Mike Trotzke
Who is this Mike Trotzke?
Hey iPhone, meet Board Game
I love board games. I love my iPhone. Put them together and you get me spending way too much money at the friendly neighborhood app store. It’s taken a while, but there is at least a full iPhone page worth of sweet board/card games for nerds like me.
They come in essentially 4 varieties:
- The Real Deal
- The Knock Offs
- Original Titles of Note
- Walmart Games (and their clones)
The Real Deal
These are true designer games with sanctioned licenses. I really wish there more in this category.
Zooloretto: One of the best in the app store. Pass and play with up to 5 and a great interface. A ‘Must Buy’ if you own an iPhone and know what Board Game Geek is. (Zooloretto on BGG)
Knights of Charlemagne: A classic Reiner Knizia game. Simple card game with a quick play time and 2 player pass and play. This is the one of the most played games on my phone. I do wish it supported up to 3 like my non-digital version does. (Knights of Charlemagne on BGG)
Poison: Another great Reiner Knizia game. He is one of my favorite designers and this game works well on the iPhone if you are cool with 1 player vs AI only. (Poison on BGG)
Werewolf: Classic many player game. This is more like a game aid than the game itself. You can only play it using pass and play with at least 3 (really 7+). Nice to have handy. (Werewolf on BGG)
Croke: A sweet implementation of the fantastic dexterity game Crokinole. Not exactly a designer game since it’s in the public domain, but it’s a great game.
Set: Has gone missing from the iTunes store. Surprised since it was the official version. There are a few knock offs if you are jonsin’ for some Set.
The Knock Offs
Not sure how I feel about these. On one hand it is pretty crappy to steal some ones game deign and sell it on iTunes. On the other hand the IP holders for these games obviously don’t get it and have been sitting on their hands forever. I justify buying them by telling myself that a knock offs’ success will get game publishers to create a licensed version— but mostly I just want to play Settlers of Catan(ish) while peeing.
Kolonists: A total rip off of Settlers of Catan with no dice and a Roman theme. I can’t put it down.
Mining Bots: (Update: now missing from the app store) A clone of Hey! That’s My Fish! with a robot theme.
Hanto: A slightly re-themed version of the 2 player abstract strategy game Hive.
Other titles of note
The app store also includes some digital only games that might be of interest to board gamers. There are some good strategy card like games like: Orions, Karma Star, and Strongholds. There is also A Robo Rally-esque game called Robo Logic and a few HeroScape like turn based strategy games (UniWar and Reign of Swords).
But my favorite in this category is Strategery. It is by far the most played game on my iPhone. It’s a risk like game, but very configurable and quick to play. If you’ve manage to keeg reading this far you should own it.
There are also some handy tools. The BoardGameGeek app is great for keeping track of of games in your collection, recording plays and checking out reviews on the go. Score is a well done score tracker for a ton of designer games. You’ll also find a bunch of dice rollers (The Dicenomicon, SettlerStats, Risk dice).
Walmart Games
The most popular board games in the app store are mainstream or family oriented games. Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly and Yahtzee Adventure from EA have incredible production quality. Be warned that Clue on the iPhone is more of an adventure game than a board game, but can still be fun. Lux Deluxe is like risk only better— with enough configurable maps and options to keep you entertained for hours. Versions of pretty much any classic are just a search away (Stratego, BattleShip, Uno, Phase 10, Connect 4, Othello, etc.)
I also am a big fan of Word Party. It’s got two modes. One that is like Catchphrase and one that is like Taboo. It sure beats lugging the electronic catch phrase around when camping or on a road trip.
Happy Gaming!
P.S. Will somebody who has more free time than me please write Carcassonne, Lost Cities, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic for iPhone? kthanxbye
