برچسب: Games

Embracer Group says it’ll put out 76 different games in the coming year, as it ditches friends for a fellowship and spins off Goat Sim publisher Coffee Stain

Damn, the nice little friendship thing Embracer Group had decided to morph into after earning the ire of lots of folks by going hard on the layoffs, closures and sales is no more.

The company’s decided to ditch the “and friends” tag it had given to different bits of its business, and form a fellowship, as it does yet more corporate shuffling around. It does also plan to actually release some more games.

As announced by Embracer, the bit of previously dubbed Middle-Earth and Friends will now be known as Fellowship Entertainment. As you might have guessed, that’s the part that looks after The Lord of the Rings, as well as housing the studios behind likes of Kingdom Come Deliverance, Tomb Raider, the Metro series, and Dead Island.

With Asmodee, the second of the three bits Embracer divided itself into last year, having spun off from the company as of February this year, it’s the turn of the third bit formerly known as Coffee Stain & Friends to do the same. Now named Coffee Stain Group, the subsidiary that includes the dev teams behind the likes of Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim and Goat Simulator is being released into the economic wild as a separately stock market-listed company.

“The games industry is more competitive than ever, but also more rewarding if you do things right, and we believe this move gives us the clarity and control to navigate the landscape better on our own terms,” Coffee Stain Group CEO Anton Westbergh said, “We can now focus even more on what we do best—supporting our developers, staying close to our communities, and building an even brighter future for Coffee Stain.”

Right, that’s enough on the corporate shuffling of people’s livelihoods. In the financial results it’s published alongside this spin-off announcement, Embracer says that it’s got “76 different games” it plans to release in the coming financial year. There’ll be “a mix of new IPs, sequels, and remasters”, including Killing Floor 3 and the recently delayed Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, with Embracer expecting the latter to “drive notable revenues but to have lower margins due to shared economics with several other partners”.

Another as of yet unannounced AAA game that Embracer things will have “financial dynamics more similar to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2” is also in the works, but the company reckons it’ll have to be pushed back to the 2026/27 financial year to allow for more “polish”

The rest of the lineup for the upcoming is being filled by the likes of Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core, Metal Eden, and “the next SpongeBob SquarePants game”. Spongebob Squarepants tries to get to the Bikini Bottom of where Embracer’s friends have gone, maybe?

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22/05/2025
The best sandbox games on PC 2025

What are the best sandbox games? Sandbox games are difficult to nail down, as the sandbox style is spread across countless genres with disparate mechanics and settings. But all sandboxes share a common trait: freedom. Whether it’s creating a whole world or building up a gang of criminals across a city, sandbox games leave most of the agency up to the player. They are universes to be experienced at a pace not dictated by developers.

Some of the best PC games of all time are those that allow total player freedom, but there needs to be a bit of clarity when looking at what makes a great sandbox game. They have, since the days of Elite and Ultima, referred to open-world games filled with choice and diversions. But revisionist history would describe them as “games like Minecraft”. For the purposes of this exploration of the best of the bunch, we’re taking a look at them all. So, from the mean streets of Los Santos through the ruthless missions of Agent 47 and the stunning expanse of Eve’s universe, these are the very best sandbox games on PC.

Here are the best sandbox games on PC in 2025:

Genshin Impact

Combining an expansive open world with an engaging story, Genshin Impact gives you the tools and the freedom to explore Tayvat as you please. Want to plow through the engaging story? Go for it. Want to wander from the beaten path to unlock the best Genshin Impact characters? Even better.

Genshin Impact is free to play, with a gacha mechanic for unlocking new Genshin Impact weapons and characters. Thankfully, it’s pretty generous with its prizes for just playing, so while you can pay to become all-powerful, there is an excellent sandbox game in there that will reward you for your time.

Play Genshin Impact for free.

No Man’s Sky

It’s incredible to see how No Man’s Sky has evolved over the years, truly delivering on its promise to let you explore an infinite universe. If you experienced No Man’s Sky at launch, we implore you to try it again in 2025 as the developers have added so much to the game that it’s almost unrecognizable. Vehicles, virtual reality support, and cross-play are just some of the major updates added to the game, and we haven’t even touched on the gameplay just yet.

When you look at the sheer scope of No Man’s Sky, there’s no other game on this list that gives you the freedom to explore like this one does. With nothing but a ship and a dream, you can choose to conquer each planet, establishing a base where you drain the land for its precious resources, or you can be peaceful, opting to focus on enhancing your ship to travel to new locations. Each planet is procedurally generated, changing the climate, inhabitants, and even the creatures to ensure your experience is different, no matter where you decide to explore in the galaxy.

Project Zomboid

Zombie game fans, survival game fans, and even fans of The Sims should give Project Zomboid a try if you haven’t already. This sprawling isometric game may have been available in early access for over a decade, but it’s still as popular as ever with a ‘very positive’ rating on Steam after nearly 300,000 reviews and tens of thousands of concurrent players.

