8 Best PS Vita Board and Card Games

Best of Board Games is a Bigben Interactive compilation of chess, mah-jong and solitaire. Each game has its traditional rules, with some new game modes added on top for players who already know them by heart. It came out on the Vita in 2014, on the same day as the PS3 version.

It is the plainest game on this list, and nobody buys it for a story. Players still put it on their lists of favourite Vita downloads, next to fighting games and pinball tables. A deck of cards and a chessboard in one download is a fair deal on a handheld.

Pure Chess is chess and nothing else, made by VooFoo Studios and published by Ripstone. It came out on the PS3 and the Vita in 2012, and a PS4 version followed in April 2014. Its own blurb calls it "a stunning celebration of the greatest strategy game of all time", which is a big claim for a chess game. In June 2012 it was the fourth best-selling PS Vita game. Early Vita owners, it turns out, wanted chess.

Players who make lists of the Vita games worth owning put it with the traditional games, and strategy fans say it is good. One critic did not like the multiplayer, mainly because it is asynchronous: you make your move and then wait for the other player to get around to theirs.

Talisman started as a board game in 1983, and Games Workshop published it. By 2000 the board game had sold over 800,000 units. Players take turns rolling a die and moving around the board. Where you land may start an encounter or give you an Adventure card. The goal is to reach the Crown of Command at the centre of the board.

The Digital Edition is the officially licensed version for 1 to 4 players, with 14 characters to pick from, from the heroic Warrior to the powerful Sorceress. Whoever claims the Crown first can destroy every rival and rule the kingdom. Players who own it on the Vita love it and still recommend it. It reached the Vita in 2017.

Top Trumps Turbo is a brand new Top Trumps card game of its own. You use the cards to beat the computer and try to become the Top Trumps Turbo Champion. It was published by Funbox Media and KISS, and it reached the Vita in 2017, two years after it first came out on Linux.

It is the oddest pick here, and probably the one fewest people have played. Players who know the Vita's stranger corners keep bringing it up, so it earns its spot. It is a small game, and it never pretends to be anything bigger.

Space Hulk is based on the Games Workshop tabletop game of the same name, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. You lead a small army of Space Marine Terminators through the cramped corridors of a ship lost in space, against hordes of alien Genestealers. It is turn based, with a limited number of action points each turn, and a dice roll can earn you a few more. Hoplite Research and Full Control developed it, and it reached the Vita in 2015.

Players rate it highly, and some count it among the Vita's hidden gems. Strategy fans call it excellent and very hard. Critics were rougher: one review called the Vita release a ramshackle port. A follow-up, Space Hulk: Ascension, came out in 2014.

Fight for Fortune is a turn-based digital collectible card game set in the Uncharted series. Bend Studio proposed it in early 2012, right after finishing Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and Naughty Dog supervised it again. Cards belong to factions such as Heroes and Villains. Each round you place cards in five slots, and treasure cards change their attack and defence. If you also own Golden Abyss, your progress there earns you new cards here.

Two downloadable packs added cards from Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. Critics gave it mixed reviews, liking the gameplay but finding too little content. Card game fans call it pretty good, even a must-buy if you like Uncharted, and some still want a sequel. The online multiplayer shut down in 2019 along with the Vita's own.

Destiny of Spirits was a free-to-play, location-based strategy game for the Vita, made by Q Entertainment and SCE Japan Studio. Players around the world teamed up in turn-based battles against Chaos spirits. It was announced during a pre-E3 live show in 2013, and PlayStation Plus subscribers got codes for a worldwide beta that October. The game ran on three regional servers.

The servers closed on June 30, 2015, and the game cannot be played today. It ranks this high anyway because players loved it while it lasted. They call it the best free-to-play game on the Vita, one you could play without spending a cent, and they still miss it. Few dead games get mourned this fondly.

Monster Monpiece is a card battle game developed by Compile Heart. It came out in Japan on January 24, 2013, and Idea Factory International released it in English in May 2014. Battles are turn-based on a 7x3 grid, and you drag cards from your hand onto the field. There are over 100 monster girl cards, split into four types, and two players can battle online.

Then there is the "extreme rub" system, where you stroke both sides of the Vita to remove the clothing from the character on a card. IGN gave it 4.9 out of 10. Players know all of this and recommend it anyway: they admit it gets pervy, then praise the deck building and the turn-based combat. Vita players name it more than twice as often as any other card game on the system. The Steam version from 2017 has all the uncensored artwork but no multiplayer.