D&D Lords of Waterdeep
I’ve never played the board game, but I thought I would give this game a shot since I’m a long time D&D player and have been craving a bit of solo fun. Most people have already outlined the pro’s and con’s regarding it, so I will not go through them. I will tell you:
-The game is worth $10 easily. Even $15 is acceptable if you like computerized board games.
-You must play the tutorial to understand what’s going on. I played it twice, and after that was a pro at playing.
-Ignore all the naysaying about the animation speeds. Once you know what is going on, you will appreciate the speed of the animations. Could they be slower? Sure. However, a couple games through and you know exactly what the cards are doing. There is also a review icon that you can click called the “Discard Pile” to read and look at the cards that have been played. In addition, you can click on the individual players cards and review those that they have drawn which may have moved too fast to read initially. IN FACT, it is a good strategy to review the other players cards to make decisions in the game.
– Real player with 61.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Dungeons & Dragons Games.
My “hours played” stat is a little misleading, because I played the iOS version of Playdek’s adaptation on the iPad for years.
This version is virtually identical to the iOS version, with a few exceptions. The most obvious is the fact that the game is horizontally oriented, instead of vertically. This is an unfortunate necessity, since monitors can’t be oriented vertically. As such, the expansions –- and I strongly recommend getting that DLC – have to be awkwardly crunched into the board, instead of elegantly just placed below the board. One has to scroll as well, and non-obvious tabs implemented to save space.
– Real player with 43.1 hrs in game
Through the Ages
Through the Ages : 2nd edition is a fantastic port of a physical board game to the digital space. A hit board game created by Vladimír Chvátil (Vlaada Chvátil) in 2006. The rules have changed slightly from the original version mainly with tactics cards being shared.
Gamelay-wise, a turn-based action point game. Each turn, you start with a political phase where you play an aggression card, event card or war card. Then, you have your action phase, where you get to use your civil actions (white) to build civil units, draw cards and place leaders. With military actions (red), you get to build military units and play tactic cards.
– Real player with 710.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Card Game Games.
I’ve been holding off making a review for this game. Reason being, the developers had some server issues until recently. Something to do with the providers of the multiplatform system they used pulling out from supporting it. This happened at the same time they were upgrading compatibility from IPv5 from IPv6. With them being a small development team, this pulled all their resources to get stability back. For some months there was some frustrating server moments.
Now I won’t profess to understand exactly what was going on behind the scenes, BUT… they fixed it!! Through the Ages is now fully stable!!
– Real player with 489.1 hrs in game
Scythe: Digital Edition
I’m a pretty experienced player on the board game, so I know what I’m talking about: this game follow the rules quite well, except for a few mistakes (mill that create meeples WTF?!)
the board is exactly the same as the real game, and even if I felt a bit lost cause there is no infos about your mat type except at the very beginning of the game or somewhere I never found quite easily, it would be nice to have the name of the combo ( example : rusviet patriotic ) all the time, to me this can be quite important as there is some combos that are very OP (Rusviet industrial is already banned wich follow the rules of Jamey Steigmaier, crimea patriotic should follow) but those combos should remain open if you play a non ranked game or with one of your friends )
– Real player with 91.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Turn-Based Games.
Bought this game during steam sale.
I love the board version. Was pretty excited to test the digital version as well. Here is my review and why its pretty meh.
TLDR: good gameplay, terrible netcode/online games. Don’t bother buying the DLC (Invaders from afar) since factions are really bad and you will end playing them a lot more than people without the DLC. A bit expensive for the experience. Worth it for the $8 I paid during the sale.
1. Gameplay 7/10
Its pretty much the same as the board game. Works very well. It can be a bit troublesome at first to get a grisp on how to make a turn, read the boardstate etc but after around 30 games it feels really natural.
– Real player with 60.4 hrs in game
Race for the Galaxy
The best card game there is, especially for two players. A beautiful design that squeezes an enormous amount of tough decisions into a fifteen minute time frame. There’s no need to build decks, collect new cards, or grind for booster packs - Everything you need is included. You’ll easily get hundreds of plays from just the base deck of 114 cards, and still feel like you haven’t explored all the possibilities and can improve further.
In Race, people will not beat you because they’ve spent more money on the game than you - They’ll beat you because they know the game better than you. And then, in single player mode, the truly excellent AI will pummel you some more. This is to be expected, since some people have been playing this game for ten years already. However, the Steam implementation is a great way to start getting ready to face the folks who only agree to play the fabled “GS/RvI/BoW Arc”.
– Real player with 384.8 hrs in game
Yep!
Great, addictive card game from 2007 that thankfully made the jump to online.
Build an empire of planets, technologies, and social developments to outscore your opponents, using a variety of means both military and economic. Specialize in one type of resource, diversify, absorb all the little worlds you can or conserve your forces to risk it all on a single valuable target. Will you hold firm to your initial plan, or roll with the punches as new strategies suggest themselves?
You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking the above all sounds pretty standard for a game of this type. So what sets Race apart? The fact that every turn, every player influences the opportunities presented to their rivals. If one player chooses to place a world as their action, every player may place a world, if they have the resources to do so. Does your opponent have economically focused holdings? Let them spend their action to produce goods, and your empire can also produce goods! Meanwhile, you can spend your action to draw more cards, or build a new development, effectively earning two turns' worth of benefits at once. But beware - if your enemies can predict your moves, they can take advantage of you in the same way.
– Real player with 290.1 hrs in game
Ticket to Ride
Ticket To Ride has been my favourite board game for about ten years now, and this addaptation is totally worth getting!
