What board game have you played recently?

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I'm not a regular board game player, but it's never too late. I've recently re-discovered Magic Maze, which is really fun and interesting!

The main idea of that cooperative game is that the tokens don't belong to players, each player only has one or several specific roles (move up, move down, take the stairs, …) that he/she applies to any token (called heroes), the goal is to make them move to specific locations in a dungeon-like scenery, to steal objects then escape.

No turn, everyone moves any hero that needs moving whenever they want - or must, really, to reach the next destination. So the players have to apply those actions to the heroes in a coordinated manner. Typically, one player moves up, another left, and so on.

Significant caveat: players can't communicate with one another, and there is a time limit. So you really have to constantly watch all the heroes, have a good idea of the plan, and understand what the other players are expecting of you in order to progress.

Those are short games, typically 15 minutes or less.

Your description reminds me of a very popular board game here : The Labyrinth : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(board_game)

I never came to play it, unfortunately. It's still on my buying list (shame on me !).

I didn't know that one, but then I don't know many board games

Next on the list will be T.I.M.E Stories, which seems to have less replayability so I'll wait for the right moment. It seems pretty much role-play, that will be interesting.

Now this is an interesting topic.
When I was a kid I used to play lots of AD&D with my fellow acne ridden geek friends of course.
Nowadays, being older, wiser, richer, grumpier, I really like small party games, ideally a game for two or three, such as:

Labyrinth, and its super fun spin-off Labyrinth Mini. C'mon, everyone knows Labyrinth!
The Lost Cities, a wonderful card game for two. Simple rules, deep strategies.
Black Stories (and its endless expansions). A wonderful detective deduction game for two. Excellent for some weird Hercule Poirot cosplay event.
Munchkin. This one needs no introduction in an RPG forum like this.
Claim (and its expansions). This one is very interesting: each expansion bends the core rules, so you have a game system that is as simple or complex as your mood dictates. Genius.

Bonus: I really tried to love the Lovecraft-inspired Elder Sign and Arkham/Eldritch Horror games, but somehow I find these very annoying.

Windward! Was a Kickstarter and seriously enjoyable, with lots of layers.

Last one I played was Descent with an app acting as dungeon master. About as close as you can get to a PnP RPG without it actually being one.

Good times, and I hope we will get back to it in the coming year.

We finally found some time to play TIME stories.

It's a good concept, but you need to buy new stories to keep the interest, the first one is included in the box, Asylum.

It's a role-playing game board with simplified mechanics, each character has the equivalent of DEX, STR and CHA, then AC and HP, on top of individual powers or limitations (it may depend on the story).

The catch being, time is quite limited and it's not really possible to explore and gather enough items in one run. Once your time is up, you have to start everything again, except you can change your character and keep a few specified items. Those items and your knowledge accumulate and allow you to eventually complete the task.

One run is around 2 hours, and it's best not to wait too long between them or you may forget the relevant places to visit or the people worth talking to (in order to save as much time as possible).

It's an amusing and soft introduction to RPG. The first run is really fun, the next ones in the same story begin to be somewhat repetitive, and they're getting about time optimization rather than exploration.