Hive similar games & best alternatives

Hive

PC (Microsoft Windows) • 2014

Should you play it?

Officially licensed version of the "Mensa Select" award-winning board game! Hive is a board game with a difference. There is no board! The pieces are added to the playing area thus creating the board.

What works

  • Faithful adaptation of popular board game
  • Deep and challenging strategic gameplay
  • Multiple ai difficulty levels
  • Supports local, online, and asynchronous multiplayer
  • Short, replayable matches

Things to keep in mind

  • Small and inactive online community
  • Some ui and graphical limitations
  • Dlc required for full piece set
  • Ai not very strong at highest levels
  • Multiplayer matchmaking issues

What to play next

Top picks

Games that feels the closest overall

  • The Castles of Burgundy

  • Sagrada

  • Just Xiangqi

  • Simply Chess

  • Carcassonne - Tiles & Tactics

  • ‎My Suika – Kyo’s Fruit Merge

More fantastical

Games that feels like Hive but with more imaginative fiction

  • Phobies

  • Gods vs Horrors

  • Tales & Tactics

  • Pyrene

  • Toy Smash Kaboom!

  • FORWARD: Escape the Fold - Ultimate Edition

Less competitive

Games that feels like Hive but with less competition against others

  • Captain Whiskers: Incremental Seas

  • Budgie's Bug Shop

  • Gamblers Table

  • Dogpile

  • This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker

  • The Perfect Tower II

Less dominating

Games that feels like Hive but with less domination over others

  • Dice Player One

  • Chip

  • Evergarden

  • Terroir

  • RollScape

  • Dice A Million

Choose your own criteria ->

Similarity map

How to use the graph

Similarity map

Each dot is a game placed from its motivation profile relative to this page’s game. Direction shows which motivation differs most; distance along that axis shows how large the gap is.

  • Purple star: this page’s game at the centre — everything is relative to it.
  • Direction: each axis is a main motivational difference vs this game (e.g. more / less competitive).
  • Distance on an axis: how large that difference is (ring scales show +/− points).
  • Coloured chips: click to highlight games that mainly differ on that motivation; click again to reset.
  • Dotted line: link between this page’s game and the one selected for comparison.
  • Hover a dot to preview that game in the panel on the right; click to keep that comparison.
  • Scroll or double-click the chart to zoom.

How to read the map This is a polar difference map: direction = which motivation differs, and distance = how much (same units as the sidebar deltas).

Hive: Less representative of its motivational profile, with noticeable differences. Motivations that often define this kind of title include Violence, Fantasy, Story, Thrill. Here, the score leans higher than usual among comparable games on Domination, Competition, Idle.

Last update: 03/08/2026