Recommended Casual Game Award

Casual Game Recommended badge Each Recommended game has been carefully evaluated by our editorial staff and found to meet the following conditions:

• Representative of the casual game genre in terms of game length, depth, and complexity
• Appeals to a general audience, with a G or PG content rating
• Has acheived a high rating in gameplay, quality, and originality

Ion is a game about chemistry! But more specifically, it’s a card-drafting game about building compounds! Players are given a hand of ion and elements cards, and must select one of those cards either to bond to a card already on the table, or to set it alone. Players then pass their remaining hand of cards to an opposing player to start the process over again.

The brilliant Dr. Eureka has important experiments for you to complete!

You must solve his scientific formulas by moving your materials from tube to tube without touching them with your bare hands! Solve the solutions faster than your competition to prove you are the smartest scientist in the lab!

Your old favorite book is now your new favorite game! Draw a category card, grab a book, and then quickly skim to satisfy the chosen prompt (and the judge!) with the most entertaining phrase. Can you find "a ridiculous tabloid headline" in that best-selling novel? How about “dating advice” in your well-worn cookbook? Since you can use any book, you can play with any group and find limitless potential on every page! Where will you discover “the title of the next hit party game?” Find out when you Bring Your Own Book!

You are an owner of a traditional restaurant. Do your best to attract the 7 best Geisha to join you by collecting their favorite items.

Explore! Discover! Sabotage!

Join the Golden Age of Archeology! Compete with your rival colleagues to become the most revered archeologist in the world. Use seas, mountains, and airports to connect your dig sites to your base camp. Collect valuable artifacts and out with your opponents in this easy-to-learn strategic, tile-laying game.

Beware the mummy!

Welcome to the city of Machi Koro, the Japanese card game that is sweeping the world.

You've just been elected Mayor. Congratulations! Unfortunately, the citizens have some pretty big demands: jobs, a theme park, a couple of cheese factories, and maybe even a radio tower. A tough proposition sine the city currently consists of a wheat field, a bakery, and a single die.

Enter a fantasy realm with only five minutes to complete your missions!

Dungeon Time is a real time, cooperative card game of exciting dungeon adventures and catastrophic failures for 1 (yes, you can play solo!) to 5 players.

As the sand falls in the sandtimer, you must race through the deck to achieve as many missions as you can. Simultaneously, you and your friends draw, play, draw, frantically looking for all the Items you need to complete your Missions.

Every morning Odin sends his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, across the world to bring back news of what life is like on Earth. Naturally, after thousands of years, they've gotten a little competitive...

Race through the landscape in opposite directions to be the first to return to Odin. Focus on speed, or enlist the help of the trickster god Loki to create shortcuts and hinder your opponent. Can you be certain Loki's changes won't help your opponent instead? There's only one way to find out!

Happy Salmon is a simple fast-paced card game packed with high-fivin', fin-flappin' fun!

1. Everyone calls out the action shown on their top card.

2. When two players have a match, they perform that action together, then discard their top card.

3. Keep doing this. The first player to discard all their cards wins.

Two Kahuna – ancient sorcerers of the Pacific – compete for dominance on an archipelago consisting of twelve small islands. Using their magic and wisdom, they struggle for control of the islands. They anxiously await the cards handed to them by fate. But when the time is right, they move to capture one, two, or even more islands, trying to gain the upper hand.

At the mercy of the magical powers of the South Seas, they quickly realize that even the best magic is no good without strategy.