Disney is one of the biggest franchises out there, so it’s no surprise that it has a large board game collection that make perfect candidates for game nights with family and friends.
Table of contents
Disney Animated
Disney Animated is a cooperative board game where players must complete their animation panel before the deadline. Along the way, after player turns, the villains will strike and cause calamity to make the players’ job more difficult.
Interestingly, in Disney Animated, players will slowly construct their chosen animation panel for their selected film. The background must be constructed, and characters built on top. It’s satisfying and fun to construct your animation panel, and when everyone finishes theirs, the players win the game.
As actions get performed in Disney Animated, they’ll reduce in value, meaning player cooperation is integral despite the divorced playing boards.
Big Thunder Mountain
Big Thunder Mountain makes up for being somewhat complicated through the great board design. Each player is trying to make money and earn points by selling the gold they panned or picked from Big Thunder Mountain.
What makes this game special is the board, as it’s a large 3D mountain where a player must twist the mountain top to release a marble. The freed marble will randomly pick one of the paths of the mountain and fall into a pocket, causing different effects depending on what type of marble it was and what other marbles it got paired with.
Big Thunder Mountain is incredibly interactive, and moving around the minecarts and marbles elevates the family fun that’s easily had.
Disney Sorcerers Arena
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena is a board game adaptation of the strategy arena mobile game, where players can battle it out head-on in king-of-the-hill battles for victory points.
Each player will pick three characters to make their team and then use their cards to fight the enemy and stay on top of spaces that award points. It’s refreshingly simple and can be taught as you play, making it accessible to families who don’t play a lot of competitive battle board games.
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena is a fun game where most of the enjoyment comes from picking a team that complements each other, and then going to town on your opponent.
Disney Villainous
Disney Villainous allows players to step into the boots of notorious Disney villains to complete what they couldn’t. Players can pick from six villains to play as, and they’ll get specific player boards and icons to play with.
Move your villain across different locations to complete objectives and take down any heroes in your way. Each villain has different objectives, player boards, and actions, meaning there are many games that can be had here.
There is a lot of complexity in Disney Villainous as you have to at least vaguely understand the other villains in play to know who’s ahead and who’s catching up. There is little direct competition also, which may not be for everyone.
Haunted Mansion
Haunted Mansion is a beautifully designed game about forming a tableau of cards. Players will use a rotating platform to visit different rooms of the Haunted Mansion to get new ghost cards and encounter the Hitchhiking Ghosts.
Although this game may go over the heads of children, adults will have simple fun moving around the Haunted Mansion and forming groups of ghost cards. Haunt cards gained by dueling others and meeting the Hitchhiking Ghosts will lose players points, and could lose you your biggest stack of ghost cards.
Although Haunted Mansion isn’t terribly complicated, it’s certainly less accessible for younger players. Some may not find the granular and gritty card collecting too much fun, whereas others will find it extremely satisfying.
Dixit Disney Edition
Dixit: Disney Edition allows the players to become the storytellers for once. Players will receive cards with iconic and abstract Disney moments, which are beautiful in their own right.
Using the cards, the active player will pick a card from their hand and will describe it to the rest of the group. Players will then pick a card from their hand, and all of the cards will go in the middle. Players will have to guess which card is the active player’s.
If everyone or no one picks the active player’s card, then everyone but the active player will gain points meaning you cannot be too specific or too vague when describing your Disney moment in Dixit: Disney Edition.
Codenames Disney
Codenames: Disney is a harder game to wrap your head around, but it’s deceptively simple. A grid of images and phrases related to Disney is spread on the table, and both teams will work together to try and identify their cards.
Each team will have a guess master, and both teams’ guess masters will receive a small combination grid that tells them which tiles their team needs to guess. The guess master, for their team, can only communicate with one word and the number of tiles that clue corresponds to. The team will keep guessing until they unveil a tile that’s not theirs.
Once a team has identified all five of their tiles thanks to their guess master’s skilled communication, they’ll win.
The Magical World of Disney Trivia
The Magical World of Disney Trivia is a trivia board game that will put everyone’s knowledge to the test. The game comes with both adult and child question decks, to make the game fair and for difficulty adjustments.
Players will move around the board using the spinner to answer questions of different color categories. Upon answering a question successfully, you receive that color’s swirl. A player must obtain all the color swirls and reach the end first to win the game!
With points of interest, magic carpet rides, and fun player counters, The Magical World of Disney Trivia makes for not only a great trivia game but a solid game in general that can be enjoyed by anyone.
Lorcana
Lorcana is a trading card game where the combat is not the primary objective. With each deck consisting of 60 cards that can only be composed of two card types, players can get really serious with their deck building.
The aim of Lorcana is to gather 20 Lore Points, which characters can freely grab as an action during their turn. Characters can also challenge other characters and sing, allowing players to execute a sing card for their effects.
The objective of Lorcana is refreshing and makes for a nice change of pace, as players must decide between gaining Lore Points and taking out their opponent’s characters. Do note that as a trading card game, this could be a gateway to a very expensive hobby.
Disney Sidekicks
Disney Sidekicks is a cooperative board game celebrating the (mostly) unsung counterparts to our famous heroes. In a twist, the villains have caged up some Disney heroes in their castle, and it’s the job of the players and sidekicks to rescue them.
To win Disney Sidekicks, the players must free all the trapped heroes and defeat at least one of the villains on the board. Heroes can be freed through using stars, which are gained from many actions in the game.
There are other things to do in Disney Sidekicks, like rescuing villagers to unlock your sidekick’s bonus effects, making this game a dynamic and very engaging experience.
With this grand selection of Disney board games, all you must do now is pick one to play with your friends and family.