The retro-looking Project Zomboid is a self-professed “hardcore sandbox zombie survival game with a focus on realistic survival”, and players must loot, craft, build, and survive a harsh reality swarming with undead enemies. It looks and feels like old-school Sims, its survival elements play out like some of the best games in the genre, and there are NPCs to interact with that even give it an RPG feel. Project Zomboid really has it all. If you plan on giving this challenging game a try, take a look at our essential guides on Project Zomboid multiplayer and how to barricade windows and doors in PZ.

Palworld

Nintendo fans have been begging for a Pokémon game that breaks away from the series’ norms and embraces modern gameplay mechanics. Well, everything they could ask for has been implemented in Pocketpair’s Palworld, albeit with a range of creatures found in the Paldeck that, uhh, may not be as cute as Nintendo’s iconic Pokémon, but they certainly do a job. Quite literally in the case of Palworld, where your Pals can be put to work as you can set them up to do Palwork jobs in your base. You mean to tell us that we have access to a Pal that can generate electricity and we aren’t going to harness that power in some way?

After playing Palworld for several hours, eventually, you begin to welcome the idea that Pals should be pulling their weight rather than sitting pretty on a farm somewhere. You’ve also got your combat Pals, the ones you want to bring with you into battle to fight against dangerous enemies equipped with their evil Pals. Pocketpair has borrowed elements from the famous Pokémon formula, but there are enough changes in Palworld to turn it into something new. Read our Palworld review to see how impressive the game is, even in its early access state.

Minecraft

Minecraft is synonymous with modern sandbox games. And it deserves to be. It’s one of the purest sandbox titles because it’s more a tool than a game. It’s a figurative sandpit, waiting to be molded into giant fortresses, complex circuits, and gargantuan spaceships suspended in the sky. Yes, you could be the next person to make one of the best Minecraft maps or cool Minecraft houses.

Minecraft captures the essence of playing – and fashion, just check out some of the best Minecraft skins for proof. It’s a tactile experience that evokes days spent building Lego creations in your bedroom. Limitations are few and far between, and usually, the simple installation of some Minecraft mods will smash down any that do exist – it’s more concerned with giving players the tools to curate their own experience than telling them what to do.

It’s bridged the gap between different generations of gamers. Its rudimentary graphics and interface inspire nostalgia, while its simple logic and blocky building appeals to mites (and a fair few adults). And it’s easy to describe; or, at least the very basics are. The common sense logic that runs through its foundations makes it accessible and less daunting for the uninitiated, making it an experience that can be shared by kids and their parents.

And if you aren’t a builder, then there’s the entire survival game aspect of Minecraft, which would can play through from start to finish and beyond without having to worry about how beautiful your base looks, retaining the sandbox experience as you explore procedurally generated caves and infinite biomes. Besides mods, there are countless other ways to improve the experience, from Minecraft shaders and texture packs that make it look like a new release to maps and servers to play on.

Grand Theft Auto V

A decade old this year, Rockstar’s most recent GTA offering is still a true play pit of opportunities. At times, it feels like every street of the sprawling city is a destination for fun, offering up new types of people to interact with, new terrain to experiment on, and new buildings to explore, whether you’ve been playing for years or are jumping in for the first time. While there’s plenty of online content to tackle, GTA V is arguably the best offline game in the series, thanks to its lengthy campaign and huge sandbox environment.

The simulation offers an exaggeration of urban and rural America, going mental with a few firearms can lead to chaos in the streets – not to mention some exceptionally wild police chases. Pushing the world’s limitations is part of the expected experience: seeing just how many bodies you can pile up, how many hitchhikers you can kidnap, or how long you can go with a five-star wanted level without getting wasted. You can always resort to using GTA 5 cheats if needed.

The GTA 5 mods scene is booming right now so it’s the perfect place to experiment with other people’s creations. But, beyond that, the game comes bundled with its own extensive tool kit for creative types: the Rockstar Editor. A seemingly limitless machinima movie creator, it allows you to film whatever you fancy and cut and shape it into a work of cinematic art.

We can only imagine the thrilling open-world adventures that await when a GTA 6 release date finally rolls around, but knowing it’s a good year away at least, there are still plenty of reasons – and regular updates – keeping us coming back to Los Santos.

Hitman

Before sandboxes were synonymous with games like GTA or low-res block building, the term was inescapably linked to the freeform murder of Hitman. After a heavy misstep with Absolution, Agent 47 retrieved his sandbox crown with 2016’s Hitman. A set of six locations provides you with uncountable opportunities to dispatch a target, from a simple sniper rifle shot to some of Hitman’s craziest kills.

