn-based engine with no drafting and no neighbors. Worth owning, wrong reason — see our games like Splendor roundup.
• Terraforming Mars. It has an official drafting variant, which is why it gets suggested, and it is a two-hour heavyweight that plays nothing like a 30-minute card draft. If your 7 Wonders itch is actually an appetite for something bigger, go read our games like Terraforming Mars list or the best heavy Euro board games guide instead.

Big groups, and playing alone

7 Wonders is one of the few good games that genuinely works at seven, so it is worth saying which of these hold up as the group grows. Sushi Go Party! goes to eight and is the only one on the list that does. Between Two Cities matches 7 Wonders at seven and is arguably better at six or seven than at three. Fantasy Realms tops out at six and slows down noticeably there because of scoring. It’s a Wonderful World stops at five, and Duel is two only. For more options at the crowded end of the table, see our best board games for 7 players and best party games lists.

Alone, the list thins fast. It’s a Wonderful World ships with a solo mode in the base box and is the clear pick. Between Two Cities includes an Automa for one or two players. The other three are multiplayer only. More in our best 1-player board games roundup.

Frequently asked questions

The bottom line

Buy It’s a Wonderful World if you want the closest match — the simultaneous draft plus an engine that pays off harder than 7 Wonders’ does — and you can live without the trading and the fighting. Buy Between Two Cities if the seven-player, thirty-minute, nobody-waits table is the thing you are trying to recreate, and your group likes to talk. Buy 7 Wonders Duel if you are two people, in which case it is not really a substitute at all — it is the version of this game you should have owned all along. Buy Sushi Go Party! if you want to hand the drafting idea to kids, to eight people, or to a table that has fifteen minutes. And buy Fantasy Realms if the chains were the point and you would rather get to the payoff in twenty minutes than in ninety.

One thing worth saying at the end: none of these makes 7 Wonders redundant, and that is a compliment to a game from 2010 that still does something almost nothing else does. If you are shopping to fill an evening rather than to replace a box, start with the best strategy board games guide and work back toward whichever hook you just discovered was yours.