Games like Spirit Island

Looking for games like Spirit Island? You want a heavy cooperative game that pushes your group to think hard on every turn — ideally one where each player feels genuinely different from the others. Spirit Island sits squarely in the heavy tier: it rewards mastery and punishes passive play.

Frosthaven and Gloomhaven both rank among the strongest matches. Frosthaven extends the dungeon-crawler format into a full campaign with hand management at its core, trading Spirit Island's urgency for a slower-burn narrative arc. Gloomhaven covers similar ground with a larger box and tighter tactical puzzles, and it supports solo play just as Spirit Island does. Mage Knight Board Game is another strong fit — a solo-or-cooperative heavy game that shares the emphasis on hand management and variable player powers, though its ruleset is famously demanding.

All three reward the same analytical, each-player-is-different approach that Spirit Island demands. Here is what scores highest against that brief.

— BoardMatch team