The Longest and Most Complex Game Rules in the World

Ever felt like some game rules are so complex they require the time equivalent of earning a PhD to understand? While the game War can be explained in 245 words, the rulebook for the game Twilight Imperium is 35,000+ words long! From straightforward games like Pyramid and Canfield Solitaire to nuanced titles like Gloomhaven or Spirit Island, game rule complexity varies wildly.

A recent study we conducted embarked on a quest through a labyrinth of game rules and took on the legendary saga of analyzing every word from over 200 of the most popular board and card game rules in the world. Our desired achievement? To find the rulebooks that are so long, confusing, and complex that it would take a wizard to work out the meaning. Trust us, it was no roll-and-move affair, but we cracked the code, finding the games with the most brain-bending experience.

For those who prefer an easy setup and straightforward gameplay where you can jump right into the action without feeling like you need a rulebook translator, we’ve got you covered as well. After all, there’s a reason games like Solitaire have remained beloved — clear and simple rules that anyone can pick up and play. Read on to discover which games challenge your brain and which ones let you dive straight into the fun!

Key Takeaways

• The card game Magic: The Gathering has the longest rules in the world, with over 100,000 words.
• Twilight Imperium and Mage Knight Board Game have the #2 and #3 longest rules, with over 35,000 and 26,000 words, respectively.
• The 7th Continent (board game) is the most confusing game in the world, based on the rules’ reading difficulty level.
• Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Euchre are the classic, non-commercial games with the longest rules.

The Board and Card Games with the Longest Rules

You’re not alone if you’ve found yourself flipping through a massive rulebook thinking, “Let’s just get on with the game!” Some games are so rule-laden that their epic tomes of instructions could rival a fantasy novel. For example, topping our list of board and card games with the longest rules is Magic: The Gathering. This card game has a rulebook with a whopping 100,000+ words. That’s more words than in the entire The Hobbit novel, which is 95,000+ words, for the record.

In second place is Twilight Imperium with 35,000+ words, and in third place is Mage Knight Board Game with 26,000+ words. For a sense of just how long these are, the median word count for the 242 game rules in our analysis is 2,281 words long. That’s about the number of words in the rules for Texas Hold’em, which clocks in at 2,243 words in total.

Classic, non-commercial games like variations of poker tend to have far shorter rulebooks. Texas Hold’em has the longest rules of these non-commercial games, while the Omaha variation of poker earns second place with 2,217 words, and Euchre instructions earn a distant third with 1,367 words.

There’s a reason most people are more familiar with these classic games than games with the longest rulebooks in our study. These class games may have simpler rules, but that just makes them much easier to pick up and play. Games with simpler rules are often just as engaging and strategic; they offer deep gameplay without the need to wade through a swamp of 10,000 words!

While we went into this analysis thinking the card game War most likely had the shortest rules, we found a few rulebooks with even fewer words! Coming in first place with the fewest words in the book is the board game Rush Hour, which has only 128 words in total. In second place is the classic card game Thirty-One, with 208 words, and in third place is the board game Trouble, with 244 words.

According to our analysis, Thirty-One is also the classic, non-commercial game with the fewest words in the rulebook. While the rules for War have 245 words and land fourth place for the fewest words overall, they earn second place for the classic, non-commercial games with the fewest words. Rounding out the top three classics is Crazy Eights in third place with 252 words.

The Games with the Most Confusing Instructions

While the length of game rules can determine how much time before you’re queuing up to play, it doesn’t inform how often you might be reading and rereading those instructions because they’re so confusing! Some game instructions can feel like you’re reading a whole other language with explanations that are so lengthy that it’s almost like embarking on a side quest just to get to the main game!

To find the game with the most confusing instructions to read, we employed the Flesch Reading Ease formula using the Textstat Python library to assign reading ease scores to the 242 rulebooks in our analysis. The formula assigns reading difficulty labels based on scores ranging from 0–100, with labels ranging from very easy (90–100) to very confusing (0–29).

Our analysis found that The 7th Continent board game takes the crown for the most confusing instructions. It has a reading score of 30, barely squeaking past a very confusing label and landing at just difficult. In fact, according to the formula, which is the gold standard for readability analysis, The 7th Continent is the only game with rules that have a definitive, difficult readability rating.

In second place are the rules for the board game Secret Hitler, with a reading score of 53, earning it a fairly difficult reading level. Rounding out the top three places is the rulebook for Marvel Champions: The Card Game. It has a reading score of 55, which also gives it a fairly difficult reading level. The board games Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and Root deserve an honorable mention. These are the only two other games that earned fairly difficult reading levels in the analysis.

