One of the reasons that I’m generally more interested in boardgames than in computer games is that I can see the bits working, and tweak them if I want to.
I’m playing a bit of Maiden’s Quest at the moment for my 10×10, and it would be easy enough to implement as an app: here’s the obstacle, run or confront; here’s your fan, click on the symbols to activate them in whatever order you like. But without the physicality I’d enjoy it much less.
I would argue that every app implementation of a game is at the very least “a slightly different game” than the one it is implementing. Omitting the obvious one–physicality–there are other changes that apps make to every game that is transported to the new medium.
One aspect of this is visual representation of the game.
There are some apps that I prefer over the boardgame if only because I cannot get the game to the table or because the game itself is so fiddly that I do not even want to get it to the table.
Others just change from the original too much or become too fiddly in the digital implementation: Gloomhaven and Spirit Island are my two prime examples. Both allowing you to make awful mistakes and then locking you in.
I have to add my three favourite game apps for now: Root, Lords of Waterdeep and Raiders of the North Sea. Especially these three, I can play so much.
On the other hand, I was a bit disappointed with Terraforming Mars and Race for the Galaxy. Somehow, they don’t click the same with me.
As an aside I think the Tigris & Euphrates app is good. But totally agree that there are distinct differences between apps and board games.
Having never played the physical game I can’t compare but I am utterly addicted to the Doppelt so Clever app.
Just out of interest, by ‘app’ are you guys talking about a phone app, or a digital implementation (including Steam)?
In my case I do not really make a difference. I have Steam applications, Android apps and iOS apps, I would even include Switch implementations (but I do not have any of those)
To my knowledge a lot games are cross platform so youcan play as a phone app user against a steam user.
My issue with the Pandemic app is it hides so much of the mechanics. Playing the boardgame you understand how the deck is changing, but when you use the app, it all just happens backstage. If you know the game, it’s fine (though I still find it slightly disorientating), but if anyone who has bought the app to avoid buying the boardgame is going to have issues.
I’m totally with you on Pandemic. The black box is important, i.e., knowing what is in the infection deck and you need other peoples minds to build to a coherent strategy. It just goes too quickly in the app.
I think root is about the level where the app or the physical game make more sense. In root it’s nice to have the app check, can you do this, instead of having to remember all of the rules, and you can still keep track of what’s going on and come up with a good strategy. Anything more complicated, I think the physical game would be better. I actually think root with the two expansions might be on the other side of that line.
Gotta say, the app for Hive is great when you’re learning because it shows you which spaces would be valid to move to.
(In my case this just meant that I realised the game is evil and incredibly complex, and not the fun two-player I was looking for right now. But I’ll come back to it when I want insect chess).
I think this is the reason I like the digital implementation of Scythe so much. Particularly when it comes to movement, you don’t have to figure out which hexes it’s possible to move to.
There are some apps for which, for me at least, I run into a curious problem. It’s a little tricky to describe so bear with me.
These are apps where the interface is so clean and smooth, that the game mechanics get stripped bare, and the decisions feel much more cold and bald as a result of all the physical faff being streamlined away.
In other words, some of the magic is lost with the automation of the heavy lifting. I’m trying to avoid the “Emperor’s New Clothes” analogy since it’s a bit pejorative to board gaming, but that’s the sort of idea.
Some games are more prone to it than others. Patchwork, Paperback and Ticket to Ride are examples that spring to mind. Patchwork especially: after playing the hardest AI a few times, the whole game seemed to devolve into a whole string of “if this, then that” statements and I lost my appetite to play it in real life.
Is it just me?
No – I get this a bit with physical games too. (I used to play a lot of BattleTech, but there came a point when I was playing in the world championship – this was 198X, all you had to do to play in the world championship was turn up at GenCon and sign up – where I suddenly saw the whole thing in terms of probability maps, where to go and what to fire in order to have the best chance of winning. After that I didn’t play the game again for 20ish years.) The less involvement I have with the actual bits and the thinner the theme is, the more it turns into an optimisation exercise, and I play better but have less fun.
I think I do this to nearly all games anyway. Good games survive the process, others do not.
Yeah, I had similar with my first Netrunner tournament. All these people playing a fun game in such an un-fun way! I was shell shocked walking out of there.
I enjoy the mechanics of the game, but to reduce the game down to numbers and min maxing everything to devastating effect just isn’t fun for me. I want to play around with a bit of everything and have interesting push and pull. I still love card games, but I keep it to counter top play.
That seems consistent with what I’ve seen of your game-playing here.
I’m glad it works for you but I think there are very few games we would enjoy playing together.
That seems a bit reductive. The way I understand games doesn’t tend to impact on other people’s understanding or enjoyment of games. Games with any form of negotiation, bidding, bluffing, and kingmaking are also usually quite resilient to relentless optimization - you have to play the players, not just the game.
Nope. I actually prefer apps that does this for me because they strip all the system mastery and gives you the decisions.
Games that make themselves complicated for the sake of it blinds you with their busywork. Meh.
I end up loving Patchwork again because of it lol although playing the physical one is still better
Over recent months(?), I played about 130 games of the app for “Finished” and I am on a 75+ winning streak now. I cracked my first win by writing down everything. (These days I admit that the undo button is–uhm–kinda useful.) By now, I know every card by heart and of course I understand why some cards are placed next to each other and at certain positions in the order like they are.
The better I know the game the more obvious the puzzle becomes and while I have not mathed out an algorithm to play the game I think I am over the sweet spot for this one–for now. My fascination is waning but I still like to play a game every once in a while because I’ve become fairly good at sorting numbers and there is a cozy familiarity seeing those cards and knowing how to use them exactly to get those three matching cards next to each other.
This very thing comes up in this fascinating video tour of the US Navy War College with USNWC game designer Peter Pellegrino. He talks about the shift from physical games to electronic/digital games with the adoption of the Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator (NEWS) in the late '50s. Very interesting. To address the disconnect, US Government wargaming has since diverged into two parallel courses: physical table/floor games, and computer modeling.
vs. 
I know he’s not everybody cup of tea, but those pics reminded me of this video.
