Doctor Who is a major aspect of popular culture. This British program is the longest running science fiction show of all time, and among the longest-running television shows of all time. It has been enchanting fans since before the invention of color TV. The eponymous Doctor’s time-traveling adventures are exciting and alluring, leading many to wish they could take the role of a companion and step into the Tardis themselves.
Fortunately, there are ways to do that. Well, not literally, but this franchise has been adapted into every medium you can think of over the decades, including quite a few interactive ones. If you’re looking for a game that will allow you to escape your current time and place and go on a time-traveling and/or spacefaring adventure, these games are for you.
Doctor Who: The Card Game (2nd Edition)
A highly strategic card game
This intricate, strategic card game has players placing famous Doctor Who locations in order to win victory points, and then playing villains on their opponent’s locations and heroes on their own.
This complex and intricate card game has players placing recognizable Doctor Who locations to win themselves victory points, attacking their opponent’s locations with villain cards, and defending their own with hero cards, all while using support cards to achieve all kinds of special effects that shift the game around.
One of the best things about this game is how you get your hand each turn. You begin each turn with five cards, you play two of them, and give the rest to the next player. When choosing what cards to play, you must consider not only what will benefit you, but what cards you want to verify your opponent won’t get.
Doctor Who Fluxx
Quick and easy, yet extremely dynamic!
This Whovian twist on a beloved card game takes the dynamic, ever-shifting cards of Flux and enhances them with countless Doctor Who elements. It’s up to you not only to win, but to define what victory is before your opponents beat you to it.
Flux is a deceptively simple and fast card game defined by its ever-changing rules. At the beginning of the game, there is no win condition, just the basic rules you need to draw and play cards. However, once those cards come into play, they’ll start changing the rules, both by introducing more popular mechanics and by creating victory conditions you can use to win the game!
This licensed tie-in takes that already excellent game and gives it a Doctor Who themed twist. This game’s various cards are themed after elements of the Doctor Who franchise, and have powers that suit the characters and moments they represent. There’s also loads of appropriately Whovian art to decorate them.
Yahtzee: Doctor Who Tardis 60th Anniversary Edition
A heroic cup that rolls villainous dice
This Doctor Who themed Yahtzee game uses a Tardis-themed die cup and dice bearing the images of various Doctor Who villains. It’s ultimately a reskin of a familiar game, but if you like that familiar game, this’ll be a lot of fun for you.
As we covered in our list of thebest Doctor Who merch, it’s not that hard to come up with something Doctor Who themed. You can just stick the Tardis on something, and you’ll have a decent product. Mind you, that’s not all this game does. This Tardis cup contains dice with a series of iconic Doctor Who villains, ranked in order of importance and threat level.
The game is mechanically identical to classic Yahzee. Despite their character art, the dice have values from one to six as normal, and the scoring process is identical. Still, this product puts a nice thematic twist on a classic game.
Doctor Who: Don’t Blink
Can you survive a weeping angel attack?
The one-versus-all strategy game casts one player as a group of weeping angels while giving everyone else control over the doctor and his companions. Can you repair the Tardis and escape before the angels send you back in time?
The Weeping Angels are among Doctor Who’s most iconic villains, and you can face off against them for yourself in this challenging cooperative strategy game. This is a one versus all game, where one player takes the role of the angels, and the others play as the Doctor and his companions.
The Tardis has crashed on an abandoned spaceship full of the statue-esque monsters. In order to win, the Doctor and his companions must gather the Tardis’ missing parts and repair it, even as the weeping angels roam the ship, trying to take the good guys out one at a time. This is a challenging game, not for the faint of heart or for inexperienced gamers, but its difficulty is very rewarding.
Doctor Who Exterminate! The Miniatures Game
Elaborate combat between custom-painted miniatures, all in a single box
This intricately-crafted wargame puts a pair of Doctor Who factions—usually villainous ones, though the heroes are available in some of the expansions—up against one another in a battle to obtain mastery over time and space.
This miniatures wargame casts the players as factions from Doctor Who and tasks them with defeating one another or taking out the Doctor himself. The base game includes the Daleks and the Cybermen—both villains—but expansions allow for scenarios where the Doctor and his companions are playable.
This is a full-on miniatures wargame, complete with the gridless board and ruler, the extremely complicated rules, and the fact that you have to paint the miniatures yourself. Casual gamers will be overwhelmed by this game, but if you’re looking for something meaty to sink your teeth into, this game will give you a great experience! For more miniatures wargames,check out this list.
Doctor Who: Nemesis
Use your villain’s unique abilities to defeat one of sci-fi’s greatest heroes
This card game once again places you in the role of a Doctor Who villain, this time casting you as a single character who commands a group of minions. Can you make your evil schemed pay off? Can you defeat the Doctor? Or will one of your enemies triumph first and steal your victory from you?
Another game that has you play as the bad guys, this intricate and strategic card management game casts you as one of four Doctor Who villains—the Daleks, the Weeping Angels, The Master, or the Cybermen—and charges you with either completing one of your own evil schemes or eliminating the Doctor.
There’s a ton to this game. Every villain has their own library of cards to choose from, meaning they all play differently! You can summon minions capable of dice-powered combat and work toward accomplishing a variety of villainous schemes, or you can just try to kill the Doctor, and triumph where all your rivals have failed. For more games where you play as the villain,check out this list!
Time Stories
You’re the time police!
This cooperative tabletop game casts the players as time police and charges them with repairing anomalies in the timestream. It’s a tough job, but luckily, you’re a time-traveler, who can attempt each scenario multiple times until you win.
This list has mostly featured officially Doctor Who themed games, because there are quite a few of those, but, ultimately, this list isn’t just about those official products. It’s about games that give you experiences of time-traveling adventure, and one game that offers you just that is TIME Stories.
This cooperative board game casts players as time-traveling police charged with repairing temporal faults. Each agent has unique abilities and must use them to complete various tasks. The best thing about this game is the way it incorporates time travel into its mechanics. This game is hard, so hard that you aren’t expected to succeed on your first try. You’re meant to play through each scenario multiple times, keeping some of the cards you get between runs, until you ultimately find the timeline where you succeed!
That Time You Killed Me
This game’s mechanics feature actual time travel!
This somewhat chess-like strategy game casts the players as time travelers and charges them with traveling between the past, present, and future, making split-timeline copies of themselves as they do, all with the goal of eliminating their opponent from all of history.
What if you want to use time travel a bit more offensively? What if you want to play a game where your goal is to retroactively wipe your opponent from existence? Well, That Time You Killed Me is just that! Using chess-like mechanics on a trio of four-by-four boards, representing the past, present, and future, this game has you traveling through time with the goal of eliminating every copy of your opponent.
This game does an amazing job incorporating something impossible, time travel, into its mechanics in an interesting way. It’s complex, strategic, and requires multi-dimensional thinking and caution. If you’re looking for a rich strategy game with a strange twist, this one is tons of fun!
FAQ
Is there a Doctor Who TTRPG?
Yep, and there was a new edition of it released just a few years ago! If you want a TTRPG that will let you go on your own adventures in the Doctor Who universe, it’s a great option for you!
Has there ever been a Doctor Who video game?
There’ve been well over a dozen, spanning decades of the franchise’s history. From computer games dating back to the 1980s to mobile games released in the past few years, they offer a wide variety of experiences for you to check out.
What is the Doctor’s real name in Gallifreyan?
∂³Σx². That is not a joke. Well, okay, it is, but it’s a joke told by the show. We didn’t make it up. The fact that his name is a mathematical formula is supposed to reflect the fact that the Gallifreyans are (or rather, were D’: ) the galaxy’s biggest nerds.