Despite the huge immersive sim this generation, with the likes of Dishonored and Deus Ex, many simply can’t compare to the dense detail of a Hitman level. They provide the freedom to approach the situation in almost every manner you can imagine. And, should your imagination fail you, there are dozens of suggestions thanks to the brilliant Opportunities system. Moreover, each level is being constantly added to over time, with brand new Escalation missions and Elusive Target contracts. Hitman is a sandbox that won’t stop evolving.

The emergent fun continues in the two sequels released since, as we found in our Hitman 2 review and Hitman 3 review, respectively. There’s plenty there for returning assassins, such as Hitman 2’s Ghost Mode and an inventive AI that wants you to murder in the coolest possible ways, while the Hitman 3 keypad safe codes leave you something to come back to after completing this trilogy of stealth sandbox games.

Scrap Mechanic

Despite being in Early Access, Scrap Mechanic already has all the makings of a true sandbox hit. Like Minecraft, it’s fuelled entirely by your creativity and how your mind extrapolates the basic features into a mini (or not-so-mini) masterpiece.

What makes Scrap Mechanic different from other building games is how it encourages momentum with moving components. It sets it apart from most other games, which tend to stick to creating fortresses and other stationary objects. Even your static castle can come to life with elaborate unlocking mechanisms in Scrap Mechanic. But it’s the cars, tanks, and hover machines that really demonstrate the depths of its potential.

For a quick overview of what makes it special, take a look at our Scrap Mechanic beginner’s guide and then see the best Scrap Mechanic creations from the community. What’s surprising is that most are built with only a handful of basic components. Imagine what could be built when the game eventually expands its inventory.

Elite Dangerous

The original Elite was one of the first sandboxes, setting the standard for future sandboxes and simulation games alike. It’s still pretty impressive, almost 40 years on, with over 200 worlds to visit and trade with. Elite Dangerous, though, is a galaxy in size, a scale that is both bewildering and extremely intimidating. Just the scope of the thing is astounding. No wonder it’s one of the best space games on PC.

Making your way through the galaxy is familiar: trading with stations, fulfilling requests for goods and assistance, chasing down bounties. But this is all taking place in our own simulated galaxy, where everything is to scale. When you leave Supercruise and are faced with a gargantuan glowing sun, it feels like you’re facing a real sun, something so massive that it’s almost inconceivable.

Even simple trips feel like significant undertakings. With every jump to supercruise, there’s the risk of interdiction, leading to a lot of flailing around as you attempt to align with the escape vector, which plonks you right in the middle of deep space. Fail, and you’ve got a dogfight on your hands. Don’t worry if that danger is too much for you, though: our Elite Dangerous guide will help out any beginners.

Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program is the only sandbox in this list where having a solid grasp of maths and physics will be a boon. It’s an ambitious simulator that tasks players with sending rockets into space, colonizing planets, mining asteroids, and fooling around with moon buggies. How you go about all of this is pretty much up to you.

As still one of the best indie games around, thankfully, KSP now has a sequel in early access, so there’s even more reason to familiarise yourself with the original before the official Kerbal Space Program 2 release date. With its full feature set of missions and free-form sandbox mode, the first game provides practically endless opportunities to fiddle with big-budget science. It’s a game where your experiments and successes have extra weight, as they aren’t taking place in a fantasy realm but one grounded in real-life science.

ARMA 3

Military simulator Arma 3 is, like Minecraft, as much a tool for game creation as a game itself – one where much of the heavy lifting has already been done. It looks great, making the fictional Greek islands it takes place on eerily real, and the combat has benefited from this eye for detail, too. It’s a combined arms war game where you can dabble in commanding tanks, try to play it like one of the best plane games, or take advantage of the detail of this sniper game to skulk and take your foes out from the shadows.

While it comes with a three-part campaign and multiplayer, the meat is the huge editor that gives creators countless tools and assets with which they can craft their own worlds. As it allows for anything from persistent multiplayer campaigns to military operations to be created, it has birthed some of the best games ever, including DayZ and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Just Cause 3

Just Cause 3 is ridiculous. Sure, it has the trappings of the modern open-world shooter – killing dudes, driving around, plowing through hundreds of missions – but that’s not what makes Just Cause 3 sparkle.

The whole point of the game is to sow chaos throughout the island of Medici. How you go about that is up to you. Most of the joy comes from attaching the grapple hook to things. Attach it to a car and then to a statue, and you’ve got a simple means of toppling this symbol of tyranny. Create an attachment between oxygen canisters and soldiers, and you can watch as they’re dragged off before exploding. Then there are the rocket mines, which can be attached to anything and everything for high-velocity, explosive violence. The game really could just be about doing silly things with the grapple. But a gorgeous island and flexible missions mean there’s more to Just Cause 3 than silly chaos (well, not too much).

