Digital Board Games just keep coming!

We know one of the great reasons to play board games is the social interaction.

Sitting down at a table face-to-face and engaging in a shared activity with family and friends is a lot of fun.

There’s also a great tactile element of fun to playing board games in moving items and cards around the table or on a board.

But it’s hard to ignore the tons of fun board games and card games that are now being published in digital form.

We first wrote about the draw of digital board games a few years ago and have posted about a few of the ones we enjoy since then.

Today we’d like to share about a few more that we’re excited about and think you will be too.

 

Colt Express

Colt Express is a fantastic board game complete with a 3D train!

When I first heard about Colt Express going digital it was hard to imagine because the 3D train and other pieces are such a draw for the game.

However, now that I’ve played the digital version from Asmodee Digital, I have to admit that I still enjoy it quite a bit.

In Colt Express players are trying to get the most loot from a train. But it’s not as easy as it sounds because all the other players are trying to grab loot as well. Not only that, but players must pre-program their actions.

And that’s the real part of the game I love.

I’m happy to report that it’s alive and well in the digital version.

The game is played over a series of rounds that are each divided into two phases. The first phase is where players play cards from their hand to program their future actions. They go into a shared stack of cards that all players play to.

Once everyone has played the prescribed number of cards for the round, they all get resolved.

The fun is seeing how well your actions play out once the other players take their turns. Because chances are likely that their actions will mess with your plans.

For example, you may move into a train car and pick up some loot just before another player goes into that same car and punches you — making you drop your just-acquired loot.

Of course, there’s also a deputy on the train that can mess with your plans too.

The digital version of Colt Express brings the fun of the game to life with cool animations.

When a player takes a Shoot action, their character takes a shot and the hit character spins around hurt. There’s no blood to worry about and it’s all in a cartoon style which I really like.

Even the deputy character gets in on the action when he moves from car to car as he kicks the doors open.

While players make there choices and carry out their actions, the train continues to speed along with the background and smoke from the train moving right along.

In addition to the Classic mode of just playing straight up, there’s a Story mode too. The Story mode let’s you play through five chapters as one of the characters. When you complete a story, it opens up a game variant in the Classic mode.

We haven’t tried the Online play yet to play against others, but imagine it will be just as fun to do.

We definitely recommend checking out Colt Express available on the App Store, Google Play, and Steam.

If you’d like to see it in action, you can also check out the game trailer.

Of course we also highly recommend the original, physical Colt Express game from Asmodee as well.

Get a copy of Colt Express on Amazon.com.

 

Patchwork

Perhaps the digital board game that has captivated everyone in our family the most since it came out recently is Patchwork.

The funny thing is that before playing it on our iPads, we’d never played the game.

I had heard a lot of great things about Patchwork over the last year but just hadn’t had a chance to play it. It caught my attention because it’s a 2-player game that I thought my wife would really enjoy.

Players work to fit Tetris-like pieces of cloth into a quilt for points.

While the quilt theme wasn’t a big draw to me, I knew how much my wife loved playing Tetris. So anything with fitting pieces should go over good in her book.

Well, getting Patchwork for our devices and teaching her how to play has been a huge hit!

Now I think she’s addicted. 🙂

It’s such a simple game to learn and play, yet there’s still enough of a challenge to keep us going back for more.

Players can either play against the AI player or compete head-to-head against each other in pass-n-play style or over WiFi.

Now that we’ve played it a bunch, we can regularly beat the Hard AI in the game. But the real fun is challenging each other anyway.

We’ve even used Airplay to project our app to our large TV and take turns challenging each other. It’s kind of fun seeing our patchwork quilts come together on a larger screen.

Go ahead and give Patchwork a try on your iOS device from the App Store.

Or you can buy a physical copy of Patchwork on Amazon.com.

 

Tokaido

Tokaido is a board game published a few years ago that’s said to have a zen quality about it.

Each player is a traveler crossing the “East sea road”, one of the most magnificent roads of Japan. While traveling, players meet people, taste fine meals, collect beautiful items, discover great panoramas, and visit temples and wild places. The player who discovers the most interesting and varied things along the way will win the game.

It has an interesting linear play style where players advance along the track stopping at a variety of spaces. The player who is furthest back takes the next turn. So, players get to choose whether to advance slowly in order to get more turns, or to travel more rapidly to beat other players to their desired action spaces.

We got a copy of the physical board game Tokaido earlier this year in a game trade at SaltCon and haven’t yet played it enough to offer a full review. The game play is pretty straightforward with a number of choices to balance along the way. The different opportunities to score are varied, yet still balanced. So it’s hard to tell who will pull ahead in the end.

As of this writing, the digital version of the game isn’t yet available.

It’s still in beta testing – which we’re lucky enough and happy to be a part of.

While the terms state that many things aren’t yet final (such as the visuals), we like the presentation. While the path is still linear, we like the 3D look of the road to travel along. And the white background harkens to the original board game with it’s white backdrop and simplistic design.

 

There also isn’t a tutorial in the beta version so beta testers must be familiar with the rules before diving in.

That being said however, the interface is so well done that it’s easy to understand the game play.

We’re looking forward to seeing the final version. We just don’t know the timeline for it.

In the meantime, go ahead and snag a copy of the physical board game of Tokaido on Amazon.com.

 

Potion Explosion

Potion Explosion is another upcoming digital release of a very fun family board game.

Actually, we almost consider it a marble game.

That’s because the central mechanic in this game is a tray of marbles that are collected and used to mix potions to score points.

I first saw Potion Explosion at Gen Con in August and have been excited to give it a go ever since.

Well, just this month we finally got a copy from CMON and have enjoyed playing it. (Watch for our full review coming soon.)

So when we heard Asmodee Digital was bringing the game to the digital realm, our interest has again been piqued.

There’s something very pleasing about the tactile nature of collecting marbles from the tray and seeing the others roll into place. So we’re interested to see if that same appeal can be ported to a screen.

The good news is that we won’t have long to wait because Potion Explosion is set to release in December. And look at that, it’s now December. So it should be very soon!

While you’re waiting, you can always buy a copy of the wonderful physical board game of Potion Explosion.

 

If you do a search for “board games” on either the App Store or Google Play, you’ll find a ton of other board games gone digital as well.

But just because we enjoy playing some of our favorite board games in their digital version, it doesn’t mean we’ve stopped playing the physical version either.

We’ve found that each have their time to shine.

It’s pretty hard to pull out a board game in the car or on a plane. Playing Kingdom Builder or Alien Frontiers and other game apps I love on a long flight is a great way to pass the time.

Which games do you love playing both physical and digital version of?