Domino and Tile Games

A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment games. Some board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout, or allowing changes in the board geometry during play.

Zombies!!! is a tile-based strategy board game for two to six players. Zombies!!! won the 2001 Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game, and Zombies!!! 3: Mall Walkers won 2003's Origins Award for Best Board Game Expansion.

Catan, or The Settlers of Catan in older editions, is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag (Kosmos) as Die Siedler von Catan. Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players are rewarded points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of points, typically 10, is the winner. The game and its many expansions are also published by Mayfair Games, Filosofia, Capcom, 999 Games, Κάισσα, and Devir.

Saboteur is a mining-themed card game, designed by Frederic Moyersoen and published in 2004 by Z-Man Games.

Gold Mine is a tile-laying board game for 2 to 6 players, ages 8 and up. It was designed by Chris James and published by Stratus Games. In the game, players excavate a maze of mine tunnels by placing tiles that represent the features of an underground mine. Players also control miniature miners who traverse the mine collecting gold. In addition, miners can traverse secret passages, challenge other miners for gold, and direct bats toward other miners to chase them away from their current position in the mine.

Galaxy Trucker is a science-fiction board game for two to four players. The game was developed by Vlaada Chvatil, with graphics designed by Radim Pech. The Czech version of the game was released in 2007 by Czech Games Edition, and a German version was published in the same year by Heidelberger Spieleverlag.

Fjords is a tile-based German-style board game designed by Franz-Benno Delonge and published in 2005 by Hans im Glück and Rio Grande Games. Unlike some other games in the genre, Fjords is strictly limited to two players. The game is played in two phases: exploration and expansion. In the first phase, the players draw random hexagonal tiles and place them on the gaming table in alternating sequence to form a map. Tile edges must consistently match with respect to terrain types (clear land, mountain, and water). On some of the tiles they place their four villages. In the second phase, they expand from their villages by placing tokens of their colour on the tiles. The player who succeeds in placing the most tokens (by cutting off the other player's access to tiles) wins the game.

Forbidden Island is a cooperative board game developed by Matt Leacock and published by Gamewright Games in 2010. Two to four players take the roles of different adventurers, moving around a mysterious island, looking for hidden treasures as the island sinks around them. All players win if they find all the hidden treasures and they all make it back to the helicopter and fly away, and they all lose if they cannot.

Diceland is a tile-based game designed by Spartaco Albertarelli and released in 2002 by Kidultgame. Players place hexagonal tiles to form a playing area. They then roll dice to form an army. The dice themselves form the soldiers in the army, and the number rolled is the strength of the soldier. As a result, in smaller games luck plays a large factor and the game can be very one-sided. Larger games tend to be more balanced, though it is not guaranteed.

Carcassonne is a tile-based German-style board game for two to five players, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German and by Rio Grande Games (until 2012) and Z-Man Games in English. It received the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis awards in 2001. It is named after the medieval fortified town of Carcassonne in southern France, famed for its city walls. The game has spawned many expansions and spin-offs, and several PC, console and mobile versions.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a board game published by Avalon Hill and designed by Bruce Glassco. Players all begin as allies exploring a haunted house filled with dangers, traps, items and omens. As players explore the mansion, new room tiles are chosen at random. Accordingly, the game board is different each session.

Alhambra is a 2003 tile-based German-style board game designed by Dirk Henn. It was originally published in Germany by Queen Games in a language-interdependent version; an English-specific version was released in North America by the now-defunct Überplay. The game is an Arabian-themed update, set during the construction of the Alhambra palace in 14th century Granada, of the 1998 stock trading board game Stimmt So!, which in turn was an update of the 1992 mafia influence board game Al Capone; the original version was subsequently released as Alhambra: The Card Game.

Tsuro is a tile-based board game designed by Tom McMurchie, originally published by WizKids and now published by Calliope Games. Tsuro is a board game for two to eight players. Each player takes their turn by selecting a tile from their "hand", and places the tile on the board to build a path that begins at the edge of the board and travels around the interior. The object of the game is to travel the path and to avoid ending your journey at the edge of the game board, and to be the last remaining piece in the play area.