It’s like a Pepsi Max ad from the ’90s but with a much higher body count. No wonder we voted it one of the best games of 2015. We got more of an iterative update with the sequel, however, but we found in our Just Cause 4 review that it didn’t stop it from being just as bombastic and fun.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

After eight years in development, the sequel to the first Mount & Blade game is finally out on Steam’s Early Access program. Despite it being about as buggy as Warband was back in 2010, it’s – ironically – a much more polished experience that expands on pretty much everything that made the first game such a standout for the sandbox games genre.

Bannerlord, like its predecessor, is all about letting you roleplay in a systems-heavy medieval sandbox. Perhaps the showman in you will inspire you to become a master jouster and champion of many tourneys. Maybe your eye for a good deal will let you make money fast in Bannerlord, using your mountain of gold to fund a mercenary army to protect you and bring you glory. Or perhaps you’re just a good-for-nothing crook, and if so, then it’s the bandit’s life for you.

The blend of macro-scale management and being able to directly control your character and party gives you an unrivaled level of control, to the extent that you can either lead an army of hundreds from above or command them from the over-the-shoulder perspective of your medieval hero/warlord/dastardly baron. If you get stuck, there are always Bannerlord cheats to consider.

Eve Online

If you’ve never played EVE Online you’ll have heard its many stories. Thousands of players and fleets of ships fighting out in space, alliances toppled by traitors, spies murdering CEOs, and lots of theft. All of this is without developer involvement and led by incredibly talented EVE fleet commanders from the comfort of their home PCs.

It’s a living galaxy with a complex player-run economy, filled with corporations and alliances that rise and fall and opportunistic pirates, soldiers, and businessmen waiting to fleece or destroy you. EVE fights the good fight by making its world a true sandbox – helping it become one of the best MMOs on PC.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, check out our EVE Online beginner’s guide. It’s in the corporations, though, that EVE’s heart really lies. The intrigue and wars that arise from them would fit neatly in the pages of The Twelve Caesars.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Four years old, RDR2 is still the latest game from Rockstar, and it received glowing praise in our Red Dead Redemption 2 review and still stands up to it today. After a somewhat sluggish start in the snow, it soon opens out into a glorious representation of the Wild West, with beautiful views of snow-tipped mountains and verdant woodlands. You can wander through the wilderness hunting animals or picking flowers for camp recipes, as well as complete missions for the locals and uncover many RDR2 easter eggs hidden throughout.

RDR2 really hits its stride during some of the key set pieces, including chaotic showdowns and contemplative aftermaths leading to a dizzying finale. After all, you play as an outlaw and, as such, are more than capable of pulling off bank jobs, train heists, and duels. If your PC can handle the Red Dead Redemption 2 system requirements, then there’s a lot to discover in one of the best western games on PC. And that’s not including the countless hours of multiplayer action in Red Dead Online, or even joining the RDR2 roleplay with like-minded gunslingers.

The Sims 4

Equal parts creepy dollhouse and terrifying social experiment, The Sims is one of EA’s big cash cows, squeezing out expansion after expansion. It’s difficult to reconcile the game with the business model, but it’s better to simply put the latter to the back of your mind and not go crazy with the expansion purchases.

The creation tools are simple and tactile, but you can do a lot with them, and the crazy Sims 4 mods and DLC mean the toolset keeps expanding the potential of one of the best management games. But it is the emergent stories that happen to and within your creations that make The Sims so damn compelling even after you’d expect the well to run dry.

You could follow the route of the creepy, sociopathic puppet masters by creating dungeons and then setting fire to Sims once they’re inside. Yes, you could, but we’re not going to encourage that kind of behavior. Instead, why not help your Sims follow their dreams, be that hooking up with the hot person from the bar down the street or building their own Sims space rocket and blasting into the universe?

Garry’s Mod

Garry Newman’s physics sandbox is really just a giant toy box. Absent of objectives and rules, it furnishes players with props, character models, and a whole load of tools from which it can spring all manner of oddities and crimes against nature.

Everything can be stuck together and fiddled with to the point that it’s often used to make hugely creative videos and bizarre shows. And it’s a game design tool, giving birth to single-player adventures, multiplayer worlds, and a heap of player-created content.

It can be an introduction to game design, countless games, or just something you can mess around with when you’re pissed. But, most importantly, you can give NPCs very silly faces. Intrigued? Discover the origin story of the game with the making of Garry’s Mod.

Don’t Starve

Don’t Starve starts with one goal: staying alive. That’s easier said than done in a hellish purgatory, however. Foraging for berries and carrots is easy enough, but as they grow scarce and the hunt takes survivors further afield, the risk of death intensifies. Wild pig men, monstrous arachnids, and unspeakable horrors abound at night.

