What do you guys think of digital board game apps? I’m a big fan of the good ones, I’ve currently been playing a lot of Root and Castles Of Burgundy.
Anyone else? Some people I know are purists and only play on the table, others enjoy being able to play on the go (I fall into the latter camp!)
I play almost exclusively on Tabletop Simulator simply because it’s much easier to gather a group of people interested in a game online.
This is why we play via apps mainly. My family will pay board games with me but won’t enjoy things like Root. I mean my son’s 7 so maybe in the future 😅
I get the most mileage out of boardgamearena. I think of digital board games as “diet” board games. still good, but a lighter version of the original
I’ve played a few things on BGA - they have a big library but their UI doesn’t always play nicely with mobile browsers…
There are some games I only play the digital version of. They‘re easy to handle, cheaper, shorter and give you the simplicity of a board game experience in the palm of your hand.
Hero Realms for example is so awesome!
They’re all so much cheaper! No time setting up, no need to worry about keeping scores…
I have only played TTA through the app and I don’t think I have any desire to play it on the table - I can imagine it being a real pain in fact…
I play a lot on BGA/Yucata and also play app implementations for some games. Generally I much prefer the BGA/Yucata versions over the app ones because of the more faithful implementations, the better matchmaking and the consistent UI.
I have no problem with mixing digital and on-table, the more ways to play the better! And it’s really nice to be able to try games online before buying them. The best way to sell me a game is a good BGA or Yucata implementation.
That’s a good point - I much prefer the app version of games because I’m not too keen on the UI of BGA but either way is a cheaper way to test a game before buying it in real life for sure!
I’m a fan. I used to play a lot of Ticket to Ride on iOS. Having it as an app takes the fiddliness of all that shuffling out of it. Plus, it’s nice to be able to play only a few turns here and there.
I think definitely stripping out the fiddling about, setting up, scoring etc can be a big plus especially for more complicated games.
And it is nice to just play for a few turns and then come back to it later, yeah
