It’s that time of year again, when the Motion Picture Academy chooses its best movies of the last year and, accordingly, we offer up great games to pair with those movies. It’s cinephile cardboard, and, depending on the movie, a perfect way to echo its themes or turn to should the flick in question not hold your attention.
So make some popcorn, turn up the lights, and let’s get these dice rolling.
Sinners: Music and Vampire Mayhem
Board games and vampires have a long history (Fury of Dracula, anyone?) and there’s a growing body of music-infused titles, from the complex Luthier to the
jazzy Bebop. Given Sinners hard bounce between the two, it makes sense to make your game night a double feature. For that, I’d suggest an opening round of Rock Hard: 1977, a euro oozing character that’ll get you in the mind of a musician that just might risk it all for a big break.
Once that’s wrapped and your group knows who to sink their frustrated fangs into, crack open Vampire the Masquerade: Vendetta, a slithery work of shadows and stabs infused with drafting and deck-building. Easy to learn but, but playing well means engaging with your opponents and feasting on their foolish minions, ensuring a collective festival of blood. Much like Sinners itself.
One Battle After Another: A COIN in Movie Form
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a work of multitudes, stuffed with factions, personal motivations, and Benicio del Toro’s brilliant turn as a dojo master. Through a certain lens (mine, to be clear), One Battle is a COIN game. Particularly, though, I liken it to the slimmer set of Irregular Conflict Series titles, thanks to their tighter player count and zippier action. You want to understand what it’s like to be anarchist insurgents? Join the Merry Men in A Gest of Robin Hood and scramble the Sheriff of Nottingham’s nefarious goals. Then, when the lawmen draw a bead on your miscreants, scramble to turn the people to your side and bring them down.
Or explore Vijayanagara, with its twin minor powers working together against a greater foe, all while trying to time a stab into the other’s back. Both are great introductions to asymmetric war games, much like One Battle opens a door to Anderson’s eccentric, wild films.
F1: It’s all about the Car
Check out our F1 article for excellent racing games, as there are many. Watch F1 though, and you’ll see almost as much time spent discussing car construction, air 
flow, tire quality, and more as there is racing. So, naturally, I must turn to the master of tinkering euros: Vital Lacerda.
His car production game Kanban EV is a tightly knotted array of dials and knobs that, when turned right, will produce the perfect car (and score points aplenty). What lifts Kanban above most other heavy euros is Sandra, who, like the nefarious meddlers in F1, is intent on throwing cold water on your ideas. Learning to manipulate her machinations to your benefit mirrors Sonny Hayes’s journey in the film, rising from dreaming hopeful to vehicle savant. Kanban also looks just about as gorgeous as F1 (if not Brad Pitt himself, because c’mon), so you can soak in the sharp colors as you scheme your way to automotive victory.
Hamnet: Tragic Wordplay
There’s Shakespeare and Black Sonata, of course, for those who want the Bard in more pure form. But I’d argue Hamnet is less about Shakespeare himself and more about grappling with tragedy through letters. And there’s few tragedies in board gaming more fun than a clue that goes wildly awry. Which brings us to So Clover and Letter Jam.
So Clover, with its clue-based enigmas, is a perennial favorite around these parts. Think Codenames with wrinkles. The team-based play (everyone’s on the same side here, folks) means it’s all good vibes, even if some players can’t write a sensible clue to save their lives.
Letter Jam continues the coop vibes—and who was Shakespeare if not everyone’s favorite pal?—with players attempting, with letter-by-letter guesses, to form ever longer words. Hit on the big ones to bring home the literary bacon.
Train Dreams: Rails in the North
Elegiac meandering through the Pacific Northwest wilderness. If you’re more interested in the family element, complete with tragic consequences, Agricola continues to deliver biting euro brilliance. Build up your rustic farm and family, dodge disasters, starvation, and competing players to score the most points. Relaxing until it isn’t, Agricola is surely what Denis Johnson played while writing the novella.