Don’t Starve is a great survival game, but it’s no slouch as a sandbox, either. The world might be cruel and deadly, but it can be somewhat tamed and molded into something a bit more comfortable. A simple fire and tent can flourish into a farm, fortress, or laboratory. Erstwhile nightmares can be transformed into allies that can protect you from the worst the world has to offer.

Goat Simulator: Remastered

Goat Simulator has been remastered with updated graphics and includes every PC DLC from Goat City Bay to Waste of Space. For those new to the idea of playing as a goat and defying the rules of gravity and physics, Goat Simulator has very few rules and is a sandbox game all about creating as much chaos as possible.

Fly, leap, flail, ride, and dive into different levels where the object is to annoy NPCs and cause as much destruction as possible. It’s just as stupid and buggy as the original, and just as fun, with improved textures, lighting, animations, and more.

There you are, enough of the best sandbox games to get your creative juices flowing for a long time yet. We’ve supplied the bucket and spade and now it’s up to you to use your newfound videogame freedom to make your own fun. If you like doing things your own way, then check out the best crafting games available, but for when you’re more in the mood for destruction than inventive creation, there’s our list of the best FPS games around. Oh, and of course, you’ll never go wrong with our list of the best old games that continue to age better by the day.

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13/05/2025
great party games for small groups — The Treehouse

The game begins with players receiving their secret role card, determining whether they’re on team villager, trying to track down a possible werewolf in their midst before it’s too late, or team werewolf, trying to lie low and avoid detection. Certain village team roles come with special powers, giving players nuggets of information to help put them on the scent, while others act as instruments of chaos adding extra layers of intrigue.

Cue the night time phase: all players place their character cards face down in front of them and close their eyes. The various roles then trigger one at a time, letting the relevant players peak at other cards around the table, swap roles around, or perhaps lock eyes with a fellow werewolf. The game comes with a handy app to talk you through the steps, complete with (optional) spooky disco soundtrack. Then daybreak arrives, giving players a matter of minutes to exchange information, hurl accusations, and finally… decide who to lynch! If the majority vote for a werewolf, it’s victory for the villagers, but if not, the werewolves win the day.

This game needs 5+ players to shine, and the range of roles in the box leaves you with plenty of options for switching things up.

Codenames

If you haven’t yet played this absolute blockbuster of a modern classic, consider your party plans sorted! There are no hidden roles here, just plenty of tension and occasional opportunities for feeling like a genius… or the opposite.

The game set-up is a five by five grid of word cards in the centre of the table, selected randomly from a sizeable stack. Players form two teams, red and blue, then each team selects a ‘spymaster’ who will be their clue-giver for the rest of the game. The two spymasters sit where they can both see a card which allocates each word in the central grid to either the red team, the blue team, a decoy beige category… or one final option which I’ll come back to.

Spymasters take turns to provide a clue to their teams in a specific format: a single word that relates to one or more of the words of their colour in the grid, plus a number which indicates how many words the clue links to. Coming up with the clues is fiendishly tricky, but once that’s done, spymasters simply sit back and maintain a poker face as their team members decide how to interpret their new information, and make a guess at which word(s) in the grid the clue relates to. Each word guessed correctly is covered by a card of the team’s colour, bringing them one step closer to victory. Incorrect guesses either end the turn (beige words), give points to the other team (words of the opposing colour) or, possibly… LOSE THE ENTIRE GAME, in the case of the one black word on the grid: the DEADLY ASSASSIN.

With so much at stake, there’s no shortage of tension here, and few moments in gaming are as satisfying as thinking up or cracking a particularly great clue… or as nerve-wracking as watching your team confidently take hold of the wrong end of the stick. This game works well with four players and brilliantly with six, and if you can’t get together in person there’s an awesome free online version here.

If you’ve mastered Codenames and aren’t put off by the idea of getting your head around a few more rules, we’d strongly recommend Decerypto – check out the review here to find out why.

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11/05/2025
Spooky games for a scary time — The Treehouse

In Betrayal, players take on the role of characters exploring a spooky mansion. You begin the game in the entrance hall, comfortable in the knowledge that you’re all on the same side, and feeling ready for an adventure. The mansion slowly reveals its secrets as you explore, which (spolier alert) pretty much always include some truly daft architectural choices, given that the room tiles are drawn at random. Some rooms contain items (often useful stuff like weapons, etc), while others trigger creepy little events or, most excitingly, reveal omens. Each time an omen is appears, six dice are rolled, and if the total number that comes out is lower than the number of omens you’ve encountered so far… then it’s officially SPOOK TIME, because The Haunt is about to begin.

This is the point at which Betrayal really comes into its own. The basic game comes with a book of 50 different scenarios which can trigger at this point. Which one you end up with is determined by the number on the omen card that tipped the balance, and which room it was found in (who’s to say a scary plot line can’t begin with a look-up table? Certainly not us!). The only thing the scenarios have in common is that they will pit one player (the traitor) against the rest. Who becomes the traitor is determined by the scenario, but whoever they are, they will now become the keeper of the Traitor’s Tome which will provide them with their new, secret win condition and let them know their new spooky powers.

