TOP-7 Best Board Game Video Games

In December 2025, Cyberpunk 2077 — The Board Game will be released, a board game set in Night City. It offers to take control of V, Panam Palmer, Jackie Wells, or Judy Alvarez. There is a slight irony in this, because the latest project from CD Projekt RED is itself an adaptation of the tabletop Cyberpunk 2020. And this is far from the only such example. We present to your attention a selection of top-notch video games based on popular board games.

The board game Vampire: The Masquerade has received many games based on its themes, from visual novels to battle royales. However, the best of them was the 2004 project from Troika Games. This team consisted of former employees of Interplay, which gave us the original Fallout dilogy. The action of Bloodlines took place in modern Los Angeles, which is inhabited by vampires. They are divided into clans with their own characteristics, customs and preferences. Among them are cultural bullfighters, crazy Malkavians and creepy Nosferatu. Bloodlines can be praised for its variability, dark atmosphere, excellent work with the Masquerade lore and complex gameplay that suggests different ways to complete it.

However, the game was let down by its technical component. It was slow, glitchy and had critical bugs. As a result, Vampires was practically unnoticed compared to other hits of 2004, which hit the financial capabilities of Troika Games. The studio was closed in February 2005. However, thanks to mods and fan patches, Bloodlines was brought to mind. If you missed it at the time, you can try it. Over the past 20 years, the game has hardly aged.

Games based on Warhammer 40,000 have been released since 1992. However, Relic Entertainment managed to convey the scale of the endless war between humans and xenos and heretic traitors most fully in the first Dawn of War. This is a real-time strategy with hundreds of infantry and dozens of vehicles on the screen. To win, it is important to capture key points that bring resources. You can't sit back in a deep defense — you need to constantly attack the enemy in all directions.

Each of the three add-ons for Dawn of War added new factions. In the final add-on called Soulstorm, we saw nine sides of the conflict. If you decide to check out the strategy today, we recommend installing the fan remaster. It brings the game's graphics up to modern standards.

Many cult RPGs, such as Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, are based on the Dungeons & Dragons board game. But if we were to choose one project, we would choose Baldur's Gate 3. In our opinion, this is the best adaptation of D&D in an interactive format. The developers from Larian Studios carefully transferred all the features of the board game universe, came up with their own interesting plot and allowed you to go through it in dozens of different ways. All this goes well with exciting gameplay. We talked about Baldur's Gate 3 in more detail in our review.

The MechWarrior series is based on the tabletop BattleTech. It is dedicated to the distant future, where people fight each other on huge exoskeletons. While there were many mech simulators in the 90s and early 2000s, today there are practically no representatives of this genre. That's why MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, which was released 5 years ago, still looks fresh and unusual. And it gives a complete picture of the BattleTech universe. If you miss exoskeleton battles or are not familiar with this direction, but want to try something new for yourself, we recommend checking it out.

The original Shadowrun bizarrely combines science fiction and classic fantasy. The first games based on this universe were released on SNES and Sega Mega Drive, but we want to draw attention to Shadowrun Returns. This is a turn-based tactics in the spirit of the latest parts of XCOM, but with RPG elements. The specifics of the setting make battles unpredictable, because some heroes rely on technology, while others rely on magic. However, the game is quite complex, so it will suit, first of all, fans of tactical strategies.

In addition to Warhammer 40,000, Games Workshop produces board games that are made in the dark fantasy genre. They have their own Empire, green-skinned orcs and Chaos as an absolute evil that threatens all living things. Video games based on Warhammer Fantasy have been released since 1995, but many of them turned out to be unsuccessful, so they do not deserve your attention.

The situation changed when Creative Assembly took over the series. The transition from a historical setting to a fantasy theme played into the studio's hands — against the backdrop of the second «Rome», Warhammer was perceived as a breath of fresh air. The developers have retained the signature combination of a global mode and large-scale real-time battles, and the participation of vampires, beastmen and elves in them brought variety, which was so lacking in the latest parts of Total War.

Torment: Tides of Numenera was presented from the very beginning as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment. However, the game is based on the board game Numenera, which was released in 2013. Its action unfolded in the distant future, where new technologies are already indistinguishable from magic. Therefore, the setting of Torment is more reminiscent of fantasy than science fiction. In terms of gameplay, we have an old-school role-playing game with an abundance of dialogue and leisurely battles.

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Are you into board games? Or do you prefer their adaptations in the form of films and video games? Share your opinions in the comments!