Triominoes is a variant of dominoes using triangular tiles published in 1965. A popular version of this game is marketed as Tri-Ominos by the Pressman Toy Corp.

Tantrix is a hexagonal tile-based abstract game invented by Mike McManaway from New Zealand. Each of the 56 different tiles in the set contains three lines, going from one edge of the tile to another. No two lines on a tile have the same colour. There are four colours in the set: red, yellow, blue, and green. No two tiles are identical, and each is individually numbered from 1 through 56.

Hive is a bug-themed tabletop game, designed by John Yianni and published in 2001 by Gen42 Games. The object of Hive is to capture the opponent's queen bee by completely surrounding it, while avoiding the capture of one's own queen. Hive is an abstract strategy game.

Heroscape is an expandable turn-based miniature wargaming system originally manufactured by Milton Bradley Company, and later by Wizards of the Coast, both subsidiaries of Hasbro, Inc., and discontinued by Hasbro in November 2010. The game is played using pre-painted miniature figures on a board made from interlocking hexagonal tiles that allow for construction of a large variety of 3D playing boards. The game is often noted and lauded by fans for the relatively high production quality of the game materials, in particular the pre-painted miniature figures as well as its interchangeable and variable landscape system.

Gheos is a tile-laying board game designed by René Wiersma. Graphic design and illustration was supplied by Joshua Cappel, and box cover art was painted by Allan Bednar. The game was published in 2006 by Z-Man Games.

Blokus is an abstract strategy board game for two to four players, invented by Bernard Tavitian and first released in 2000 by Sekkoïa, a French company. It has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher's Choice Award. In 2009, the game was sold to Mattel.

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a gameboard which is divided into a 15Ã-15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words which, in crossword fashion, flow left to right in rows or downwards in columns. The words must be defined in a standard dictionary. Specified reference works (e.g., the Official Tournament and Club Word List, the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) provide a list of officially permissible words.

Rummikub is a tile-based game for two to four players, combining elements of the card game rummy and mahjong. Players take turns putting down tiles from their racks into sets (groups or runs) of at least three. In the Sabra version (the most common and popular), the first player to go out scores a positive score based on the total of the other players' hands, while the losers get negative scores. There are 104 number tiles in the game (valued 1 to 13 in four different colors, but duplicated) and two jokers. An important feature of the game is that players can work with the tiles that have already been played.

Qwirkle is a tile-based game for 2-4 players, designed by Susan McKinley Ross and published by MindWare. Qwirkle shares some characteristics with the games Rummikub and Scrabble. It is distributed in Canada by game and puzzle company, Outset Media. Qwirkle is considered by MindWare to be its most awarded game of all time. In 2011, Qwirkle won the Spiel des Jahres, widely considered the most prestigious award in the board and card game industry. A sequel, Qwirkle Cubes, was released by Mindware in 2009.

Quad-Ominos is a game published by Pressman beginning in 1978. It is permanently out of production but generally available on the secondhand market. It is similar in theory to Triominoes but uses a set of four-sided square tiles. The object of the game, as with many domino-type games, is to rid one's hand of tiles by placing them all on the board.

Okey is a tile-based game, very popular in Turkey. It is almost always played with 4 players, though in principle can be played with two or three. It is very similar to the game Rummikub as it is played with the same set of boards and tiles but with different rules. The game apparently evolved from the original Rummikub through cultural contacts of Gastarbeiter in Germany. In Turkey and among Turkish communities abroad, it is very popular not only at homes but also at coffeehouses.

Mahjong, also spelled majiang, mah jongg, and numerous other variants, is a game that originated in China. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-player variations found in South Korea and Japan). The game and its regional variants are widely played throughout Eastern and South Eastern Asia and have a small following in Western countries. Similar to the Western card game rummy, mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and calculation and involves a degree of chance.

