9 Best Nintendo 3DS Board and Card Games

Mahjong Cub3d is a mahjong game from Sunsoft, known in Japan as Shanghai 3D Cube. It came out there on March 3, 2011, and Atlus USA published it in North America on October 11, 2011.

It is a quiet game, the kind you play with the sound off, and nobody is going to call it the reason they bought a 3DS. What players do remember is that it plays with two people from one cartridge. When people list the 3DS games that work over Download Play, this one keeps turning up next to Ridge Racer 3D and Super Monkey Ball 3D.

Saikyo Card Battle is a Yu-Gi-Oh! card game that Konami published and developed for the 3DS. It came out in Japan on July 6, 2016, and it never left. The West got Duel Links on phones a few months later instead, so 3DS owners outside Japan had to make do with the one Yu-Gi-Oh! game they did get.

The players who found it anyway all tell the same story: it was free to play, and a fan translation lets you play it in English on a modded system. For a free download that Konami never meant for you, that is a lot of goodwill.

Pure Chess is a chess game by the British developer VooFoo Studios. It started on PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3, and its publisher Ripstone later confirmed a 3DS version alongside the one for Wii U. The two Nintendo versions can play against each other, and against people on the mobile versions too.

Reviewing the Vita version, Pocket Gamer said "The single-player component of Pure Chess is solid, though there are peripheral niggles", with the touch controls and the camera taking the blame. The online mode got the harsher words, because every move is sent and waited on like a letter in the post. This is a pick for people who already play chess and want a board in their pocket.

World Duel Carnival is Konami's Yu-Gi-Oh! game for the 3DS, built around the Zexal series. It came out in Japan on December 5, 2013 as Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal: Clash! Duel Carnival!, then in Europe on June 26, 2014 and in North America on September 25, 2014. In North America it was an eShop download only, with no box in shops.

That makes it the only Yu-Gi-Oh! game a 3DS owner outside Japan could buy. If you wanted to duel on the 3DS, this was the game, and that alone puts it above the chess and mahjong games. Card fans did not need much more than a deck and an opponent, and on a handheld that was enough for a lot of people.

The Top 100 is the fifth handheld Mario Party and the third and final one for the 3DS. It came out in North America in November 2017, with PAL regions and Japan following in December. It is mostly a compilation of 100 minigames from the home console Mario Parties, and there is still a mode where up to four characters play a proper board game.

It received mixed reviews, with praise for the idea and complaints that there was not much else to it. Players say much the same. To them it is a minigame collection first and a board game second, and some of them warn you off it for exactly that reason. The ones who like it say it is a decent game to play alone against the computer, and that a group needs only one cartridge. Mario Party Superstars did the same idea on Switch in 2021.

Star Rush is the fourth handheld Mario Party and the second on the 3DS. It came out in Europe, Australia and Japan in October 2016 and in North America in November. It changed the rules more than any game on this list. Players roll their dice and move at the same time, on open, grid-like boards, so nobody sits around waiting for their turn.

Critics were split. Some praised the new direction and the end of the car gimmick from Mario Party 9 and 10, while others found the modes repetitive and wanted more boards. Players split the same way. Its fans say they had a great time with it, often with a partner at home. Played two-player, it holds up better than its reputation.

Culdcept Revolt is a turn-based strategy game made by OmiyaSoft, with music by Kenji Ito. Nintendo released it in Japan on July 7, 2016, and NIS America brought it to North America on October 3, 2017. You play Allen, a Cepter who wakes up with amnesia in a walled city and joins a resistance group called the Free Bats. Cepters can use magical cards, and the Count who runs the city wants every one of them gone.

The game itself is a card game laid over a board game, with hundreds of new cards for the series' 20th anniversary. Players call it a card game and a board game at once, Magic: The Gathering crossed with Monopoly, and that is a fair way to sell it. It finished a hair behind the Mario Party in second place, which is impressive for a game this niche.

Island Tour was the first Mario Party on the 3DS and the third handheld one in the series. It came out in North America in November 2013, with seven game boards, ten playable characters and more than eighty minigames. Unlike most Mario Parties, the boards have their own goals, and none of them are about collecting Stars or coins. There is also a single-player climb up Bowser's tower.

Reviews were mixed: critics liked the variety in the boards and minigames but missed online play. It still sold 2.95 million copies, making it the 24th-best-selling 3DS game. Players name it for one reason above the rest. Four people can play every board from a single cartridge through Download Play.

Pocket Card Jockey is a horse racing game you win by playing solitaire, and it was made by Game Freak. It came out in Japan on July 31, 2013 as a download-only game called SolitiBa, and Nintendo released it worldwide on May 5, 2016. Your jockey loses their first race, gets trampled, and is visited by an angel who teaches them to see horse racing as a game of solitaire. Sure.

The card game is golf: you clear the field by playing cards one higher or one lower than the last. Between hands you use the touch screen to place your horse in the pack. Lose three races and the horse retires to the farm, where it breeds the next one. It scored 83 on Metacritic, and USgamer called it "unorthodox but brilliant." Players say the same thing in plainer words. It sounds like a joke, and then it eats hours. They named it more than twice as often as anything else here.