Vietnamese board games and tabletop games to play with friends

Bonding with friends over a fun board game never gets old, and while the likes of Monopoly or Catan are tried-and-true names that have stood the test of time, many Vietnamese talents have also come up with their own board games that can actually give these titans a run for their money.

So, if you are on the lookout for something different – something with a dash of local flavor perhaps – give these 9 Vietnamese board games and tabletop games a try the next time you hit up a board game café with your friends.

1. Ma đói GrabFood – Vietnamese version of Werewolf


Image credit: Grab.com

Werewolf – the popular game where you use deduction and reasoning to find the bad guy in your group – should be an all-too-familiar name to any board game fan, and Ma đói GrabFood is an attempt to give this massively popular game a localized, more down-to-earth makeover. So, instead of villagers fending off werewolves, you’ll be playing average Vietnamese foodies and GrabFood drivers who must unite to survive against the Ma đói (hungry ghosts).


Image credit: Grab.com

The rules remain mostly the same: each player is given a secret role with unique abilities. Some become hungry ghosts whose goal is to haunt other players to remove them from the game, while others can possess special traits such as having 2 lives or the ability to save another player from being killed by hungry ghosts.


An illustration of the different types of hungry ghosts
Image credit: Grab.com

Each round begins with a night cycle, where everyone closes their eyes and the game master calls on each player to perform their respective role without letting others know who they are. Then when day comes, the game master relays the outcome of the actions – such as who gets “murdered” in the game – to everyone, based on which the players must discuss among themselves to find out who the hungry ghosts are.

Image credit: Grab.com

The game ends when all the hungry ghosts are found out, or they successfully eliminate the majority of players while remaining undetected.

Since the roles are assigned randomly and no one knows who is who, your best friend in real life could very well be a hungry ghost who wants to kill you in-game. As such, you have nothing but your own reasoning to rely on. This is a game that’ll put your logic and deduction skills to the test.

Recommended number of players: 8-10
For ages: 15 and above
Price: VND100,000 (~USD4.30)
Difficulty level: Moderate to Hard

2. Bắn Gà Là Tạch – PUBG on the table


Image credit: Bắn Gà Là Tạch

The online first-person shooter game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) took the Internet by storm in 2018 and practically spawned an entire new video game genre called battle royale, where 100 players fight on a huge map to become the last man (or woman) standing. Now, Bắn Gà Là Tạch is about as close as you can get to that in board game form.


Image credit: Bắn Gà Là Tạch

While not quite able to support 100 players, the game can accommodate as many as 9 – which is already a sizable group. And the battle royale spirit is still there: players drop into random locations on the map without knowing each other’s whereabouts. From there, they must roam around to pick up equipment to better prepare themselves for confrontations when they inevitably run into another player.


Image credit:Bắn Gà Là Tạch

Of course, in true battle royale style, the battlefield gets progressively smaller as the game goes on, meaning that before long, there won’t be any place to hide and your only chance is to fight and win.

But Bắn Gà Là Tạch also adds a more unique flavor to the formula: even if you do get taken out, it won’t be the end of the line. Instead, you’ll turn into a chicken and can throw eggs at other players to mark their locations, allowing others to spot them more easily. This way, even when you no longer have a shot at winning, you can get revenge on the one who eliminated you.

Recommended number of players: 6-8
For ages: 16 and above
Price: VND450,000 (~USD19.34)
Difficulty level: Moderate

3. Đồng Hành – travel across Vietnam from the comfort of your chair


Image credit: Đồng hành – trò chơi Việt Nam

The COVID-19 pandemic has spelled the premature demise of many a vacation plan, but with Đồng Hành, we can still reminisce about what it’s like to travel.

Playing on a simplified map of Vietnam that features 26 of the country’s biggest provinces and cities, your goal is to manage the 3 resources – rice, wood, and iron – that will support you as you travel to all 26 locations on the map.


Video credit: Board Game VN

As everyone shares a common goal, there is no competition between players in Đồng Hành. Instead, the challenge comes from bandits that spawn randomly on the map after each turn, forcing you to spend resources to fend them off. Of course, moving also consumes resources, so you need to plan your route to travel far on as few supplies as possible.


Image credit: naboardgames.com

The game also comes with a deck of 26 cards giving you information about the cities and provinces, from their history to signature landmarks and notable delicacies to try.

Recommended number of players: 2-4
For ages: 10 and above
Price: VND450,000 (~USD19.34)
Difficulty level: Easy to Moderate

4. Lên Mâm – cooking Vietnamese foods with cards


Image credit: Ngũ Hành Games

After you’ve “traveled” across Vietnam with Đồng Hành, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the country’s cuisine with Lên Mâm.

In this cute little card game, players take turns dishing out cards, representing the act of adding food ingredients to a pot. Once there are enough ingredients to make a dish, the person who added the final ingredient takes credit and earns points.

Alternatively, if you don’t have the cards needed to finish creating a dish yourself, you can sabotage others by playing special action cards such as “flipping the pot”. This discards all the ingredients on the playfield and forces everyone to start over.


Image credit: Meeple in Saigon

The dishes featured in Lên Mâm are staple Vietnamese recipes that you should feel instantly at home making. For instance, to make bánh tét – the traditional cake eaten during the Lunar New Year – you need pork, mung beans, sticky rice, and salted eggs. Meanwhile, for bitter melon stew, look for bitter melons, spring onions, minced meat, and wood ear.