We’ve played a few games of Betrayal ourselves and had a LOT of discussions with people who’ve playing it at the Treehouse, and are always astonished at the variety of plot lines. Yes, some of them are better-designed from a gameplay point of view than others, but we’ve never been disappointed with the narrative that develops: this game has genuinely produced some of our favourite board game storylines. If you’re up for some super-nerdy viewing, check out this episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, which does a great job of demonstrating just how funny and unpredictable Betrayal can be!

Pretty much the only downside to this game at the moment is that you do need at least three people to play it, and ideally 5-6 to experience it at it’s best. If you’re lucky enough to have the player count right now, we strongly recommend giving this one a go.

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10/05/2025
board games for Christmas — The Treehouse

Slowly but surely we’re getting a clearer picture of what’s in store for us over the festive season at the end of this weirdest of years. It’s looking like getting family together around a table will be ‘a thing’ this year in our part of the world, but with pubs shut in a lot of places and household mingling still limited, Christmas merriment might still need a bit of a helping hand.

That’s where (you guessed it) board games come in! Long a traditional component of Christmas for lots of families, board games have come a very long way over the past decade or so, and have never offered so many effective ways to get the fun started. Here’s our Christmas Games Guide 2020 to help you navigate these crowded waters and find the perfect family game for Christmas…

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09/05/2025
Board games and (my) mental health — The Treehouse

At the moment, pretty much everyone in the world has got more than usual to deal with when it comes to mental health. Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve all had some learning to do on what it takes to keep ourselves sane when our usual routines are disrupted and many sources of enjoyment aren’t available to provide a pick-me-up, and that’s just those of us lucky enough to have avoided major trauma or bereavement.

I suspect most regular board gamers would be willing to at least speculate that the hobby was doing their brains some good. It turns out there’s plenty of real life science to back this up, at least in certain areas (abstract strategy games and dementia, for example). I’m not qualified to say anything clever about the research, although a lot of it does ring true for me: this post is a reflection on how board gaming has helped my mental wellbeing over the past twelve months and why I think that is.

This is a personal subject so I’ll introduce myself for a change: Hi, I’m Ruth. For the last three-and-a-bit years I’ve been running the Treehouse with my other half Andy. Unless stated otherwise it’s probably me writing the social media and blog posts and behind the camera taking the pictures. Things I’ve learned about my mental health in the last twelve months: being below a certain level of busy is bad for me; even small amounts of random chitchat with other humans is good for me; I’m still capable of experiencing boredom (genuinely a surprise); houseplants are so beneficial for my mood that it’s almost weird. Big things I miss: sitting round a table with family and friends; working with the rest of the Treehouse team. Small things I miss: the sound of the Treehouse full of people having fun; live music (this one might belong in ‘big things’ actually); PINTS.

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08/05/2025
If board games be the food of love… — The Treehouse
Connect psychically

Maybe what you’re craving isn’t escapism at all, but a way to engage with each other on a deeper level. These (potentially dangerous!) games encourage you to get right into each other’s heads… who knows what surprises you’ll find there?

A quick aside: both of the following games are really designed for larger groups, and I wouldn’t claim that two is the ideal player count for either. However, during lockdown we’ve all had to make our fun with what’s available, and we’ve had an enjoyable two-player time with both of these. Playing with just two makes them a lot less raucous and a little more intense, but arguably no less satisfying than the larger group version, and you’ll get to have a whole different type of fun with them once party days are here again!
- Medium. The first game in this weird but potentially wonderful category is Medium, in which players become mind readers trying to pluck words straight out of each other’s brains (not as gross as it sounds!). Each of you begins with a hand of word cards, and you take turns starting each round by choosing one to play face-up in the middle of the table. Then, the other player follows with a card from their hand, ideally one that they think creates an obvious connection with the word already chosen. You both count down from three then say the word that you think most directly links the two cards. If you both said the same word, great! You just scored the maximum points for the round. If not, you repeat the process up to twice more using the words you just said instead of the words on the card. This super-simple game has some genuine magic to it, and never more so than when you can look each other in the eye and just KNOW that you’re thinking the same thing!
- Wavelength. Ah, Wavelength. I’ve used a whole lot of words waxing lyrical about this phenomenal game since it became available to buy again recently, but I can always find a few more! Wavelength is remarkable in many ways: you can play it in team or cooperatively, by video link or in person, with a large group or with just two players. It’s simple to learn, has some of the coolest components around, and can get you thinking about things as strange and diverse as “who on the Treehouse team is the most Slytherin?”, “which colour does my sister think is the sexiest?” or “what is small but not tiny?”.
  
