While much has changed in the past 8 years between Spielbound and Spielbound Board Game Cafe, we are proud to still be able to provide you with an ever-growing game library and fantastic drinks/food/setting to make play fun! We're celebrating all month long with the return of weekly trivia, pastries, Labor Day game sale, Player's Log for the #SpielboundChallenge, new drinks, and more! We're also hosting more game demos, other events, and will be at Nuke-Con - we need volunteers and participants! Follow us on social media for updates and we are back with a monthly email newsletter you can sign up for far below.

Give me “Biggest Playable Game Library in North America” for 3000!

We’ve been busy during much of 2021 getting our library back in service, catching up on our backlog of donated games (we’re far from done), replacing some games that have a bit too much wear, and rotating some into our archive while we add new titles to our red and black shelves.

But today we’re celebrating reaching 3000 games in our library!!! To be fair, we actually have many more than that, but we only officially count a game in our library when it’s been cataloged and properly added to our online library page.

And the game that has the honor of being our 3000th? One of the best games we’ve ever played – Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. This was donated directly from Cepholofair Games this fall as they visited our collection. While this was easily one of our favorite games of all time, we weren’t sure if it should be in our library. First, this game takes a long time to play all of the adventures and scenarios (around 50 hours or so), there are a lot of little pieces, maps in the booklets, and 4 important miniatures. Because of this, we’ve put it in our Protected section of the library, which is reserved for those with a membership to our library. This way you can try it out, or play regularly, and count on it being in near-pristine shape each time.

We have made the changes to our outdoor mural on 33rd Street and are excited to build up our library to revisit the #SpielboundChallenge in 2022 with new and fun ways to participate.

Thanks to all the volunteers and people who continue to make our library the foundation for the rest of our outreach programs – Play On!

Our updated mural showing 3,000 games!

Spielbound Library Reborn.

Spielbound Library Reborn.

Previous Next

We are incredibly proud to have what we believe is the largest playable board game library in the country (currently at 2867 unique titles as of typing this). We never expected anyone to play all of these games, but we had always hoped to expose more of a variety of games than what you’d get at home.

This pandemic has had us on our heels most of the year, and as future looks brighter, we revisit our mission:

We believe games inspire, motivate, and help us grow. In this positive space, we seek to provide all people the challenge, art, and fun unique to the world of board games.

An aspect of board games that we love is that there are so many different kinds of games to play! Even more so as the pandemic has forced many companies to put their games online, which we appreciate though we are biased in preferring in-person play when possible. To help encourage playing new and different kinds of games, we are launching the 2021 Spielbound Challenge.

What is the challenge?

Spielbound Challenge Family Edition.

Spielbound Challenge Strategy Edition.

Spielbound Challenge Ultimate Edition.

Previous Next

We challenge you to play a game in each category of our game library in 2021! Since not every category is appropriate, we offer 3 “editions” of participation: Family, Strategy, and Ultimate. The Family Edition has 13 categories of games mostly found in the bright red shelves of our library and is appropriate for younger players and more casual exploration. The Strategy Edition has 20 categories of games mostly found in the black shelves around our library and is for those who enjoy longer, more strategic games. Lastly, The Ultimate Edition has 33 categories (almost every category possible!) and is for those up for a true challenge including all games in our Family and Strategy Editions as well as those that are harder to find in our archives, foreign language, and protected sections, which requires someone with a membership to access.

When you’ve played a game from one of the categories listed, whether at home, online, or at Spielbound, write down the game’s name, the date, and any other details that you want. You can find a full list of games in each category in our online library listing . Once you’ve completed a challenge (Family, Strategy, or Ultimate editions), please send us your list, and we’ll publicly recognize you at the end of the year, provide a small gift and coupon, and enter you in a drawing for a game or gift certificate appropriate to your challenge edition.

Every month we’ll be writing about a section of our board game library to help you get acquainted with the games in it and our decision-making process for making the category. We’ll also be updating details on this challenge throughout the year. We ask that you use #spielboundchallenge in your social media posts on this, too, to help spread the word.

We’re excited to launch this challenge and hope you’ll join us throughout the year – play on!

Kaleb…

Director, Spielbound