What better way to improve our memory and have fun than a good ol’ board game? Memory board games have many benefits to the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus.
Exercise your mental muscles and keep your brain buzzing with our top picks for the best memory board games and card games!
🏆 Our Top Picks for Best Memory Board Games
In a hurry? Take a quick peek before you go.
Codenames
Players: 2-8
Playing time: 15 mins
The top-secret board game. Win or lose, it’s fun to figure out the clues!
In Codenames, you’ll be working together to contact all your agents before the other team and will have to decipher clues in this fun and challenging social word game.
Using memory and deduction is key for Codenames. Spymasters give one-word clues that can help their teammates guess the correct words all while avoiding the assassin. This game is super fun but a testing game as players’ communication is limited. By focusing on choosing the most important words the game challenges the brain and makes you think.
Give Codenames a try and play this deceptively awesome game!
The Resistance
Players: 5-10
Playing time: 30 mins
A dystopian universe of secret identities, deduction, and deception.
In the game, The Resistance, the empire must fall by shattering imperial strength. Players work to liberate the masses, but with internal spies, sabotage is imminent.
Unmask the spies by using your skills of deduction. Not only exercising your memory, but with The Resistance, you can also practice your lying skills. Deceive players by getting creative with bluffing and negotiation too.
Artfully balancing deduction with the social elements of the game, Resistance will have everyone on their toes in this adrenaline-filled game.
Hanabi
Players: 2-5
Playing time: 25 mins
A cooperative deduction card game with a twist. Hanabi is a dazzling display of memory and communication skills.
Each player has 5 cards and can see everyone’s cards except their own. Teamwork is important but only if your memory skills are up to scratch.
Making decisions without seeing your cards has fun gameplay that’s also challenging. Remember vital information other players have told you and help each other create an amazing firework display!
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
Players: 2-8
Playing time: 10-30 mins
This game’s unique name is perfectly titled for an interesting gaming session. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza is a compact card game perfect to play any time, any place.
Taking a matter of minutes to learn, this is a fun memory party game that’s simple yet hilarious. Be the first to get rid of all your cards and win. Although the rules are simple, the race against each other as you slap down a card has you second-guessing yourself and messing with your head.
Memory and pattern recognition are important to winning, all while playing in real-time.
Whip out Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza at your next party and let the cute cards deceive your friends!
Boom Goes the Dynamite
Players: 2-6
Playing time: 15-20 mins
A game of memory, math, and matching for the whole family.
Boom Goes the Dynamite gives players one mission. Find and ignite matches using memory, math, and just a touch of luck. As simple as your mission sounds, the cards are constantly changing and can lead to an explosive twist!
Boom Goes Dynamite offers players of all ages a game where you can practice these important skills all while having fun. It’s also a great game for a classroom and won the 2020 Teacher’s Choice Award.
By mixing logic, focus, memory, and math this easy-to-learn card game is a good educational game to choose.
Survive: Escape from Atlantis
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 45-60 mins
Adventure, suspense, thrills… escape from Atlantis, and survive!
Survive: Escape from Atlantis is a long-standing favorite for memory-focused board games. Set in the early 20th century, a time of adventure and exploration, Atlantis has been discovered. Great treasures have been found but Atlantis begins to sink! Can you escape?
This is a really fun game with sea serpents, whales, and sharks that only requires a bit of light strategy. With custom dice, tokens and boats, players must move along the grid while avoiding the scary meeples. By bluffing and using your memory you can escape on a boat with the most survivor points and win!
Letters from Whitechapel / Whitehall Mystery
Players: 2-6
Playing time: 90mins
An intense cat-and-mouse hunt for Jack the Ripper!
Letters from Whitechapel is a thematic game in which players must bluff and deduce which players have taken on the role of the infamous Jack the Ripper! Whether you’re one of five detectives or the Ripper himself, London is buzzing with fear that the killer will strike again.
This is a fantastic game played over four rounds. Each round, a victim is chosen and ‘Jack’ must elude authorities pursuing him. With reference sheets, locations, and investigative tiles to keep track of, memory skills are of the utmost importance.
Play Letters from Whitechapel and experience the seediest corners of London, with a killer on the loose.
Wrap-Up
We hope you enjoyed our list of the best memory board games! These games will test your cognitive skills and challenge even the best memory against family and friends. Keep your wits about you and dive into strategy with these quick memory board and card games!
Have you tried any on the list? Did we miss any of your favorites? Drop a comment below – we’d love to hear from you!
Kendra has always been a hardcore fantasy nerd. Growing up in the worlds of Tolkien, Sanderson, Jordan, and Abercrombie, DnD & board games just came naturally. She and her husband, Bryan, started GameCows.com in 2018 as a fun passion project that just took over their lives. An avid board gamer since childhood and chronic DnD chronicler for more than two decades, she loves to play, write, travel, and learn dead languages.