Picture this: another day at the office. Work is tough, adults aren’t engaging with each other. Maybe it feels like each team member is a little too autonomous, and there’s a lack of communication skills being utilized across the entire team. Why not dust off those communication skills and crack open a team building board game – get everyone talking, finding common ground, and working effectively together. It’s a great plan… but where to start?
What Are the Top Team Building Board Games for Adults?
Let’s dive into the best team building board games for adults and why they’re a great choice.
Herd Mentality
By: Big Potato Games Players: 4-20 Time: 20-30 minutes
Herd Mentality is a fun group game that could be mistaken for a trivia game – but it’s far from it. While people are going to be answering questions, it’s their answers that are important, and those answers have nothing to do with being right or wrong. The game is simply challenging you to pick the answer you think everyone else will pick.
You gain points for being part of the herd, and a squishy pink cow for going against the grain.
As an example, a question could be “What is the best Disney film?”. While you may immediately have your favorite Disney film in mind, you need to try to figure out what everyone else is going to put. Sure, you may feel like Hercules is the best, but you also know that Jenny from Accounting has a Beauty and the Beast themed purse, so maybe she’ll put that…
Once everyone has scribbled down an answer, they’re revealed, and those who gave the majority answers get points!
While you want your team to be able to think outside the box, trying to think about how your teammates might think is fostering additional layers of empathy and critical thinking. Communication skills are boosted because inevitably, people will be asked why they think the best pizza topping is ham of all things, and differences will be acknowledged and discussed.
Lastly, because it’s not about being right, there’s no embarrassment to be had for being unable to answer a trivia question. And like any good team building board game it only takes a minute to learn, but soon soon enough you’ll have the whole team bonding and everyone will be having a great time together.
Monikers
By: CMYK Players: 4-16 Time: 30-60 minutes
Monikers is actually a public domain game – so there’s a chance the entire team here may have played Celebrities before, which is what it’s based on. But Monikers is just the more recent, nicest production of the classic board game. If people on your team have played Charades before (and let’s be honest, most will have done so), it’s not only easy to teach, but familiar ground. So skip the long learning curve of picking up a new game and get straight in!
Players each get eight cards, they pick five and shuffle them together to give to a single player. One player then draws a card and must describe what’s on the card without saying the name of the thing. While that’s always fun in itself, the second round then sees the same deck being looped, but now the reader can only use one word to describe the card. The final round is no words at all, only actions.
It sounds silly – and frankly it is – but there are so many reasons it works well as a team building game. One of which is the player count. It’s tough to get games that support bigger teams, and this one does in the game itself, but also has more than enough cards to have multiple games running simultaneously.
But the biggest reason this works is because people are laughing throughout, and building up inside jokes and references as they go. If someone describes “The Kraken” as “an aggressive octopus who hates pirates” in the first round, that might be “Octopus” in the second, and an unforgettable wild pirate vs Octopus reenactment in the final round. This sort of shared humor in a moment that can spill into the everyday makes Monikers the perfect board game for team building and fostering creative thinking.
Waterfall Park
By: Repos Productions Players: 3-5 Time: 45 minutes
Waterfall Park is a team building game for those who need to communicate – namely because you’re going to need to talk to everyone playing in order to have any success in this game at all, as this is a game of negotiation.
Waterfall Park takes you into the fantastical world of park building. You’ll be trying to build the best attractions by placing matching tiles in the same area and gaining points for them. The difficulty? You might not own the spaces around where you’ve begun your building of that bowling alley, or perhaps you don’t have enough bowling alley tiles to make it work.
However, you can see that your fellow player has the space you need and is trying to get a space you have. Maybe you can negotiate a trade deal with them for both the space, and one of their bowling tiles… Except of course, other players are trying to trade too, and no one wants to trade away a space that will let another player win, while equally needing to surrender something of theirs for their own chance to win. You can even trade coins, which represent winning points – and remembering these can be pivotal for honing problem solving and resource management skills.
Waterfall Park is much more friendly than its predecessor Chinatown (on which it’s based), there’s much less scarcity of resources, meaning it’s more about friendly competition and negotiation than cutthroat bargains. That makes it a perfect team building game, where everyone can bargain bits back and forward, opening new lines of communication, new alliances are formed, and team members who perhaps haven’t spoken, now have a reason to.
As with all aspects that have a competitive element, stories develop where fun is had, and that means that these stories have a chance to develop into lasting relationship moments. The Power of Board Games!
Dungeons & Dragons
By: Wizards of the Coast Players: 3+ Time: Any
Not technically a board game, but a roleplaying game – but perfect for a team building exercise. We’ve picked Dungeons and Dragons, but you could substitute any cooperative game in here – Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Mork Borg – roleplaying games offer a fantastic opportunity to build a team, by letting them be a team in a whole new environment.
Essentially, tabletop roleplaying games are just collaborative storytelling. One player is the Game Master, which means they run the story. They know where the story is going, such as crucial plot moments. The other players are the players of the game, who will have a character of their own, and they must navigate the story being told by the game master.
Stories often follow an adventure, within which everyone has different strengths and abilities, meaning everyone will need to communicate and work as a team in order to be successful. Not only is that the foundation of team building, but it also goes further. People will form lasting friendships in roleplaying game groups, and often begin to pull fun stories from failures or bonkers plans. These then offer real-life opportunities for communication.
