Digital board gaming

Analog gaming is back. There are so many quality board games produced in the last few years and it's not going to stop soon. We have big announcements for 2017, potentially new hits. So why do we see so many board games digitalized?

Yes, it's hard to match the feeling of playing board games face to face with other people. But we all know what it takes to organize the board game nights. People have jobs, commitments, families. Making the time work for all is often impossible. Also, sometimes you want to play with your friends or family members that are far away. Sometimes you would like to try something before you buy it. There's also a time that you would like to play a game but nobody is around. Virtual board games can help with all that. You can play from your computer with people all around the world.

Some board games have their own official digital implementations, like Dominion or Days of Wonder games, like Ticket to Ride and Splendor which you can play on Steam or on your mobile device.

Beside official apps for specific board games, there are also platforms for building and playing board games. The most important ones are Vassal - an open source game engine, Tabletop Simulator - which is actually a sandbox game with the realistic physics engine and a bunch of official and unofficial board game modules, and Tabletopia - online sandbox arena with official board game adaptations and a big catalog of games.

Out of those, Tabletopia might be the easiest to jump in because it has a simple interface, it can run in the browser and lots of games from the catalog are free to play.