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Torulf Jernström
Finland
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Hi all,
I thought I would continue the discussion on board games on touch screens, and the iPad in particular. Reiner Knizia's latest, Keltis Das Orakel, is now available on the iPad - almost simultaneously with the traditional board game sales start. It's a two to four player game, with AI support being added in the next update.
Still, this game - like Small World and other releases - is just the first part of the trend. When the new large touch screen devices get into consumers' hands, there is sure to be a lot of board games coming. Since we started a company betting on this trend, we would like to hear your thoughts on it.
Is touch screen board gaming the future? Is it a fad that's quickly going to die out because of the lack of physical cards, dices, etc.? Somewhere in between?
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"Spartan spawn, sworn, raised for warring."
United States
Beaufort
South Carolina
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I wont be partaking in any of it. I like my boardgames like I like my books, when I buy them I want them to take up shelf space and have something to hold and touch and work on. I dont buy any sort of digital books or digital book readers. I wont be purchasing an Ipad and I definitely wont be playing games on it.
If the future of boardgaming is electronic Im deeply saddened. I like to 'pimp' the occasional game, this wont be doable if its all done on the Ipad. I enjoy getting my components from a new game and opening, punching, and bagging them, this will be removed on the Ipad as well. Handling and playing with the pieces while actually gaming is another thing I enjoy, this will be removed from the Ipad.
Personally I hold the hope that published boardgames will never disappear as books even with the introduction of the Kindle and such havent stopped going to print...yet. It'll come eventually Im sure.
If I want to play a video game, I'll play my 360. If I want to play a boardgame I want a board and pieces not some electronic touch screen.
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Ed Holzman
United States
Seffner
Florida
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Why would anyone spend $500 on a maxiPad and then have to turn around and spend even more money to buy the game apps? For that kind of money, I can purchase 15-20 real games.
Or I could buy a Netbook for $300 and play hundreds of games that are currently freely available as VASSAL or Cyberboard modules (and do a lot of things that the maxiPad can't do).
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Perhaps because you bought that thing for.... like... other reasons and want to try that? *shrug*
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Torulf Jernström
Finland
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Personally, I hope your right, that electronic versions never fully replace the traditional card board games. I still like to physically move pieces of wood, etc.
However, I believe there's a new area that will grow the overall market for social board games. With the computer taking care of rules and playing pieces, you can make more complex games easier to approach.
Still, playing on a large touch screen is not the same as playing on a computer or console, simply because the screen lies flat on the table, letting you sit face-to-face with your friends. Social contact + easily approachable games that still have depth is what gets me excited about it.
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Patrick Alexander
United States
Florence
Alabama
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While I do prefer the tactile feedback of a traditional board game, I will dive into the ipad boardgames with gusto! I pack 4 or 5 (at least) bulky boardgames in our car every time my family and I go to my gaming buddys house. The boxes get smashed, they slide everywhere and they are a pain to lug between the car and house.
These are sacrifices I am willing to make because I love me some games! The prospect of having a wide variety of games in the tiny footprint of an ipad sounds great to me. On vacation, being able to have a compact collection of games at my fingertips sounds ideal.
Quick setup and the ability to play on a tiny hotel table will be great! The scrabble app shows the ability for each player to have their tiles displayed on their iphone/ipod touch. This ability opens up a lot of possibilities for some of my favorite games.
I guess my best analogy is that I prefer face to face communication, but I am posting this on an internet forum because it affords me the chance to talk to all you good people, something I'll never be able to do face to face. It's all about increased opportunity, be it communications or gaming!
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mrbass
United States
Las Vegas
Nevada
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I got it and glad you can at least access the rules while playing the game (hello SmallWorld I'm talking to you). I've never played Keltis only have Lost Cities which I had about 4 copies of but gave to friends. Also played Lost Cities on DS back in the day.
Not sure I select the 2 players but it keeps giving me 3 players. Not sure if that is a bug or what. Read through the rules and was honestly lost then started playing a bit and still lost but then reread rules and now it's making sense. Definitely not beginner friendly like Lost Cities is though.
Think the instructions could use a tad more graphical screenshots to reinforce visually points.
Oracle and game pieces are too close together and hard to pick exactly which one sometimes.
Also a typo in the rules in the tablet piles section.
"The initially empty ones are discard piles, each of this holds tablets of a specific coulour"....change to "each of these"
Also just for clarification and consistency sake in the Advance the Oracle priestess section
"If the priestess ends is movement..." change to
"If the Oracle priestess ends is movement..."
Last observation is brown and red are pretty hard to distinguish at times so perhaps change brown to purple perhaps.
Hopefully Keltis will have same gut wrenching decisions to be made that Lost Cities has.
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Torulf Jernström
Finland
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Thanks for the feedback.
Some bugs/improvements you found were fixed in an update. We'll check your list to make sure.
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Stephan Koehr
Germany
Frankfurt
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I think the iPad will be a great device for playing boardgames which require a lot of bookkeeping- it's nice to have a CPU for that. Of course I wouldn't buy an iPad only to play boardgames, but when a future version will be more like a computer running certain programs I want to use on a mobile device (like a good MIDI sequencer f.e.) and less like a fancy Kindle-iPod-thingy, I'll be glad about all those boardgames I will be able to play then, sometimes even without human players against a KI. (I want Race for the Galaxy on iPad!!! Keldon? Are you listening?)
