There’s something terribly ironic about card and board games on Steam. There’s been a natural evolution of hundreds of years of games ever since our ancestors were playing jacks and throwing dice that culminates in you booting up Steam’s store to do the exact same thing. With games out there on the market like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Cyberpunk 2077, games have truly evolved as a medium (and an artform!). And yet, these games based on simpler mechanics that humans have already been playing with for generations upon generations are still incredibly popular. 

These games replicate card and board games in new and unique ways, taking advantage of the boundless potential of video games as a medium—and in the best cases they completely turn these games on their head to make thrilling and engaging experiences.

These are five of the absolute best card and board games on steam, ranked in my personal order of worst best to best best.

5: Tabletop Simulator ($19.99)

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Among the many varied board game experiences you can find on steam, Tabletop Simulator is the premier option by far. With an incredibly simple and modular interface, the game has achieved the almost herculean feat of porting nearly every popular board game into the game interface itself. Catan, Monopoly, Codenames, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Warhammer for Pete’s sake, and hundreds more. Basically any board game you’ve ever wanted to play is available in Tabletop Simulator. It takes advantage of its digital space, making playing any of these games simple and easy through its interface.

The only pitfall present is that this expansive library is where Tabletop Simulator starts and ends. It does it just beautifully, but if you want anything more you’re better off playing one of the games listed below.

4: Uno (Free)

It sounds strange putting Uno above Tabletop Simulator, especially since you can literally play Uno in Tabletop, but the game Uno itself is actually really unique! The game is self explanatory, (just like regular Uno) with some unique mechanics to accommodate the digital space. The funniest thing that Uno does is allow players to modify all of the hotly-debated Uno rules into practically any format that has been said before. Seeing as how most people disagree with Uno the game’s rules, it’s pretty funny and smart to see this. One of these special rules is one that takes unique advantage of being a video game; jumping in. This happens when someone plays a card that you have an exact copy of, you can play that card immediately after if you react in time. It’s silly, it’s classic, it’s full of fun game modes and rules to play Uno any way you want.

3: Slay the Spire ($24.99)

Slay the Spire isn’t only technically a card game, it’s also kind  of a turn based dungeon crawler with card-game adjacent mechanics. That being said, it is an incredible game that consists of you, the player, fighting your way up a tower of strange and powerful monsters that challenge you at every turn. Your defense is a deck of cards, which comprises your abilities, and you draw at random every turn and use to your best ability to, well, slay the spire. It’s no traditional card game by any means, but it is a terribly fun and mechanically complex romp that takes the basics of a card game and tells you to go kill with it. And then you do! 

2: Inscryption ($19.99)

How to describe Inscryption? Well, it is a card game / escape room / ARG with lore that goes deeper than most people would bother to look. But the center of the game is its atmosphere:

You’re trapped in a log cabin full of cryptic puzzles, but the only thing to do at first is to sit down with this terrifying looking man and play some eerie card games, which are terribly reminiscent of some of the mechanics from games like Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic: The Gathering. You play little animal cards that get pretty eerie and monstrous against the strange man as the tension slowly builds. You use teeth and eyes as currency, and morph your little animals into horrible creatures that are significantly stronger than the woodland sprites from before. The game’s first section ends with you fighting the moon! It’s a wild ride from start to finish that nails its vibe perfectly.

And then, everything goes crazy: turns out, this cabin is just the introduction to this game! There is so much here that it can’t be all laid out easily, so the only thing to say is go play it if you want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

1: Balatro ($15.99)

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Every time I mention Balatro, and someone asks me what it is, I suddenly find myself at a loss for words. I can think of how to describe it, but that would require more people to know what the term roguelike is, much less what a ‘poker roguelike’ even entails.

But Balatro is an incredible game. It was nominated for game of the year in 2024, and while it definitely had no chance against the triple-A monsters that the industry puts out, it definitely means something. And it’s only fifteen dollars! Game of the year for your wallet.

Balatro is, again, technically a card game, but this one is actually played with a deck of cards! The core loop of the game is that you play poker hands to score points, trying to beat an ever-increasing bind, with occasional boss blinds that come with special challenges. That is the core of it, and yet the game goes so much deeper. There are special planet cards that make certain hands worth more chips, and tarot and spectral cards that imbue certain cards in your deck with unique abilities. But most importantly, there are the Jokers, a set of about 150 cards that each give you a special bonus or ability that help you score enough points to win.

The beauty of Balatro, besides how incredibly addictive it is for many players, is how mathematical the game becomes once you get further into it. The game ‘ends’ at around a blind of 100,000 chips, but with the right cards and combination of jokers, you can easily score billions upon trillions upon quadrillions of points if you get lucky. Some smart players have managed to break the game completely and score enough points that the game simply forces you to lose because it can’t compute your practically infinite score. It’s for this reason, this incredible harmony of game design, vibe, and card game-ness makes Balatro my personal number one for this list.

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Remember that this list is only five out of hundreds of card and board games on Steam, so if this genre of game appeals to you and your friends, go and check it out! A lot of these games are made by smaller creators and indie studios, so support them by playing their games and have all the fun you want along the way.

And even if card and board games aren’t your thing, that’s alright! If you’re more interested in turn-based games, or, if you’re a fan of first person shooters, then there is a wide variety of options to choose from.

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