For some perspective, of the analyzed game rules, four have difficult or fairly difficult readability, 86 have easy or very easy, and 151 have standard or fairly easy. Overall, the average reading difficulty score was 75, which translates to a fairly easy label. For an idea of what the average readability looks like, think Monopoly or Blackjack. Both of these games have a 75 or fairly easy reading difficulty.

Curious about the rules that are so easy that you could do them in your sleep or the ones best for kids to start learning on their own? That would be the card game Old Maid in first place with a 93 or very easy reading difficulty score. Squeaking close behind is the board game Sorry!, which makes no apologies for earning a very easy reading level. Last but not least, in our roundup of the easiest instructions to read are from the preschool board game, Don’t Break the Ice. With a score rounding up to 93 as well, it also earns a very easy reading difficulty label.

The Games with the Most Complex Rulebooks

To make it to our analysis endgame, we joined the forces of our word count and reading difficulty analyses to create an entirely new creature deserving of its own archetype. Our aim? To find the most complex rulesets that are not just long in word count but dense in complex sentences. Our complexity score equally weighs each ruleset’s word count and reading difficulty to find the most complicated game rules in the world.

For those ready for the ultimate challenge, look no further than Magic: The Gathering. It may only have a standard reading difficulty, but the average ruleset in the analysis has a fairly easy label. Combined with its novel of a rulebook, this game earns a 9 out of 10 in our complexity score, second to none.

In second place is The 7th Continent, which is a solo or co-op choose-your-own-adventure board game. Just like an open-world video game can be very convoluted, a choose-your-own-adventure style of board game can be very complex. The 7th Continent had the only rules with a difficult reading level, so it should come as no surprise that combined with its 10,500+ word instructions, the game comes in second place as the most complex in the world.

Rounding out the top three places, we have the board game Twilight Imperium. Like Magic: The Gathering, Twilight Imperium also has a standard reading level. Also, similarly, Twilight Imperium earned second place for the longest rulebook with 35,000+ words, which, when combined, makes it the second-most mind-blowing complex game in the world!

Discover Games for Your Playstyle

Whether you’re a seasoned planeswalker strategizing your next big move or you’re prone to fumbling your mana cards at the slightest misstep, there’s a perfect game waiting to join your party. Even if you don’t enjoy scanning through rulebooks that look like they were written in Elvish, there are high-score adventures without steep learning curves that prove great games don’t need to come with a thick rulebook.

At Solitaired, we’ve leveled up a whole site surrounding the 265 words that describe the game Solitaire. If you’re itching for a quick shuffle and deal, we’ve got a royal flush of options. Yahtzee your way to victory with a classic 1,100-word dice-rolling game, or power up your solo gaming experience with an epic game of FreeCell Solitaire! Roll for initiative and dive right in!

Methodology

On August 15, 2024, we gathered a list of the most popular board and card games in the world to find the games with the longest rules, the most difficult rules to read, and the most complex rules.

How We Found the Most Popular Games

To find the most popular games, we gathered a list of board and card games from three sources:

1. All 100 from the Amazon Best Sellers in Board Games
2. Top 200 with the most voters from Board Game Geek's All Board Games list
3. All 30 from YouGov's "Which card games have Americans played?" survey question

How We Got to Our Final List

Next, we cleaned both lists to ensure that only card and board games were truly included and removed themed variations of games so only the most standard version of games remained. We removed any bundled game sets from the Amazon list. Then, we gathered the PDF game rules that we could find for each of the remaining games. Our final list was of 242 popular board and card games.

How We Counted Words for 200+ Game Rules

Using Python, we employed pdfminer.six and langdetect NLP library to convert PDFs to TXT documents, keeping only the English instructions from each rule set. We used the pytesseract, pillow, and pdf2image Python libraries to convert all image-based PDFs to text. Then, we used the OS Python module to attain the word count from each converted file.

How We Determined Reading Difficulty

To gauge reading difficulty and ease, we used the textstat python library Flesch Reading Ease formula to assign scores to game rules from 0–100. Scores of zero mean rules are very confusing to read, and scores of 100 mean rules are very easy to read. This score is a widely recognized readability formula that assesses the syllables per word and words per sentence of each game rule to determine reading difficulty.

How We Determined Reading Complexity

We used a logarithmically scaling formula to weigh with a 50:50 ratio, the word count, and the reading difficulty score of each game. The word counts and reading difficulty scores were normalized and transformed to a 10-point scale. Scores of 10 are the most complex games because they have combined harder reading difficulty and longer game rules.