Image credit: Ngũ Hành Games

Recommended number of players: 2-4
For ages: 10 and above
Price: VND170,000 (~USD7.31)
Difficulty level: Easy

5. Lớp học Mật Ngữ: Cuộc đua sao chổi – save the planet as your horoscope


Image credit: Lớp học Mật Ngữ

Adapted from the popular Vietnamese manga of the same name, Lớp học Mật Ngữ allows you to play as the characters from the manga, each with their own unique traits and abilities.

The premise is straightforward: a meteor shower is coming, and your job is to visit the many shops around the map to retrieve supply crates before they are destroyed. The player with the most supply crates at the end becomes the winner.


Image credit: Lớp học Mật Ngữ

Meteors destroy a random shop on the map every turn, and if you happen to be in that shop, you’ll be caught in the blast and lose a crate. Thankfully, you can also play special cards to turn the tide in your favor. These have multiple effects, from switching your place with another player to rendering you immune to any bad event.


You can use cards with special effects to gain an advantage
Image credit: Board Game VN

If you are a fan of horoscopes or you like cute chibi characters, Lớp học Mật Ngữ is just the game for you.

Recommended number of players: 2-6
For ages: 10 and above
Price: VND440,000 (~USD18.91)
Difficulty level: Easy to moderate

6. Bom Lắc – simple yet hilarious game to play in a large group


Image credit: Board Game VN

Bom Lắc is the perfect game to play in large groups. It has virtually no player cap and takes not even a minute to learn, yet it can be a ton of fun.

The rules cannot be simpler: you roll a dice and then pass it to another person to either side of you based on the number you get. For instance, if you roll a 3, pass the dice to the third person to your left or right. The process is repeated until someone rolls 1 or a number greater than the current number of players. That person is then considered to have “exploded” and is removed from the game.


Image credit: Board Game VN

Now, if you’re thinking it’s just a boring dice game, the fun of Bom Lắc lies in the special effect cards, which everyone is given one of at the start. They allow you to pass the explosion to another player, rob someone of their card, and carry out plenty of other effects that can set off hilarious chain reactions.

Recommended number of players: 10-20
For ages: 10 and above
Price: VND160,000 (~USD6.88)
Difficulty level: Easy

7. Xóm Chim – a quirky representation of Vietnamese daily life


Image credit: Xóm Chim

Xóm Chim aims to portray Vietnamese daily life in a quirky, tongue-in-cheek manner. Becoming one of the 7 residents of xóm chim (Bird Hamlet), you’ll go about the neighborhood working toward your goals.

Each character has different objectives to achieve, but they mostly boil down to accumulating a specific amount of money – which you can do by going to workplaces – and, well, making others pee their pants.


Image credit: Xóm Chim

See, as you perform actions such as hitting up the market to buy special cards that give you perks or going to work, your character will develop an urge to pee, and once that crosses a certain threshold, you’ll pee your pants and lose a turn. Others can play pranks on you to speed up the process, so be careful. When another player approaches you, you can be sure that they have no good intentions in mind.


Throughout the game, you can obtain cards that grant you perks
Image credit: Xóm Chim

All in all, the gameplay is not too difficult to pick up, but does require you to put on your strategic thinking hat if you want to come out on top. Combined with the bright, lighthearted art style reminiscent of ’70s propaganda posters, Xóm Chim is a good entry option if you’re new to the world of tabletop games.

Recommended number of players: 4-5
For ages: 16 and above
Price: VND600,000 (~USD25.78)
Difficulty level: Easy to Moderate

8. Hội Phố – channel your inner businessman to become the richest of them all


Image credit: Lalaland 869 – Café & Pub

A product of leading Vietnamese board game creator Ngũ Hành Games, Hội Phố takes you back to Hội An in the 17th century, where the ancient town was a major commercial hub of Southeast Asia.

There is only one goal in this game: to gather as much money as possible. To do so, you send out cards representing traders to compete against other players.


Image credit: Lalaland 869 – Café & Pub

There are a total of 12 traders in the game, each of whom is portrayed as an animal of the Chinese zodiac. They come with special effects that are activated when they encounter their respective archnemeses – for instance, when the Dog is put against the Cat. As a result, anticipating which cards your competitors will play and reacting accordingly is key to winning. 

Recommended number of players: 2-4
For ages: 10 and above
Price: VND180,000 (~USD7.73)
Difficulty level: Easy

9. Dozen War – a western fantasy game made by Vietnamese creators


Image credit: Dozen War

While most Vietnamese board games have a laidback vibe reflecting everyday life that we can all relate to, Dozen War instead opts for a full-blown Western medieval fantasy theme to set itself apart.

Here, you control a group of heroes and their troops to roam around the map, picking up resources to expand your army and battling other players to become the supreme ruler of the land. If you’ve ever played turn-based strategy games such as Heroes of Might & Magic, you’ll instantly recognize the formula.


Image credit: Dozen War

That said, there’s a lot more when it comes to the details. As Dozen War’s 12 heroes and 3 types of troops all come with their own strengths and weaknesses, it’ll take at least a few games before you can get a grasp of everything.


Image credit: Dozen War

With a steep learning curve and lots of strategies involved, Dozen War isn’t something you just casually pick up and play. However, if you are a diehard board game fan, the level of depth it offers can easily draw you in.

Recommended number of players: 2-4
For ages: 16 and above
Price: VND1,350,000 (~USD57.69)
Difficulty level: Hard

Vietnamese board games and tabletop games by local creators

Sure, giving your friend that +4 card when they are just about getting ready to yell “UNO” is fun and all, but why limit yourself to just that when we also have no shortage of homegrown Vietnamese board games and tabletop games that can be just as fun?

For more things to do with friends and family, check out:

Cover image adapted from Bắn Gà Là Tạch and Đồng hành – trò chơi Việt Nam

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