  The rules of Wavelength are simple: the player whose turn it is to be clue-giver draws a card which defines a scale, e.g. famous to infamous, pointy animal to round animal, or nice smell to disgusting smell, and tells the other players what it is. Then, they spin the Wavelength Wheel of Wonder* (*not its real name) and take a peak behind the snazzy turquoise screen to find out where on the scale the target has landed, without showing the other players. They then concoct their clue, which can be whatever they like as long as it’s not too complex, to help their team mates (or all other players in the cooperative version) to guess where the target is by adjusting the red needle. Once the decision is made, the screen slides back to show the answer, and points are awarded if the needle is within the target area. It might sound a little abstract without the game in front of you, but as soon as you’ve got to grips with the (literal) mechanics of the wheel, all will become clear!
  
  A small safety note to finish: with just two players, we’ve found that this game can go one of two ways: either you’re so wondrously in sync that you become increasingly thrilled at your collective cleverness, or… you’re so at odds that you begin to wonder how you’re even friends. In the event that you find yourself in the latter scenario, don’t panic – treat it as a conversation starter and explore how you got there, and you’re bound to find out something about each other that you didn’t know before!
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08/05/2025
travel games for UK holidays — The Treehouse
It’s summer! And it’s actually been warm! Ridiculously warm! And sunny! Ridiculously sunny! You may have decided to venture outdoors, or even outside of Sheffield for holiday-related fun times over the coming weeks. But if you, dear readers, are anything like us here at the Treehouse, you will be incorporating games into your travel plans.

Yes, I know this summer is different than most, and we can lament not being able to play Carcassonne in Carcassonne, play Santorini in Santorini, or the dream: play Jaipur in Jaipur while drinking a bottle of Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (this may just be my dream). But we are big fans of making our own fun, and so here is a roundup of games for holidays and it goes out to our tribe whom we know will play them rain or shine, Near and Far (available in our library). Read on for a round up of travel games for everyone.

Beach (and rain!) proof games

We are an island nation, and although Sheffield may not have a coastline, we’re surrounded by water (sometimes more than we would like!). I am a beach girl and wild swimmer at heart, so this first group of games is for anyone who’ll be out on the water, or relaxing in the sand, games in tow. Some of these games fit into other categories below, but I wanted to give a special mention to games that are easy to clean and conveniently play well near sand, water and even ice lollies.
- Blokus: This colourful abstract strategy game looks like a very cool analogue version of Tetris but the goal is to fill up the board, not empty it. It can be played by up to four players but works well as a two player game and even has a variation that allows for solitaire mode. Without any text it is easy for kids to pick up and for multilingual groups to play. It’s not necessarily travel sized in the traditional sense but the box is flat and very easy to slip into a suitcase or car boot. I should mention there are some small bits involved, but nothing that a picnic blanket couldn’t contain, and the plastic pieces and board are easy to clean.
- Bananagrams: This Scrabble free-for-all only requires a flat surface to play and each player races to complete their own crossword-style grid in front of them using only the letters they’ve picked up. You can play it alone or up to a group of eight, but eight can get kind of frantic. It’s most enjoyable for two to five players in my experience. And it comes in a cute little fabric banana bag. The whole thing is sand-proof and washable.
- Cobra Paw: Cobra Paw has a cardboard box, which will admittedly get a bit battered the further it strays from your admirably arranged board game shelf. You can accept this hazard, or store the components in a travel bag… or even do as some friends of mine have done and create a special travel box that helps you both store the pieces more compactly, and immediately see if one is missing so that you don’t leave the campsite without it. Cobra Paw is a very speedy matching game for two to six players requiring quick reflexes and good observational skills. It relies on rolling dice and matching symbols on domino shapes and has the extra competitive mechanic of stealing pieces from other players if they are not quick enough to defend them. It is suitable for both adults and kids to enjoy, as long as neither are tantrum-prone when they’re not winning!
- Qwirkle: This one comes in a big-ish box, but don’t be discouraged. Inside the box is a bag of tiles and you can easily take it on holiday with you in the bag and leave the box on your aforementioned beautiful game shelf. You’ll need a large, stable playing surface because these tiles get layed out sort of like dominos and there is no limit to how far you can place them other than the table’s edge. This is a pattern- and colour-matching strategy game for two to four players and is also family friendly and requires no reading. It can be difficult to master for younger players but they may just enjoy making patterns with some of the shapes. You may need pen and paper or a phone to keep score as you and your opponents aim to use up all of the tiles by placing them in sets of matching or contrasting shapes and colours. The design is simple and bright and would suit an outdoor playing table.
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06/05/2025
When does school start again? Games for keeping kids entertained through the ‘end of summer slump’ — The Treehouse

Animal Upon Animal is fun for all ages including adults but is particularly popular with the four- to six-year-old crowd. In this game from Haba for 2-4 players, you compete to see who can stack all of your animals first. The stack you are building is shared (the French name of this game, ‘Pyramids Des Animaux’ may offer a better visual of what happens as the game progresses), which means you don’t have the luxury of setting up sturdy balancing positions for yourself. Everyone is dealt a hand of adorable wooden animal-shaped blocks. A crocodile block is placed in the center of the table and players take turns rolling the die and following the instructions.