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Michael Turner
United States
Mountain View
California
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When I go out...
My family enjoys card and board games. At home, part of the table setting is often a cribbage board that my parents play - they even have a travel cribbage board for playing while waiting for their meal when eating out. My brother and his wife play othello as their main game - on an iphone.
So, when I go visit my brother I don't have to try to stuff a good chunk of my game library in my trunk. I can pull out the ipad and we can play small world. With Keltis and Honey we can get some nice table top games while waiting for food... and when the food comes its not some mad scramble to clear the table but rather a quick tap of a button and we're ready to play it again when we get home.
I look forward to more iPad games.
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Torulf Jernström
Finland
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It's only a shame that the iPad is still so small.
When we started Tribeflame, we actually planned on making a device specifically for board gaming. More or less just like the iPad, but with a much larger screen (17 inch, which is about 3X larger in area).
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Ralph T
United States
Signal Hill
California
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Bearcat89 wrote: Why would anyone spend $500 on a maxiPad and then have to turn around and spend even more money to buy the game apps? For that kind of money, I can purchase 15-20 real games.
Or I could buy a Netbook for $300 and play hundreds of games that are currently freely available as VASSAL or Cyberboard modules (and do a lot of things that the maxiPad can't do).
Now that's just silly. No one's solely buying an Ipad to play boardgames on. But the ability to buy cheap boardgames makes it more attractive. Games on the ipad cost 1/5 or 1/10 of the cost to buy the physical version. In the case of an import only game like Keltis-Oracle, it's going to be hard to track down a copy to begin with. You have a lot more portability--do you think you can play Small World, even two player, on a plane?
As far as Vassal goes, no comparison, you usually can't play the game on Vassal without owning the physical game.
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mrbass
United States
Las Vegas
Nevada
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Yes the update I believe fix all my issues I was having. Since I updated played about 15 more times and it's a great game. My kids like it too.
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A L D A R O N
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
A L D A R O N
-} 1 {-
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Bearcat89 wrote: Why...
Try it before you rant.
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The Gray Dog Passes Go
United States
Reno
Nevada
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ralpher wrote: Now that's just silly.
Silly, yes ... and, sadly, par for the course at this place. BGG is currently over-run with numerous "But why would I pay $505 for Small World, yuk-yuk" posts. Some of these people are actually being serious, too.
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Torulf Jernström
Finland
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Great,
we made the AI smarter in the next update. Just waiting for Apple to approve it.
Torulf
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It is the future of boardgaming. Maybe some of the people here is like the ones that still keep on buying LP records instead of buying mp3's. They claim that the cover and to be physical able to "feel" the record is important, just like somebody here say the same about holding cards, moving tokes etc. The general public don't give a crap about that, they will buy whatever is the easiest and simplest way of playing boardgames.
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Jonathan Leech
United Kingdom
Newcastle upon Tyne
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I don't think real, physical board games will disappear as part of the joy is the feel of the thing but I love the idea of these games being available on a format like the ipad as it's simply an additional way to carry games with you wherever you go. It's an alternative not a replacement rather like those ebooks, I have an ereader which I use but I still buy normal books as well depending on where I am and what I'm doing.
The people dismissing this are simply showing themselves up to be completely blinkered to change.
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I would play board games on the iPad. But those games will never be the reason why I buy one. And since I have no reason at all to buy an iPad: No chance.
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Torulf Jernström
Finland
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The new version was approved by Apple yesterday. This game now has a much better AI player, along with some other improvements.
http://itunes.com/apps/KeltisOracle
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James Ludlow
United States
Saint Louis Park
Minnesota
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I had never tried Keltis before, but I downloaded Keltis Oracle for iPad and played against the AI. It's pretty fun so far, but I need to try it against another human before I can cast my judgement.
One complaint: I'm not color blind, but the red and brown tiles look nearly identical.
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Matt Mehlhoff
United States
Rosemount
Minnesota
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"Personally I hold the hope that published boardgames will never disappear as books even with the introduction of the Kindle and such havent stopped going to print...yet. It'll come eventually Im sure."
I don't believe books will ever go out of print. As long as there is a demand, they will be produced for people like you and I.
AGREED!?!?!?
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Jason Begy
United States
Cambridge
Massachusetts
I study games and gamers at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.
I hate bowling. It's just multiplayer solitaire.
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Is anybody keeping a list of board games that have been ported to the ipad? It's the one thing that could tempt me to get one. I realize it's insanely expensive, but being able to cart around a library of games in a backpack would be extremely valuable to me. I'm also hoping to move to Copenhagen for my PhD next fall, so needless to say not many of my games will be coming with.
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Michael Turner
United States
Mountain View
California
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iPad geeklist has as comprehensive of a list as I've found so far. There are also many checker/chess/othello apps out there, some of which promise to add other games in the future (I'm waiting for Lines of Action and Blue and Grey from an app titled "Game Room").
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