Honorable Mention: For the Queen
By: Darrington Press Players: 2-6 Time: 30-120 minutes
If you want to try roleplaying with your team, but don’t want to learn a set of rules to do so like above, or don’t want to assign one character as a game master, try For the Queen. The new version from Darrington Press (the publishing arm of Critical Role, an exceedingly popular D&D show) is a beautiful book-like box containing a set of cards.
The foundation is that you’ve been selected by the Queen for a perilous mission. One by one you draw cards that ask you about your relationship with the Queen. “How does the Queen remind you of her status on the journey?”, “What do you do that disappoints the Queen on this journey?”, and more which you’ll answer, leading you to craft a whole story around your relationship and the perils that face you. You do this until you draw the card that says – “Your Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?”
It’s perfect for this list for the same reasons as Dungeons and Dragons is, but warrants its own entry for a few key differences. The game is so simple, it’s just answering questions, but each of them are a little leading. You can add or remove as much drama and intrigue as you want to, and you might find the story you’ve built is far from one you’d have dreamt on your own.
Yet, it offers the same depth of feelings a full roleplaying group and game would experience, building inside jokes, common stories, and creating something collaboratively, just for the fun of it. For the Queen is a great cooperative board game for a team building activity.
Escape: Curse of the Temple – A Cooperative Board Game
By: Queen Games Players: 1-5 Time: 10 minutes
The perfect game of high pressure communication played in just ten minutes – Escape: Curse of the Temple is a fantastic team building game. If you’ve ever wanted to have your Indiana Jones moment, this is the game for you.
The game asks you to explore a temple, but importantly, you’ll need to escape it too, showcasing the excitement and engagement of modern board games. Every player crowds around the tiles, laying a new one when successful dice rolls have occurred and being able to explore further and further into the temple… except, in the background you’ll be playing a soundtrack that gives the whole game a ten minute timer.
Five minutes in, you’ll hear a gong sound, which is your cue to race to the exit as fast as you can. The only way you can do this though, is by rolling dice, and if you’re out of dice to roll, you’ll need to call out to your fellow players to roll a way to save you and get you back rolling again. It’s frantic, requires everyone to act quickly and under pressure, yet everyone must listen out for their fellow players. It’s cooperative, after all!
While the player count only goes as high as five players, as it’s played in ten minutes, it’s easy enough to get multiple games in if the player count is much higher, by simply rotating players in and out. If your team building is needed for adults in the workplace, the need to work together effectively in a high pressure environment and listen to each other… well they couldn’t build a better team to face that than with a game that requires you to work together effectively in a high pressure game where you need to listen to each other – and that’s Escape: Curse of the Temple!
Ultimate Werewolf
By: Bezier Games Players: 5-30 Time: 30-90 minutes
Werewolf is the rare game that invites a huge player count, without adding extra layers of difficulty, and still manages to give a little spotlight to every single player. Although at first glance a game of concealed identity and accusing and removing players based on suspicions they may be a werewolf may not feel like a team building game – you’d be surprised!
Werewolf sees every team member assigned a role – werewolf, villager, seer, or the game night moderator. At night, the werewolves pick off villagers, and during the day, the villagers vote on who they believe to be the werewolf, and the selected will reveal their role (werewolf or not), and they are out of the game. Werewolves win when they are equal in number to villagers, and villagers must remove all werewolves to win.
There are multiple versions of this game, but for the larger player count we’d recommend Ultimate Werewolf, which uses all the same basics, but has been rewritten and simplified, so players can pick it up even more quickly.
If you’ve ever seen The Traitors TV show, you’ll see just how being in a suspicious environment brings people together, but in Werewolves you’ll feel it for yourself. Alliances are formed, shock moments occur, and everyone will be talking about it for days and weeks to come. Everyone loves a mystery game, and there’s nothing more satisfying than the discovery. The game is guaranteed to have people smiling and laughing, and nothing makes for a better team than a cohesive cheerful one!
Conclusion: For Your Next Retreat, Try Some Team Building Games
Board games are great for bringing people together and forming friendships, so there’s perhaps no better team bonding activity than bringing out a board game. Whether you’re team building with adults in an office, or just a small group, the games on this list will stand you in perfect stead for the ultimate team.
Also Read: Our Picks for the 11 Best Deck Building Board Games
FAQ
Q: How often should we organize team building activities with team building board games?
A: It depends on your team’s needs and schedule, but monthly or bi-monthly sessions can be a good starting point. You can adjust the frequency based on your team’s engagement and feedback.
Q: Can these team building games be played virtually for remote teams?
Some games, like “For the Queen” or “Dungeons & Dragons”, can be adapted to play board games virtually using video conferencing and online tools. Others, like “Escape: Curse of the Temple”, might be more challenging to play games remotely.
Q: How do I choose the right team building board games for my team?
Consider your team size, available time, and the specific skills you want group members to develop (communication, problem-solving, etc.). Start with simpler games like “Herd Mentality” for teams new to board games, and progress to more complex ones like a strategy board game as they get comfortable.
Q: What if some team members are not into board games?
Try to choose a fun game with broad appeal, like “Monikers” or “Ultimate Werewolf”, which don’t require prior gaming experience. Emphasize the team building aspect of competitive games rather than the competitive nature of the games.
Q: How can I measure the effectiveness of these team building activities?
Observe team interactions during and after the first team building event and games, gather feedback through surveys, and look for improvements in day-to-day collaboration. You may also notice an increase in casual conversations and inside jokes among team members.