But if it’s trains in big forests that interest you, then 1822PNW brings the stock-trading and rail building to the Pacific Northwest, so you too can construct hulking bridges over gorges while contemplating existence. Because of its many minor companies, 1822PNW is best for 18xx veterans ready to engage in a tight knife fight.
Bugonia: Surreal Comedy
Theoretical aliens? Kidnappings? Baldness? A strange film deserves a strange game, and considering this director’s prior outings (Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness), I’m suggesting Dungeon Degenerates. Take the lush, heroic narrative of Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings and throw them into the gutter, where you’ll gain skills, find treasure, and figure out what you want to do with that detached head you’ve acquired. It’s challenging, but for the right group, could be gaming nirvana.
Recently expanded and flush with emergent narratives spent in the gutter and around it, Degenerates is a game that always tells a story, one that, when placed in the right light, could surely pass for art-house cinema.
Marty Supreme: Reflexes
Two ways to take this Ping-pong thriller. You could lean into the sports of it with games like Klask and Crokinole, that reward dextrous play with victory. Klask is
the buttery five minute match, tense and playable by anyone with a pulse and working hands. You might not be good at it, but gosh darn it, you’ll have a good time. Crokinole is both more expensive and more strategic, the sort of thing you leave out on a spare table to knock out a round with family any time the mood strikes you (and it will, often, because this game is a delight).
Or you could lean into Timothee Chalamet’s burgeoning stardom with a greatest hits of his career: Dune Imperium, Dune: War for Arrakis, Dune: House Secrets, plain ol’ Dune, and I’m sure there are more Dunes out there. Has Chalamet been in other movies?
Frankenstein: The Monster in Your Gaming Closet
By far the easiest on this list to find a pairing game. Horrified makes the cleanest entry, where you and your pals can join together to defeat the Creature and his bride. This is Pandemic with character, as both the original and other editions turn virus cubes into helpless villagers, and ‘cures’ into specific ways to defeat the monsters you’re up against. Fast, fun, and with difficulty scaling (add more monsters at once) that creates great narratives–why is Dracula teaming up with the Creature from the Black Lagoon?–Horrified is a wonderful cooperative series.
But to get the Doctor’s view, My Father’s Work remains the big, hulking game with creature building at its core. A multi-generational euro, where you’ll be completing experiments, building up your gothic mansion, and chasing your father’s dreams, My Father’s Work layers on an app-driven narrative to pull the group into the game. If your group likes heavier thematic euro games, My Father’s Work is one to try.
Sentimental Value: Movie Drama for Everyone
A Nordic drama about a director and his estranged daughters. Sounds like the perfect match for Trouble! Or, should the film industry be more in vogue for you, Popcorn and Hollywood 1947 present two different takes on the movies (one charming and happy, the other riddled with early Cold War tensions). 1947, with its large player count and social deduction elements, fits Sentimental Values’ strange world well, and marks a unique play experience.
Popcorn, by contrast, fits into that comfy thematic euro zone. Quick to play, easy to learn, and it’s hard not to have fun building your own theater or acquiring new movies to show. Spoofed movie titles and a great production overall make Popcorn the sort of game you can slide out after any Oscar drama to bring up the mood.
The Secret Agent: A Carnivale Criminal
A city crowded with spies and their dark secrets?
At first blush, Micomacro is a great start, with its many stories to sleuth out in game after game. You’ll start to feel like The Secret Agent, where everyone has their demons. There’s plenty of options to choose from here, whether you’re playing with younger family or fellow clandestine spooks.
Once you have your spy credentials, consider Mind MGMT, a psychic secret agent sleuthing game with a campaign and plenty of surprises, much like this movie. A one vs. all narrative, Mind MGMT is as engrossing as anything out there, drawing you and your group into its cat-and-mouse shenanigans. Play both with a Carnival soundtrack and some live parrots going to really bask in the atmosphere.
