Board Games are pretty fun in general, but if we can add a bit of education along the way that is great too. The following Geography Board Games are aimed at helping your understanding of countries, maps, and the world we live in.
Table of Contents
- The World Game
- Terra
- Who Knows Where?
- 10 Days in Europe
- Trekking the National Parks
- Travel Blog
- What Have We Learnt About Geography Board Games?
The World Game
The World Game pretty much does what it says on this tin. This game is an all-encompassing breakdown of the world. It includes 194 recognised countries from all major continents. The basic game involves competing between two countries in a top trump like format – bigger countries beat smaller countries.
However, there are also four additional modes for you to play:
- Flag
- Location
- The Capital City
- Continent
These, of course, vary in difficulty, it is a lot easier to remember which continent a country is in than its capital city, but the mental gymnastics in this game will leave you learning a thing or two by the time you have finished playing.
Terra
Terra is a Trivia game that asks three connected questions about a location. Let’s take the Galapagos Islands for example. The questions might be: Where is it? When was it discovered? How many Islands are there? If you answered Ecuador, 1535, and 18, you would get 100% and I would say you had cheated because I needed google for that.
But, the point in Terra is that you do not necessarily have to get the right answer. Being close counts and the closer you are to the correct answer, the more points you get.
The game has a runtime of 40-50 minutes and has around 300 topics to get your teeth into. You will have certainly learnt some obscure facts by the end of it!
Who Knows Where?
Who Knows Where? Is a family guessing board game. Players travel around our world by guessing capital cities, events, landmarks, and country facts. It’s a great way to prepare yourselves for that next quiz and comes in a fun, action packed box.
With over 1000 locations across 5 categories there is a serious amount of content to know. However, you do not need to know it all yourself. If you are unsure of the answer you can use one of your opponent’s guesses to supplement your own – but be careful, if they’re wrong you will be the one going backwards!
10 Days in Europe
Europe is amazing, it’s a continent shared by over 40 countries each with their own distinct culture and often unique language. There’s around 24 different official languages in the region stretching to 200 depending on your definition of languages, dialects etc. 10 Days in Europe plays much more like a board game than the other more quiz-based games on this list.
To win the game you must make a successful 10 day trip where each county links. You can travel to different countries by land – if they boarder each other, like France and Germany, by sea, if they share sea ports, for example Spain and the UK are on the Atlantic Ocean, or by plane if the countries share a similar coloured background, for example yellow.
Each turn you draw cards and discard similar cards. In essence we’re trying to make patterns that align to our cards, you must mix and max to find the best route around Europe. Other players are also able to draw your discarded cards.
This game series has also been through a lot of other iterations, for example Africa, USA, and Asia. If you enjoy the European version it might be worth picking one of these others up and expanding your geography knowledge even further!
Trekking the National Parks
Geography is not just about learning place names, capitals and flags. It is about nature more specifically and this board games helps remind us of this. The game itself is thematically close to the popular Ticket to Ride series. There are clear paths and routes linking to the national parks to one another.
When you reach a park if you have the required resources you can buy a trek card, this gives you a victory point. You have to closely manage your resources making sure you don’t run before you can walk and reach the parks too soon! Each park has a corresponding stone colour and additional points are given if you have the most stones of any one colour requiring you to put a bit of planning behind your trek!
Yosemite, the Everglades, and Rocky Mountain all feature in this geography game that lays out the American landscape in a way unseen before. Just don’t get caught alone by a bear!
Travel Blog
Realistically, I think owning a travel blog would be much more interesting than the one I run at the moment. While, of course, I do love board games, there’s nothing like visiting another country and making your own memories there.
The game follows the four seasons throughout the year as travelling gets more and more hectic and more difficult. I can speak for many in saying that blogging is a hobby rather than full time income. As such you need to aim to save money, in this game you do this by reaching your destination crossing as few boarders as possible. Let’s say, for example, Bulgaria to Switzerland, this is 4 boarders and will cost you 40 euros. Probably not quite the going rate right now, but you get the idea.
The game is interesting because it’s not only teaching you were countries are, but how they interact with each other, their boarders and their peoples. It’s an interesting twist on what is otherwise an ordinary theme – travelling throughout USA and Europe.
What Have We Learnt About Geography Board Games?
It’s helpful to have a board game that is not only fun, but also educates. Geography board games do this to a T and creates a fun learning experience for children and adults alike. While some may have the atypical world map, linking cities and countries many try to do it in an interesting way. Trekking the National Parks, for example, takes you away from state based geography and takes you across the US on an exciting nature adventure. Travel Blog, on the other hand, asks you to carefully manage finances for your world trip.
