> Soon. We’re building tools that will let anyone design their own Board games, starting with developers and expanding to players. The future of play is one you can help create. Learn more at board.fun/developers.
So I think I understand the SDK is not available yet. Can you clarify that developer tools are not yet available but are coming soon on https://board.fun/pages/developers to avoid confusion?
To expand on the topic of the SDK: will the SDK be open-source? Will I need to register as a developer or pay a fee to get the SDK? If the SDK is open-source with no registration or fees required, then you have my attention.
The SDK is open-source, no fees required. Coming in the next week or two. We're figuring out the specific details regarding registration, and would love feedback one way or the other if this is critical for you. If you want to be notified the moment it hits, email us: developers@board.fun
> The SDK is open-source, no fees required. Coming in the next week or two. We're figuring out the specific details regarding registration
It sounds like you've already figured out that the registration would have to be optional, as you're planning to make it open-source (it will be open-source once you release it, it isn't open-source yet :) ).
Yeah, I guess they could offer a downloadable .tar once you've filled out your email on their website, or email it to you or whatever. Not sure you'd wanna add that sort of friction at that stage though, makes more sense to ask before publishing what you've built.
Cool! I don't have any concrete plans yet, but I'm looking forward to checking out the SDK when it releases. I'm relieved that you aren't going for the Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo approach.
I can tell this is much more than just “Tabletop Simulator on a tablet”, although at $500 you’re likely to get a lot of attention from the Twilight Imperium and Gloomhaven crowd. I know more than a few childless people in my local gaming circle who would drop a half-large on accessories that simplify game execution.
But clearly this product isn’t about making existing board games easier to set-up/play/clean-up. I think the marketing dept has a lot of heavy lifting to do, convincing buyers that this isn’t just Juicero for existing board games.
I play games like Gloomhaven and TI4. Not sure how this product would simplify anything. Far too small for any of the more complex board games. I guess I could scroll around but then what does physical piece detection give me? Then it’s $500USD. My game group and myself got Gloomhaven from Epic for free and played through the campaign together. BGA subscription is cheap. So many games have online implementations that are free. And I can buy a lot of boardgames for $500.
I really think in-person Gloomhaven is a great use case, if it's handled well.
Scene 0: Enter player count / difficulty / etc.
Scene 1: Map. Press UI to pick a location / scenario
Scene 2: Loads hex map and enemies, manages all NPC activity for you
Players still use physical cards, and importantly, physical stands for their characters. Would be worth discussing if the screen handles modifier cards... for physical cards the names might be on screen, then the players select their actions (top or bottom) and define movement or action targets. Some animation and NPC health / reactions are handled by software.
So there's a reduction in set up (hex maps, NPCs) and a reduction in managing NPC actions (which is why the PC versions are so appealing in the first place.) But instead of all players focusing on their own screen, they are still getting some face time and tactile board game play.
it does open up some possibility for mechanics that exploit the fact that the play area ("board") is almost infinitely mutable.
But honestly concepts like this, mixing of physical and digital, have been tried to very little success in the gaming space for years. Out best success is wii-motion controls and rockband-era .. elaborate controllers. But there have been card games that utilized cameras to read the cards, skylanders, etc.
Actually this is closest to some of the things that original run of microsoft surface tables could do. I played some backgammon on one with physical dice and disks. It was .. fine, but it was just backgammon, they were just showing off the object tracking features. The only thing you could do with the board was some fancy animated board themes.
Anyways all of that stuff is largely abandoned. So I wish these guys luck.
Building diy multitouch tables has been possible for a long time now, given time, space and budget for that project.
I fully agree that it ultimately boils down to software: Can I implement my favorite board game for my multitouch interface? Yes. Can I bring that game to the table faster by just buying a physical copy? Yes.
I happen to have two 42" touch displays set aside for such a project - a unused backup unit destined for the living room for 200€, and damaged unit for dev work (for free). Since I bought them about 2 years ago, I also bought at least double that value of physical board games in retail, plus a Kickstarter board game. Go figure why.
However, I did play the digital version of Root on one of them, and enjoyed it very much. I should get Dune, too.
