Jaipur is one decision made over and over. Goods pay most to whoever sells them first and pay a bonus to whoever sells the most at once, and those two facts pull in opposite directions on every single turn you take.
Lost Cities starts every expedition twenty points in the red, so the hardest moves are the ones where you do nothing at all — and your discards sit face up in a pile your rival is allowed to reach into.
Codenames Duet is the odd one out: no enemy, two different key cards over the same twenty-five words, nine clues between you. Wyps and Scrabble are the word duels, and Wyps has no score at all — you win by connecting three edges of a hex board.
Built for exactly two
Questions about Two player games
How is this different from your games for 2 players page?
That page lists everything that seats two, including party games running at their floor. This one is only the games designed for a pair, where two is the number the rules were written around.
Are any of these co-operative?
Codenames Duet. You each see the same twenty-five words under a different key card, only three agents are on both, and touching your partner’s assassin ends the game there and then.
How long does a game take?
Ten to fifteen minutes for Jaipur, Lost Cities, Wyps and Codenames Duet. Scrabble is the long one at twenty to thirty-five, because it is the whole 15×15 board and the real hundred tiles.
Does Scrabble really work on a phone?
Better than the box in one respect. An invalid word will not go down at all, and the bar above your rack names every word you are making and what the play scores before you commit to it.