I’ll second this recommendation of well-rated BGG games.
Some criteria to add to Vaniver’s:
Format: versus, co-op, teams, etc.: - At home we used to play mostly versus games, but eventually switched to almost exclusively co-op and team vs team games. Co-op games are great if there are e.g. big differences in player experience or skill level, or if your play group includes children.
Interruptibility: What happens if a player has to take a quick break, e.g. to take a phone call, go to the bathroom, or take care of a child? In many games, things crawl to a total halt. But some game formats deal with interruptions much more gracefully. For instance, in the team vs team game Codenames, in a 6-player game consisting of two 3-player teams with one team leader and two team members each, any of the four team members could take a quick break without significantly interrupting the game flow for the others.
Language: If your play group doesn’t want to play in English, you’ll have to check which BGG games are available in your language, or check whether fan-translated supplementary material exists. That said, nowadays many games are language-agnostic except for the manual.
I’ll second this recommendation of well-rated BGG games.
Some criteria to add to Vaniver’s:
Format: versus, co-op, teams, etc.: - At home we used to play mostly versus games, but eventually switched to almost exclusively co-op and team vs team games. Co-op games are great if there are e.g. big differences in player experience or skill level, or if your play group includes children.
Interruptibility: What happens if a player has to take a quick break, e.g. to take a phone call, go to the bathroom, or take care of a child? In many games, things crawl to a total halt. But some game formats deal with interruptions much more gracefully. For instance, in the team vs team game Codenames, in a 6-player game consisting of two 3-player teams with one team leader and two team members each, any of the four team members could take a quick break without significantly interrupting the game flow for the others.
Language: If your play group doesn’t want to play in English, you’ll have to check which BGG games are available in your language, or check whether fan-translated supplementary material exists. That said, nowadays many games are language-agnostic except for the manual.