NB: I regularly see multitouch tables at trade shows. Nice eye catcher and useful to present some products or the multitude of services big companies offer.
mt tables are fine and dandy and exactly what friends have built. There are several solutions for augmenting consumer panels for multitouch. This product is a bit further than multitough though.
The problem is that I see few reasons for playing boardgames, with friends, on them. You loose a lot of 'delight' factor. Physical pieces are very important to most people. I think if you asked two chess players if they would rather sit in a park and play in the sun with a physical set or play with a touchscreen inside, they would probably select the first.
I have played many digital board games, especially during covid. It's harder for me to concentrate on the game, it's less delightful. However for solo experiences and some extremes (gloomhaven) I do prefer digital games. (I also learned root digitally so that I could hurry my understanding of each faction before I played it physically with players who had a few games under their belt, and I play a lot of solo dune imperium because i love that game more than my friends it seems)
Can this product's support for physical pieces crack the 'delight in physicality' problem. Maybe. Like I said, I had some experience with this on the surface table like 15 years ago.
I think, in my experience at least, that they only time I've wanted a digital table is for TTRPG play for very tactical tables it just keeps the game moving faster than drawing a battlemap to put minis on. There is a reason I first started seeing them during D&D 4th edition where the combat was so 'on grid'. I imagine as we try out 'Draw Steel' we may revisit that more heavily as it's combat system is very 4E aligned.
The product is a concept that I want to work more than it, historically, has.
If you missed physical objects, they did not do ftir with fiducal markers, I guess? There were some nice demos back when that was novel, like over a decade ago.
Some of the tables I saw at trade shows (e.g. E-World in Essen) this year also had them. On one you could place 3d printed power plants and various energy storage systems onto a map. To adjust their output, you could turn them like a knob. The company sold a management system for small grid operators, which then reacted to those demo inputs.
> The product is a concept that I want to work more than it, historically, has.
Sad but true. But then they don't exactly fit into the usual living room. However, as specialized board game tables are getting more popular every year, we might yet see a market for smart variants emerging long term. Not a huge chance IMHO, but larger than zero.
Maybe they need to work with the creators of Gloomhaven etc to design their next game specifically so it can be played on this tablet, to cut down on the need for bookkeeping.
The main problem with games like Gloomhaven and TI4 isn’t the book keeping. It’s getting the people around a table at the same time. Need 6 players for TI4 and the same group multiple times for a campaign. Hence why I’ve been playing the digital versions online with my group.
You’re right. But it’s only a problem if you can play in the first place. Of course solving book keeping effectively can lead to more possible times to play since you don’t need as long.
Online platforms like BGA solve both problems and are pretty cheap and constantly implement new games. And I can play with friends that have moved overseas! And if you have a regular group, you only need to pay one subscription. Could have an old fashioned LAN party for online boardgames for an order of magnitude less money.
Exact same thoughts here. This should, imo, be marketed at boardgame nerds, who are adults, and not 3-7 year olds which it seems to currently be. Which toddler is asking for this for christmas? I suppose a boardgame nerd might buy it to use with their toddler, but that is a niche of a niche of a niche.
Well, parents could also set some ground rules for iPad usage and enforce them! I don't think another screen is a good solution to get someone off a screen. You can just play a normal board game with the kids.
Board seems cool, but it's not a way to consolidate your collection of euro, war or 4x games into one surface. The appeal to me is making new experiences involving physics, exciting visuals, and sound. Sure maybe you can replicate some smaller abstract games, but this would make playing TI or Gloomhaven absolutely miserable. People that don't play complex games assume that the scale and number of components is a burden, but they're carefully designed to give the ability for the players to make sense of and organize the scale and complexity of the game itself (especially in TI)
I don't think the existing board game community is their market, but it's for people who like to be early adopters of tech and think they'd like to play games and have extra money, which is a pretty small market.
I don't really play board games, but if I did I can imagine being worried about forced updates, general online connectivity, inevitable ads, microtransactions, longevity, etc being a concern.
The current people behind Board might promise to deliver now, but who knows what will happen 5 years down the line.
Nice job! Very slick demo video. As a dev, a couple of things immediately stand out to me.
