Brain Games for Adults: The Board Games That Actually Sharpen Your Mind

There is a well-funded industry built on the idea that brain training apps will make you smarter. The evidence for most of them is thin at best. Lumosity paid a $2 million FTC settlement in 2016 after regulators found its cognitive improvement claims were unsupported. Similar products have faced similar scrutiny.

Board games, by contrast, have a growing and considerably more credible research base. Not because they are perfect cognitive tools — they are not — but because the skills they demand genuinely overlap with the skills that matter in everyday life: planning several steps ahead, tracking multiple variables simultaneously, adapting when conditions change, and reading what other people are likely to do.

This guide is about which games actually develop which cognitive skills, and why the evidence supports it.

The Cognitive Skills Worth Developing

Before recommending games, it is worth being precise about what "brain training" actually means. There are distinct cognitive faculties, and different games develop different ones.

Working memory is the capacity to hold and manipulate information in mind simultaneously. It underpins reading comprehension, mental arithmetic, and complex decision-making. Crucially, it is trainable — unlike IQ, which is relatively fixed, working memory capacity responds to the right kind of challenge.

Executive function is the cluster of processes that manage goal-directed behaviour: planning, flexible thinking, inhibitory control (the ability to suppress the first response and think more carefully), and task-switching. Deficits in executive function are associated with impulsivity, poor planning, and difficulty adapting to new situations.

Strategic planning is the ability to model future states — to consider "if I do X, then Y happens, and then my opponent will probably do Z" — and select actions accordingly. It requires both working memory (to hold the tree of possibilities) and inhibitory control (to resist immediately attractive but strategically poor moves).

Theory of mind is the ability to model other people's mental states: what they know, what they want, and what they are likely to do. It is an underrated cognitive skill in workplace and relationship contexts.

Each of these is developed by specific game types, and the games that develop more than one are particularly valuable.

What the Research Says

The UCL 2023 study was notable for its methodology: it followed a cohort of adults over 18 months, measuring cognitive outcomes in regular board game players versus controls. The strongest effects were observed for strategy games (chess, abstract strategy, economic games) rather than luck-based games. The researchers hypothesised that the consistent demand for multi-step planning — combined with real-time adaptation as opponents make unexpected moves — is the mechanism driving cognitive benefit.

The dementia research is the most striking. The BMJ 2019 meta-analysis did not establish causality — it is possible that cognitively active people self-select into game-playing rather than games producing the protection — but the association is robust across multiple studies and large samples.

What the research does not support is the idea that any single game protects cognitive health indefinitely. The consistent finding is that variety and challenge matter. When a game becomes too familiar, it stops pushing the brain. This is an argument for rotating games, not playing the same one every week.

The Cognitive Skills Map

Working Memory: The Best Games

Working memory is taxed when you need to track multiple simultaneous variables. Games that demand this most effectively are those where the board state is complex and changing, and where understanding your position requires integrating information from several sources at once.

7 Wonders is perhaps the best working memory workout in the under-90-minutes bracket. You are simultaneously tracking your own civilisation's development across three ages, monitoring what your neighbours are building (which affects what you can exploit or block), and planning your hand-drafting strategy across multiple card passes. Playing it well requires holding three separate threads in mind at once.

Pandemic (cooperative) demands that all players track the infection status of multiple cities, the available resources of all players, and the probability distribution of what cards remain in decks. The cooperative structure means that improving your analysis of the board helps everyone — there is no hiding behind others' work.

Smoothie Wars develops working memory through its pricing and stock management demands. Players must simultaneously track their own inventory and cash, estimate competitors' pricing positions, anticipate customer movement across the island, and plan purchasing decisions for the next round. This multi-track tracking — across both resource and competitive dimensions — is a genuine working memory challenge, presented in a context that feels immediate and high-stakes.

Strategic Planning: The Best Games

Strategic planning games require you to think multiple moves ahead in a system where your opponent is also planning. The most demanding games create trees of possibilities deep enough that planning to the end is impossible — which forces probabilistic thinking.

Chess remains the gold standard for strategic planning. The research on chess and cognitive development spans decades and is largely consistent: regular chess play improves planning ability, and the improvement transfers to non-chess domains to a meaningful degree. The drawback is the learning curve. The game rewards deep study, and casual chess produces limited cognitive benefit compared to studied practice.

Azul is a far more accessible planning game that develops the same "think ahead" capacity in a much shorter learning window. Placing tiles efficiently requires thinking about your board three to four turns ahead while monitoring which tiles your opponents are likely to claim. It is a genuine planning workout dressed in beautiful components.

Executive Function: The Best Games

Executive function is best challenged by games that demand inhibitory control — the ability to suppress an immediately attractive move in favour of a strategically better one.

This is where Go would sit if it were not so demanding to learn. But for most adults, Azul and Ticket to Ride offer a more accessible version of the same challenge. In Ticket to Ride, you can often take cards that help you immediately but expose your route to a competitor's blocking move. Recognising this and restraining the impulse to grab short-term points is precisely what inhibitory control looks like in practice.

Smoothie Wars presents executive function challenges through its pricing decisions. Setting your prices as high as possible sounds obviously good — more money per sale. But pricing too high loses customers to competitors, and lost sales are not recovered. The impulse to maximise margin must be weighed against competitive reality on every single turn. Players who develop this inhibitory discipline within the game frequently report that it changes how they approach pricing decisions in their actual work.

Theory of Mind: The Best Games

Games that develop theory of mind are those requiring you to model other players' knowledge and intentions — not just their actions.

Codenames is the most focused theory-of-mind training available in a box. The spymaster must construct a clue that links specific cards for their particular team — accounting for how those specific people are likely to interpret words. Playing well requires genuinely modelling other minds, not just broadcasting from your own.

Catan develops theory of mind through trading. Understanding why an opponent wants to trade — what their position is, what they plan to build, and whether the trade benefits them more than you — requires modelling their game state and intentions accurately.

Building a Cognitive Training Programme with Board Games

If you are genuinely interested in the cognitive benefits of board gaming, here is how to structure it.

A Note on Complexity

There is a temptation to assume that harder games produce more cognitive benefit. This is only partially true. Games that are too complex for a player's current level produce cognitive overload, not development — the brain shuts down rather than stretching. The right game is one that demands real effort but remains completable.

For most adults new to modern board gaming, starting with Azul, Carcassonne, or Smoothie Wars and progressing toward 7 Wonders or Pandemic is a sensible trajectory. Chess is worth pursuing separately, but expect a steeper curve.

FAQs

Do board games genuinely improve memory? Evidence suggests they improve working memory — the ability to hold and use information actively — particularly in strategy games that demand multi-variable tracking. They are less effective for improving episodic memory (remembering specific events), which is a different cognitive system.

Is Scrabble a good brain game? Scrabble develops vocabulary and pattern recognition, but the cognitive challenge plateaus quickly for experienced players. It is a reasonable maintenance activity but less effective for development than strategy games that require multi-step planning.

How often do I need to play to see cognitive benefits? The research points toward regular engagement — at least weekly — with games that genuinely challenge current ability. Occasional play produces less measurable benefit. Consistency matters more than session length.

Can board games help with cognitive decline in older adults? The evidence for preventive effect is stronger than therapeutic effect. Playing complex games throughout adulthood is associated with reduced dementia risk; the evidence for reversing existing cognitive decline is weaker. That said, the social and engagement benefits of board gaming for older adults are independently well-documented.