For those unfamiliar with the board game; the game has a perfect mix of luck and strategy, making each game challenging yet fun. Your goal is to finish destination tickets (e.g. New York to Los Angeles) by claiming routes on the board that eventually let you have a path going from one city to the other city on your ticket. To claim routes you need to collect train cards in the colours needed, picking your choice from the face up cards or the face down deck if no colours are available you could use. It’s pretty straight forward and you get the hang of it very fast.
– Real player with 386.8 hrs in game
The PC adaption (and iPad/iPhone versions too, for that matter) of Ticket to Ride is a very faithful recreation of the classic board game, where the only gameplay differences between it and the physical version are fast and accurate scoring and the fact that enraged board-flipping is no longer a possibility. (Not to mention the bonus of the game + DLC being cheaper than their physical counterparts, and is significantly easier to play with people on the other side of the world!) So, for people who have played the board game before, I think this should be a no-brainer.
– Real player with 142.6 hrs in game
Clue/Cluedo: The Classic Mystery Game
TL;DR- P2W has been removed, cross-platform play, challenging single player, plays better than the board game.
I have been holding off on posting a review as the game had a P2W component in the form of hint cards when it first launched, and the developers had announced an update to balance this out in online ranked matches.
Well the update has now launched and I can safely say that Cluedo: The Classic Mystery Murder Game is the definitive video game adaptation of the popular Cluedo board game as it hits the nail on the head with its game design and online functionality.
– Real player with 122.7 hrs in game
This is a computer version of the board game Clue, and it’s actually pretty good. You can play with friends, by yourself with AI, or with people online. It’s a pretty good representation of the physical board game. The full version is a little expensive, but the base game is an okay price, especially on sale.
The gameplay is almost exactly the same as the board game. For the sake of speed, the game automatically takes the most basic notes for you. It will automatically record that people don’t have the cards to disprove a suggestion, and when you make the suggestion it marks that one player has the card and the other players don’t. However, everything that involves reading between the lines is up to you to mark. It is a little difficult if you’re trying to keep track of anything especially advanced, because there are a limited number of symbols you can mark the spaces with.
– Real player with 76.6 hrs in game
Carcassonne - Tiles & Tactics
edit : changed my review to NEGATIVE. The reason being that there has been a bug in the game for many, many months now where players don’t get to see their final scores in the game on most occassions. There’s not much point playing a multiplayer game if you don’t know who won!!!
I bought the physical version of Carcassonne two weeks ago on a Saturday morning. After a couple of games with a friend and working out how to play it I decided to invest in this digital version. It seemed like a good game and playing the digital version was going to ensure I’d understood the rules properly.
– Real player with 80.7 hrs in game
The game is true to the original, playable and quite pretty, but for this price, the user experience is very poor.
Sounds:
The background ambient sounds are as loud and clear as the interface sounds, so it often feels like the game is trying to tell you something, but it’s just a background noise. Making this effect worse, the sounds play totally at random, which means the same sound will often play over and over again, which can only mean it’s signalling something, but it’s nothing. There’s no option to turn off just the ambient sounds.
– Real player with 64.6 hrs in game
Mysterium: A Psychic Clue Game
I review only the video game not the game itself which is very creative and more interesting than the classic Cluedo
The game is made for tablet, with an interface tactile friendly and big icons. Unfortunately for PC, that’s not user friendly : drag and drop mechanism, no tool-tips (!), scrolling is sometime very very slow, the color code for identifying the characters is too subtile, many space wasted due to a layout not optimized for our big screen, some small icons could help identify who does what, who received what, who did what etc
– Real player with 200.9 hrs in game
I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game, but at this point, I’ve experienced too many game-breaking glitches to feel comfortable leaving a positive review.
I purchased this game after playing and enjoying the physical version. The bots are smart enough to fill out a game with too few players without it being particularly noticeable, but feel a bit predictable after too many solo games. Pass-and-play is an option if your friends don’t own a copy, but if you intend to play primarily in-person, a physical copy of the game is likely the better choice. The lobby tends to be a bit quiet, so I’d really recommend finding a few friends that own a copy for maximum enjoyment.
– Real player with 56.0 hrs in game
Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition
I hadn’t played this game since the 1st edition that came out in the 80s. Back then three Hunters chased a nearly-impotent Dracula around the map, eventually slaying him. Nearly every time, anyway. Dracula had hidden movement behind a screen, and left some rumors in his wake, but the damnable hunter cards would give him away at horrible times, and if you encountered him he would get caught during the day more than half the time (you rolled a die, but the hunters had more cards) - a vampire during the day is as feeble in combat as you would think. We called it “The Frustration of Dracula.” He was fun to play, but it was very difficult to win with him. Still, I have fond memories.
– Real player with 37.3 hrs in game
While no game is ever going to translate perfectly from the board to digital I have to tip my hat to Nomad games for taking on Fury of Dracula, not just for doing it, but doing a very capable job.
*When you read negative reviews about the lack of 1 vs 4 during initial roll out of the game, I have to point out that this was clearly posted on the store page well in advance and in the discussions. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone and it’s a poor excuse to give a thumbs down. It was perfectly clear and the developers have repeatedly stated why they released it as 1 vs 1 and 1 vs AI initially, along with their plans to work on and release 1 vs 4. Understandably, the developers want to get it right, so we just need to be patient. Their professionalism and consistent feedback to our inquiries leads me to believe they will get it done.
– Real player with 30.8 hrs in game
A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition
Little bugged, but very playable. If you like table top version you will get your fix of GOT with this one. Money not wasted.
– Real player with 236.5 hrs in game
Great board game but this software is full of bugs and frequently crashes
– Real player with 113.2 hrs in game