1. Launching at $500 means it is going to be a "relatively" boutique product. At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.
Which leads to my second question:
2. Are the included physical pieces modular / generic enough such that prospective game developers could leverage them in future apps, or would they essentially need to design, 3D print, or contract out to your team to create their own props?
1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback!
2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love to work with you to make a bespoke set of pieces to go with the game. Whether the launch sets are modular enough as-is is really dependent on the ergonomics and aesthetics of the game you want to make. We’re excited to make ourselves available to devs who want to explore this though, and happy to work with folks to figure out ways forward.
> 1. super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you?
Yes most of those game don't look like they significantly add anything to the experience over similar already existing games that have or easily could have tablet versions. Even if they are doing a bit more website makes them look like cheap versions of well established computer games.
Bloogs -> that's just lemmings
Spycraft -> doesn't look like something you couldn't design touchscreen controls with little effect on puzzles
Omakase -> you are selecting positions + direction within grid, don't see why press and swipe on touchscreen wouldn't work
Mushka -> the tamagochi style game. All that the special pieces achieve is select an action which could easily be done with touchscreen menu and afterwords positioning it with finger
Cosmic crush -> again one more game where all you do is move single game piece per player on a grid
Space rocks -> asteroid like spaceship shooter
Snek -> just point the finger directly on touchscreen without special game pieces
Out of all them maybe 2 look like they are trying to consider unique strengths of the physical game pieces. The cooking game and 3d block game. And even for those it feels questionable whether it provides sufficient improvement compared to existing games.
By it's nature product like this means that you get worst parts of niche gaming console and a physical board game. Niche console means that the set of available games will be very limited with many of them either being ports from other platforms using generic pieces (meaning you can just play them on those other more popular platforms) or the gameplay isn't as good due too limited budget. Hardly any developer is going to spend years to design unique game for niche platform with very limited player base.
And like with physical board games you need to buy the pieces in physical store or have them delivered.
Tilt-5 also tried to fill the gap between digital and physical board games. They had much more interesting value add but that wasn't enough.
Looks really cool though did not see what the SDK is or languages it requires? I've built game tables before with flat panel TVs and web tech, but have wanted to integrate miniatures, position, etc into the apps.
Not the OP, but in the TechCrunch Disrupt launch, founder Brynn Putnam says, "capacitive material manufactured into the pieces."
If you put capacitive material in a unique pattern on the footprint of each piece, and the rest of the piece material was conductive enough to carry your body's charge to register a touch, the shape of that touch could be unique per-piece.
There's no mention of syncing pieces, charging pieces, keeping pieces in view of a wide-angle camera, anything like that, so that's my bet. (This would also mean moving a piece using a non-conductive material would be a way to cheat by having it not get registered!)
I just shared this on LI this morning, linking back to a video showing showing related touchscreen explorations I did for a colleague in early 2013, sensing different coins by their radii as you touch them: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vmiliano_a-vertical-triptych-...
This is nearly bang on correct. The pieces don't contain any electronics or sensors, they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house. Our custom software stack processes the raw data from the device's touch sensor using embedded ML on the NPU, which detects and tracks the pieces in real time.
That said, the device can detect the pieces whether you touch them or not. Touching them absolutely does change the response, and we pass that along as a parameter to the SDK.
Your coin exploration is seriously cool, please hit me up when you're next in NYC!
> they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house.
Would this be something a home 3D printer could do? I'm not a maker but I could see the value of others being able to quickly build a universe of playing pieces if that was possible.
It's possible to make your own pieces with a multi-material 3d printer (our early prototypes have been made with Bambu X1C & H2D printers), though it's pretty finicky to do so, and requires some rather expensive filament. Happy to help anyone along though!
This was my immediate thought. I have a Bamboo X1C; buying special conductive filament is fine if you're just making a few pieces.
Board is MUCH more interesting to me if I can easily program it for my own games, especially if I can share them with others. I'm thinking about TTRPGs and other army building games where each piece has unique capabilities and rules.
It would be nice if I could buy smart bases, kind of like RFID stickers. Something I can glue to the base of an existing miniature with a 10-20mm round/square/hex base.
