BoardGame Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW's Daily iPad App: Cargo Runners

by Mike Schramm (Jul 6th, 2011)

Trouble Brothers is a company run by developers Jeff McCord and Steve Shippert, and when I saw them back at Macworld earlier this year, they showed me a game they were working on called Cargo Runners, destined to be released on the iPad, along with an actual real-life board game version. It ...

App Review: Viking Lords is good fun, but could be "borrowing" too much

by Sebastian Blanco (Mar 28th, 2011)

Sending miniature warriors –- cavalry, spearmen, archers, dwarves and giants –- into pretend battles has a long tradition, and there are already plenty of ways to do so on your iDevice. We looked at Ex Illis a while back, which used your iPhone as a scorekeeper for your physical ...

Catan app adds Seafarers expansion with in-app purchase

by Mike Schramm (Jan 20th, 2011)

The great Catan iOS game has added in its first expansion, available via an in-app purchase, and it's based on the Seafarers of Catan expansion from the original German board game. The expansion introduces ships and shipping routes to the kingdom-building simulation, and it includes 10 different ...

App Review: Tafl brings Norse asymmetry to your game table

by Sebastian Blanco (Aug 17th, 2010)

Mancala. Chess. Backgammon. The number of ancient board games available in the App Store is long and somewhat predictable. A fresh new entry that deserves notice is Tafl, a pretty and interesting abstract strategy game that has existed in Northern Europe since at least 400 C.E. Exactly how the game ...

App Review: Medici ships good gameplay onto your iPad

by Sebastian Blanco (Jul 30th, 2010)

Medici [$5.99] is the latest in a growing, impressive line of heavy-ish board games to make the jump from the table to the iPad, and it's amazing to see this game – so carefully crafted and respected by the designer board game community – on a touch screen with an animated background. ...

App review: Blokus HD is shiny, way too shiny

by Sebastian Blanco (Jul 5th, 2010)

The difference between a port of a tabletop board game to the iPad by someone like Gameloft – makers of games like James Cameron's Avatar for iPad and Asphalt 5 – and smaller, independent companies is pretty stunning. It's also quite pretty. Take a look at the flashy images in the Blokus ...

TUAW Review: Carcassonne finally, gloriously comes to the iPhone

by Sebastian Blanco (Jun 5th, 2010)

After Small World, Carcassonne is one of the most anticipated designer board game apps to hit the App Store. It took a little longer than expected, but everything from the basic Carcassonne game is here. Nothing more, nothing less. There are no river tiles, no traders, no princess or dragon. It's ...

App Review: Might And Card - Golden Edition

by Sebastian Blanco (May 26th, 2010)

Might and Card: Golden Edition [US$4.99, iPad only] is not Carcassonne. This much an unnamed member of the UWinGame Dev Team wanted to make clear when he or she provided TUAW with a reviewer code for the game: I also would like to take this opportunity to express some more info about this game. ...

Review: Keltis Oracle is a great, light strategic board game for iPad, iPhone

by Sebastian Blanco (May 13th, 2010)

Keltis is a relatively new marquee family of board games – in Europe, at least – with a somewhat meandering history. The series started as the Lost Cities card game, which evolved into the original board game in the series, Keltis. That game won the Spiel des Jahres, Germany's highest ...

Review: Gorgeous Small World app shows board games can be great on the iPad

by Sebastian Blanco (May 6th, 2010)

Considering how good Small World (US$4.99) – the first big Euro board game of the iPad era – is, fans of these sorts of games are in for a really wonderful ride. While this app isn't perfect, we're here to tell you that it's well worth your time. Maybe you've seen Apple pushing this ...

Review: Bananagrams is addicting without the clicking

by Sebastian Blanco (Apr 20th, 2010)

Perhaps you've seen them, in Word Wars or another Scrabble movie; people who are a wee bit obsessive about their word games. For the iPhone-carrying among them, there is the official Scrabble app or Words With Friends. For people who like a little more variety in their word game apps, there are a ...

TUAW Faceoff: Skat vs. ProSkat on the iPhone

by Sebastian Blanco (Apr 14th, 2010)

We've covered quite a few board and card games in this ongoing series of iPhone / iPad app reviews, but I haven't been as excited about any of them as I was when I saw that there was not just one but two Skat apps available for the iDevices. Considering that Skat is my absolute favorite card game ...

Review: here's hoping the Kachina board game app gets some serious kinks worked out

by Sebastian Blanco (Apr 9th, 2010)

The tile game Kachina came to the iPhone/iPod touch platform in waves. First, the app appeared as a single-player puzzle game using the Kachina rules. Then, an upgrade with in-app purchase allowed you to spend US$2.99 to get multiplayer functionality. Now, the Kachina app [$2.99] that you can ...

Review: Hey, That's My Fish Honey, That's Mine!

by Sebastian Blanco (Apr 6th, 2010)

Board gamers looking for ported game apps on the iPhone (and now, finally, the iPad) might overlook the just-released offering Honey, That's Mine [$1.99]. The game uses little honeybee characters that fly across a board of hexagons to collect drops of honey. As they leave a location, that hex is ...

Review: Viva il Re board game app asks to be crowned

by Sebastian Blanco (Mar 1st, 2010)

The iPhone might be the most amazing computer you can slip into your jeans, but there are some things it just doesn't do very well. For example, you can't really get into a bluffing match against the machine, at least not with the iPhone/iPod touch app Viva il Re ($1.99). Here's what we mean. ...

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