Top 5 best board games you should make sure you’ve got installed on your phone or tablet this Thanksgiving

Codenames is a spy game, where you are either trying to get your fellow spy to guess the cards you want them to guess or you are trying to guess the cards your fellow spy wants you to guess. It’s a neat concept and one that feels quite unique to Codenames itself. The mobile version of the physical game works really well, and you can have more than one game going at a time. It’s also got some solo modes for quickplay.

Ticket to Ride is a classic board game for a reason; it’s good. Ticket to Ride is a game where you are looking to create railway routes through countries, fulfilling tasks and gaining points. You can play against your family or against bots if they aren’t feeling up to it. Either way, it’s a fun game and the digital adaptation is very similar to the physical game.

Heads Up! is more of a card game than a board game, but I do remember having the board game version as a kid. This is a super lovely family friendly game, that kids young and adults old can get into. Using one phone, you can pick a category. Then one person puts their phone on their head and there are words on there. The rest need to act out the word so the person with the phone can guess the word, then nod the phone down if it’s correct! It’s frantic and can really bring a family together.

Root is a more complex board game, probably best for your older cousins and members of your family. In Root, you are trying to keep control of the woods, using different factions to play to your strengths. Managing cards, moving characters, and keeping track of everyone else in the forest (and how they play) is ideal for this game – so people who have a good pocket of time to fill will enjoy this one.

Let’s not beat around the bush here – there’s a reason you don’t see your family all the time. And if you want a bit of peace and quiet on your own, Pathfinder Adventures is a great way to get it.

It’s essentially an RPG distilled into a card game, and it’s an awful lot of fun. There’s a huge amount of content to smoosh your face into as well. Sure, your mom might be carving the turkey, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be carving up some goblins on your phone or tablet as well.