With those tools, I would build deep accounting assistance for complex games. If it's cheap, you could put custom terrain pieces on the Board with smart properties (hard cover, soft cover, blocks line of sight, etc).
Obviously there are lots of partnership opportunities there. You could get the table top game publishers to publish Board editions of their games that automatically keep up to date with the latest rules.
If that all works, the obvious next limitation would be board size. a 24" screen can do a lot, but many games would benefit from a screen measured in feet. That would be expensive and hard to move around though, given the current thickness.
Perhaps an intermediate solution would be support for tiling Boards. Everyone brings their own, you shove them together and have a much larger playing surface. Bezel width would be annoying here.
It might be easier to 3d print normally, then separately 2d print the capacitative layer, then stick it on the bottom of the 3d printed piece: https://youtu.be/ON-6bdhQHpI
It would sound more logical to me to buy a stack of pre-made patterns (e.g. coin or cube form-factor) and glue them into a like-shaped slot in a 3d-printed playing piece. Assuming that is possible, and you'd still have to make a conductive path to the person touching the piece, but this would be much easier than printing the pattern yourself.
It is not a requirement to provide a conductive path to the person though. The patterns (glyphs as we call them) are detected and tracked regardless of whether they are being touched. However, when there is a conductive path to the person, the system detects that which provides another input vector.
This screams for compatibility with 3d printers. eg: design a piece to be "absorbed" by a LEGO brick (2x4, duh!), and design a capacitive pathway for "two buttons" a-la: https://a.co/d/f7wm3GA
3D print your goblin army, snap it to the base, touch the sword arm to attack, the shield arm to defend, etc. light up the base via capacitive to 0/1/2 inputs and you're set!
Reminds me of some ~10 years ago I found a dirt cheap game in a budget bin in some store. It contained a few plastic, pre-painted, miniatures, that had some kind of special base with bumps on (possibly in some unique pattern for each miniature?) and then you were supposed to install an app game on a tablet and place the miniatures on the tablet to move them and have their locations (badly) tracked. Seems like it may have been a similar technology, but you only had to pay for the playing tokens and use a standard tablet. Not sure if special hardware is needed for better tracking of enough tokens or if a standard tablet today could be used with the right software?
Game(s) that you were supposed to play was not very fun, in addition to the tracking not working well, as I remember it, but I may still have the miniatures somewhere. There was another game from the same company that I also bought at the same time, but that one was made to be played with a phone camera as some kind of AR game instead, moving some plastic objects on a table, that also worked about as well as the other game.
> At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.
And why that’s worth $500. I can’t think of any game(s) that are so fun or unique I’d pay $500 to be able to play them, even with my family.
Not quite the first such product, Microsoft's original "Surface" advertised similar boardgame potential. But if it worked well, I don't know of anyone who was rich enough to try it!
Detection technology on Board is much more robust. The MS Surface FTIR approach was lovely, but so over-featured no one could imagine a scoped-down (ie. cheaper) version of it.
Aha, so there are ex-Surface developers working on this too! That's reassuring actually. Yeah, the boardgame demos of Surface were gorgeous, and I was definitively disappointed that this cool technology didn't "arrive" even as the years went by. Wishing you all good luck, and I may have to see how hard it is to get my hands on one of these...
I have a first gen surface in storage. Company I was working for wanted to get rid of the heavy as hell awkward thing... There is a backgammon app on it, when i played it years earlier there were physical dice and pieces. Buy lost from my table or not included, but playable by tap as well.
Granted, this is very hard to search for, when not being around the time it was available, as most results will be about the current tablets marketed as surface.
The Unity SDK is C# and slots right into the typical Unity patterns for touch input.
Two contact types are provided:
Finger – Representing a single touch point, e.g, a finger
Glyph – Representing a tangible object
For each contact, you get ID, Position, and Phase. For Glyphs, you also get orientation and touched status, as in the system knows whether the object is being touched or not. There tunable parameters for the tracking system as well.
For event systems (e.g., menus, etc), BoardUIInputModule in provided in place of Unity's default InputSystemUIInputModule.
