Return to Dark Tower

There is a motorised tower in the middle of the table and it is not on your side.

Restoration Games' reworking of the 1981 original, and the centrepiece is literal: an electronic tower that sits in the middle of the board, talks to an app, rotates, and periodically drops skulls into your kingdoms without warning. Four heroes, four kingdoms, one adversary hiding inside the tower, and a campaign that unfolds differently depending on which of the villains you drew.

Mechanically it is engine building and resource management underneath, but the tower is what people remember — it turns hidden information into something physical, and the sound of it working is genuinely unnerving the first few times. Plays co-operatively or competitively, and at 100 to 120 minutes it is an evening rather than a filler. The most theatrical thing on the shelf.

Perfect for: anyone who has ever said board games are all just cardboard, in front of someone who wanted to prove otherwise.

1–4 players | 100–120 minutes | Age 14+ | Motorised app-enabled tower