Dominoes (or dominos) is a game played with rectangular "domino" tiles. The domino gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a deck or pack. The traditional Sino-European domino set consists of 28 dominoes, colloquially nicknamed bones, cards, tiles, tickets, stones, or spinners. Each domino is a rectangular tile with a line dividing its face into two square ends. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called pips, nips, or dobs) or is blank. The backs of the dominoes in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set.

Chinese dominoes are used in several tile-based games, namely, Tien Gow, Pai Gow, Tiu U and Kap Tai Shap. In Cantonese they are called "Gwat Pai", which literally means "bone tiles"; it is also the name of a northern Chinese game, where the rules are quite different from the southern Chinese game Tien Gow. References to Chinese domino tiles can be traced to writings from the Song Dynasty (AD 1120).

Anagrams (also known as Pirate Scrabble, Anagram, Snatch, Word Making and Taking and Grabscrab) is a tile-based word game that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words.

42, also known as Texas 42, is a trick-taking game played with a standard set of double six dominoes. 42 is often referred to as the "national game of Texas". Tournaments are held in many towns, and the State Championship tournament is held annually in Hallettsville, Texas on the first Saturday of March each year. In 2011 it was designated the official State Domino Game of Texas.

Rummy is a group of matching card games notable for similar gameplay based on the matching cards of the same rank or sequence and same suit. The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build melds which consists of sets, three or four of a kind of the same rank; or runs, three or more cards in sequence, of the same suit. You can also have mixed runs in all types of rummy so long as all 7 cards are in order.

Muggins (also known as All Fives, Five Up, or Doer Di) is a domino variant played with any of the commonly available sets. The object of the game is for each player to rid their hand of dominoes, and additionally to score points by playing a domino (or bone) that makes the total number of pips on all endpoints of the board equal to a multiple of five.

Rivers, Roads & Rails is a matching game similar to dominoes, but with 140 square tiles and in some respects similar to Bendomino. The game consists of square card pieces featuring different coloured tracks. The game was created by Ken Garland and Associates and first published in 1969 under the name Connect. Since 1970 it has been produced by Ravensburger, first in an abstract form, and since 1984 under the current theme with artwork by Josef Loflath. It has also been known under the name Contact.

Mexican Train, also known as simply Trains, is a game played with dominoes. The object of the game is for a player to play all the dominoes from his or her hand onto one or more chains, or "trains", emanating from a central hub or "station". The game's most popular name comes from a special optional train that belongs to all players. However, the game can be played without the Mexican Train; such variants are generally called "Private Trains" or "Domino Trains". It is related to the game Chicken Foot.

Matador (Spanish, "killer," can also apply to a bullfighter) is a common game using a set of dominoes. While it is similar to many domino games which the object of the game the first to go out, it has a differing very unusual rule of combining pips instead of matching numbers. The game is played using a set of double-six dominoes because of its rules; with larger sets, one can slightly tweak the rules.

Chicken foot, also known as Chicken dominoes, Chickie dominoes, and Chickie, is a dominoes game of the "Trains" family, similar to Mexican Train. Chicken Foot is played in rounds, one round for each double domino in the set. The game is normally played by 2 to 8 players using any of the common sets (double-six, double-nine, double-twelve, double-fifteen or double-eighteen).

Bendomino is a tabletop strategy game similar to dominoes, created by Thierry Denoual and published by Blue Orange Games in 2007. It is a set of double-6 dominoes with a 120-degree curve. The main difference from dominoes is the curved shape of the pieces, which introduces a new level of strategy to the game. There is also a version of the game for younger players with pictures instead of numbers and symbols on the bendomino tiles.

This is a partial list of games played with domino tiles or similar equipment. The most typical domino games are layout games, i.e. games in which the players add matching tiles from their hand to a layout in the middle of the table. These can be either blocking games, in which the object is to empty one's hand, or scoring games, in which the players can score during the game by creating certain configurations. Other games using domino sets are often adaptations of card games. On the other hand, there are also domino-like card games, e.g. Sevens and the once very popular card game Pope Joan.