It 100% counts. As a somewhat irregular DM, DnD is a very poorly designed game.
Using digital tools as a DM for any sort of TTRPG is justifiable for the same reasons we use computers instead of books.
But the real problem is that players need digital tools too as the character sheet for any character with spellcasting is unworkable by hand.
Any prepared caster would need to manually copy every spell of the right level from their spell list onto paper every few level ups. If they don't write out the spell exactly as written (i.e, if they summarize) then you're opening the flood gates of rules lawyering and googling/book opening mid session.
Many other TTRPGs don't have this problem because they are designed with "playing with paper" in mind.
Book opening is fine. Post-it notes exist. You can easily open the book to the right spell. Just write down the names of the spells you have chosen to memorise for the day on a piece of paper and cross them off when you cast them.
As for rules lawyering... That is just playing by the rules. That is how the game is meant to be played: rules as written except as modified by the group by agreement. Rules lawyering just means sticking to what the rules actually are.
Maybe you mean something else?
As for googling, why would you need to google a spell?
It's a horrible experience. I can only suggest you try out TTRPGs that don't need this. I haven't tried it yet but Daggerheart seems to avoid the problem by providing spell cards. You can do the same in DnD and I suggest doing so, but it's not assumed by the game's design.
All the old-school OSR inspired stuff doesn't have this problem.
You should not need to repeatedly and consistently open the rule-book to play what is essentially a board game. That's ok the first time you play a board game, not ok the 20th time. You google a spell because it is much faster than opening the book. DnD combat is already way too slow as it is.
Investing in a refillable printer and card stock is great for this.
I used to make MTG style cards for spells, quest items, etc. something physical the players can keep with them.
This made casting extremely efficient as the caster has the card with the info on it. All they have to do is turn it in, roll the dice, and describe their action.
It isn't a board game. Maybe that's your problem. It is a roleplaying game. The mechanics of spellcasting aren't very important because combat just isn't very important. Most people don't even play with a grid and figurines (at least traditionally).
You haven't explained why it is a "horrible experience" to look at a photocopied piece of paper or to open a book to a post-it note bookmark. I do these things every day with other books, for things like work.
Are you just bad at reading books or unfamiliar with how to use them?
> Most people don't even play with a grid and figurines (at least traditionally).
This is simply not true. If you want to play a pure roleplaying game, play a rules-light one. DnD is not that.
Everyone homebrews little bits so I'm not going to harp too much on that, but there's no point discussing the issues of DnD's design if we're not talking about DnD's design but rather whatever your homebrewed version of DnD is.
Did you know the game is balanced around 8 combat encounters per session? Do you know how many tables actually play that number of combats per session? It's a badly designed game.
The game isn't balanced at all. Are you playing the modern version or something? I'm talking about D&D which was always traditionally a roleplaying game and not a rollplaying game.
To be honest as someone who's built a dozen dice rolling and dming tools for myself I've recently switched mostly back to paper. There's just something really nice about rolling physical dice on a physical table while flipping through physical books and notes. It's super cumbersome and I don't think there's anything wrong with using digital tools. I play most of my games over a digital tabletop since those I play with aren't near by.
Yes on the physical dice rolling, no on the tombs and tombs of dead trees to lug around with me. Even just the handbooks are over 1,000 pretty printed shavings of poplar pulp. Having a cardboard paper screen and a small scratch pad and empty character sheets is the most paper I’ll bring.
Physical books feel better because it’s physical. You can touch it, you can smell it, you can read it, and some you can hear (when you open them or turn the pages). This is why we prefer it. However, I reserve those for the shelves at home.
We have a lot of pages, books, novels, notes, story from the last 10 years or so that would make it physically impossible to bring with me. Bringing just my iPad and a notepad is way better for me.
There's plenty of games where either the setup is tedious, or some of the rules create confusion. Game of the year "Wingspan" confused everyone in my group the first time we played, and only made sense after watching a YouTube explanation. A confident system would have been great.
Setting up a game can be tedious as well; Axis and Allies is notorious for taking longer to set up than to play, but it's a lot of fun once you get going.
