Here's a round up of a few current happenings in the world of boardgames: Steam is running a big genre sale for digital tabletop games through February 2nd, and a group of five games is being recognized as significant to the hobby by BoardGameGeek, the most recent additions to their Hall of Fame.
First the digital stuff: you can get deals on lots of Steam adaptations of physical games (as well as plenty of boardgames that have never been physical) in the Board Game Fest which runs until Monday.
The video trailer features some... interesting... narration choices, but does show off some popular games that are featured in the event, along with a few I've never heard of. The team has put together a big list of stuff that we saw on sale that we think might be worth checking out, some of the big popular offerings as well as games we enjoy ourselves (note that in some cases, I'm a fan of the boardgame but don't have experience with the digital adaptation specifically.) I'll start with the biggest discounts first:
- Splendor (80% off)
- Scythe (80% off)
- Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (79% off)
- Patchwork (79% off)
- Love Letter (79% off)
- Small World (75% off)
- Gloomhaven (72% off)
- Carcassonne (70% off)
- Terraforming Mars (65% off)
- Spirit Island (60% off)
- Ticket to Ride (60% off)
- Root (60% off)
- The Castles of Burgundy (60% off)
- Gaia Project (60% off)
- 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel (52% off)
- Wingspan (50% off)
- Dorfromantik (50% off)
- D&D Lords of Waterdeep (50% off)
- Tabletop Simulator (50% off)
- Concordia (50% off)
- Through the Ages (50% off)
- A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (50% off)
- Caverna (45% off)
- Everdell (40% off)
- Just Go (40% off)
- Passant: A Chess Roguelike (33% off)
- Dune: Imperium (30% off)
- Kingdomino (30% off)
- Race for the Galaxy (30% off)
- Quilts and Cats of Calico (30% off)
- Clank! (25% off)
- Cascadia (25% off)
- Ark Nova (25% off)
(Some of these games are actually on sale due to other overlapping events and may be discounted past February 2nd.)
In the realm of real life tabletop games, the big community & database site BGG unveiled an official Hall of Fame last year, and the start of 2026 has come with the announcement of five new games joining the initial inductees on pedestals. (Last January I wrote up a list describing the significance of the 25 inaugural entries.) The award celebrates their popularity, originality or overall influence and contributions to the hobby landscape. Here's their video all about the first of the new entries, the classic buying-and-selling card game For Sale:
The new 2026 Hall of Fame titles are:
For Sale - A fast-playing and small-box card game where you'll first need to bid in auctions to acquire properties that you'll then try to sell for the biggest profit in the second phase of the game. It might be small, but elegant and compact are lovely qualities in a game.
Puerto Rico - This island-economy eurogame of growing, storing and shipping crops is a classic of the genre, but does exemplify some of the issues the boardgame world has faced reckoning with its historic glorification of colonization. A recent new edition attempts to make some thematic changes to address the issue.
Memoir 44 - I've had a lot of fun with this pretty casual hex-grid, dice-rolling WW2 battlefield game, though the use of real-life military conflict as a theme for toys and games does feel less "carefree and fun" to me as time rolls on.
Love Letter - One of the most famous micro card games, Love Letter uses just a tiny stack of cards to make a quick and fun social bluffing-and-dodging game of trying to get your romantic writings into the hands of the princess.
Terraforming Mars - Staying near the top of the charts for years after its 2016 release, this mega-popular game is the newest yet introduced to the Hall of Fame, and tasks you with using a large array of unique cards and combos to transform the surface of the red planet one tile and one degree at a time.
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