Board Is Tabletop Tablet Gaming-but With Physical Pieces

"My kids also enjoyed Save the Bloogs, an obviously Lemmings-inspired platformer, where you use the pieces as ladders, bridges, and canons to guide the cute wee Bloogs away from impending death. Board Arcade is the only one that reuses pieces, with spaceships and robots adding physical controls to versions of classics like Snake and Asteroids. Most of the games are marked as age 6 and up, and I'd expect young kids to love this."

"The quality and depth of the launch titles vary, but they feel more like examples of what you could do with the tech than must-have games. It's telling that the best of the bunch are clones. It will be interesting to see what third-party developers might come up with. While I applaud the lack of a subscription, it's not yet clear how much the 10 new incoming titles will cost, when they will land, or how many more might follow."

Save the Bloogs uses physical pieces as ladders, bridges, and canons in a Lemmings-inspired platformer aimed at young players. Board Arcade reuses pieces to add physical controls to classics like Snake and Asteroids. Most launch games are rated for ages 6 and up, with a digital pet, Mushka, targeting very young children. Several promising titles, including Spycraft and Thrasos, remain marked coming soon. Strata offers a Tetris- and Chess-inspired two- to six-player territorial battle, and Omakase is a sushi-themed head-to-head bento-building game. Launch quality varies, no subscription is required, and pricing and timing for ten incoming titles remain unclear. Teens found the games boring, and the system’s large size raises storage and durability concerns.

Read at WIRED