The instructions on the die are really quite ingenious for moving the game along in clever ways. You may be instructed to place one animal on top of the crocodile’s back, or you might see two animals on the die, meaning you have to place one after another. You can also be asked to give one of your pieces to someone else to place or have the other players choose which of your animals to place next (and they will invariably select one that is harder to balance). The final option is a picture of a crocodile, which means you can extend the base block to have a larger area to balance animals upon.

The reason I think this game is particularly enjoyable for younger children starting school especially is because even if you make the tower fall, you don’t lose and the game doesn’t end. The maximum penalty if more than two fall off the pile is that you take two animals back into your hand and continue playing. This keeps the focus on dexterity, strategy, and making stacks of cute animals, and nicely swerves siblings blaming each other for quote ‘ruining the game’ or a fear of failure at a time when there are a lot of new expectations. (OK, I clearly have some some childhood Jenga tower collapse issues to explore but never mind that now). Haba games are great generally for this age group. Dragon’s Breath is another lovely Haba game that fans of Animal Upon Animal may enjoy.

Games for very little ones

And finally, even if they’re not ready for big school yet, that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready for gaming (some of my friends’ toddlers have attempted to prove this by taking out every game on the lowest shelf ready to play…).

At this age, the focus for parents choosing games is about two things, really – replayability, and doing something that looks like what the big kids are doing, so the big kids’ game doesn’t get wrecked (for example, my three-year-old niece recently ripped the Candyland board clean in half, in the most impressive WWE style rage quit I’ve heard about in years. It would have been more impressive, I suppose, if I hadn’t been the one who bought it for her and if it hadn’t been my favourite game when I was her age. I hope she is not still doing that when she’s 30, but it was epic nonetheless).

I know, you wouldn’t think there could be a game that would keep a two-and-a-half-year-old entertained, but there is actually an entire series of them by a lovely French toy and game company called Djeco. They have a whole host of adorable games that are both beautifully designed and suitable for toddlers, which is incredibly rare in the world of board games. These games look like a game and feel like a game, but are more about gamifying toddler skills like matching and sequencing and recognising colours. It’s really very clever and the history of this company originally had a child development focus. Add in materials and designs that appeal to a grown up aesthetic and these games are pretty great for everyone. We have several of their games in the shop and our games library but I will focus on Little Collect (in the first of the photos below).

Little Collect is for ages 2.5 to 5. It’s a cooperative game for two players and takes about ten minutes… or as long as attention spans allow. The object of the game ostensibly is to follow picture instructions on the cards you draw until you have completed a scene on the game board. But beware! There is mild peril! The pastoral tableau of adorable bunnies eating peas and carrots can be disrupted. If you are unlucky enough to draw a fox card, one bunny must be ominously removed from your board. It can be returned on a later turn to complete the game, but still. Hey ho, circle of life. Sun rise, sun set. As sure as autumn follows summer, soon enough, even your littlest Little Connect player will be starting school too.

And you know what that means: more time for gaming for you.

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05/05/2025
why card games rock — The Treehouse

Pick a Dog

Pick-a-Dog (1-5 players) (and its virtually identical sibling games, Pick-a-Pig, Pick-a-Seal and Pick-a-Polar-Bear) rely on high-speed matching, but with storytelling added in. You start by laying out a grid of cards that may match, but mostly don’t quite match exactly. Each player turns over their own starting card, which sets off a round of looking for matches in the grid. Though there are some exact matches, all the pictures are similar – they feature a dog who can be depicted with a number of binary qualities: looking pale or having a tan, holding popcorn or not, wearing sunglasses or not, standing near to you or far away, and using one hand or two hands.

The twist in the matching portion of the game is that you can only match cards that are either exact, or follow a sequence where there is only ONE change per card (you can go from sunglasses to no sunglasses, for example, but not from far to near at the same time). The free-for-all ends when there are no more matches to make (but watch out – if you call it and there are still more matches available, you forfeit your hand and can’t score any points that round, while the other players can resume).

Scoring is fun and unusual (or at least it is the way we teach it at The Treehouse!): to prove you’ve made a true sequence with only one difference on each card, you have to tell a story about your buddy the dog that reflects the pictures as you reveal them. It’s very cute indeed. If you discover mistakes in anyone’s sequence, those cards go straight into the discard pile. The players earn the cards they’ve proven are in a sequence each round, and at the end of the game, the winner is the one who has the most cards.

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04/05/2025