I actively avoid boardgames with overly long setup times. There's no reason to spend more time prepping than playing if you can play something else with better prep time instead. Time is in limited supply as an adult. If a game needs a digital support device, then there's no reason to waste time on the "board" aspect. Why not just play digital game instead?
Confusing rules can be ok, it depends on how complex they are (as in, what interactions they have). If the confusing rule is mostly self contained, then after playing a few times you'll learn it and it's no longer a problem. If the confusion stems from how the rule interacts with other rules, then it's a much bigger issue since you constantly need to cross-check the rules reference or worse, youtube videos and forums, on what to do.
One of my favorite games, Arkham Horror the card game, has some pretty complicated rules, but as long as they're just part of the player cards or base mechanics you eventually learn them and they become a non-issue.
It's a whole other issue when the complex rules are on specific campaign cards. Each campaign is only played a few times, so that means you never get familiar with the rule and learning it doesn't really "pay off". The campaign experience is lessened because you had to stop the game to check youtube or a forum to resolve the discussion, or just bicker and argue until a consensus is reached nobody is happy with.
As new campaigns get released the complexity of the campaign cards just keeps getting worse, requiring more prep-time as well, and my enjoyment of the game lessens as a result. The first couple of campaigns remain the most enjoyable, even on repeat plays, because they're just easier to explain to new players.
Cool product. Is the SDK open? Any time I play a complex board game like Ark Nova, Spirit Island, etc. game running consumes a lot of time. So this tool is to me better showcased with a complex game that needs game-running that computers handle better. Also I'm curious about the board pieces and how more could be made. Do they have stickers on the bottom I could just transpose onto existing pieces, etc
Reminds of Microsoft Surface, the original coffee table [1]. It was quite cool at the time, but too expensive for what could have been useful application.
Hopefully for them, this will have more luck.
On a side not, the website is completely blank on Firefox.
Conceptually, it reminds me of DropMix by Harmonix. The physicality of it was really cool, but it also ended up being really unsuccessful, and I can imagine why:
- Compared to a traditional board game (well, most of them), it was expensive and hard to procure;
- Compared to a pure videogame, it had many moving parts that are more difficult to transport, manage, store, etc;
- Since it was a multiplayer experience, that created added friction on top of everything else (everyone needs to be in the same place as the rare, expensive gadget and parts).
The issues seem exacerbated in this idea, however I think it's just as cool. I would love to play on it.
There is a huge demand for an off the shelf device like this for TTRPGs. There are entire companies making animated maps that are predicated on people laying a TV on its back on a table and building a custom case for it. I imagine they would all love to sell their maps on a dedicated off the shelf product.
Yes, I could see a lot of GMs being interested in plug in and go product that fills that niche. Implementing the right feature set is challenging, as existing dedicated virtual tabletops have already shown. But something like a simple Owlbear Rodeo extension that adds basic miniature recognition might be all we need.
Sure! It's smallish, but ttrpg players are accustomed to filling in with their imagination. You might even have a pan feature that would shift the map and show markers to help minis get replaced correctly. This might help with the size problem a bit.
Many say they would be useful for RPGs, but how? I know those that play with a large screen (i.e. old tv) on the table to display maps while playing. You do not need to track the pieces for that though? Typically the GM has a phone or laptop with a UI to control what is displayed when, to reveal new areas etc. I can't imagine a game or time when it would make sense that a player moves a miniature/token on a digital board and triggers something that happens automatically? Maybe if you were playing more like a solo or coop CRPG without a GM, but that is a completely different kind of game and everyone here is specifically mentioning using it to support TTRPGs.
I am one of those DMs and I've thought before about trying to build a system like this. The main problem for me with the screen is that it is hard from my position to tell exactly what square any particular mini is in. It would be great for me if my laptop's view of the map showed where minis were and where they were moving to.
I agree that I wouldn't want new area of the map to be automatically revealed, but detecting where they were and giving me a one-click option to reveal X squares around the mini would definitely save me time at the time.
That being said, this screen is a non-starter for me because it is just too small. We use a 40+ inch screen and I'd love to go even bigger than that. Definitely not down to a (maybe) 23x13 square screen.
its too small to work for TTRPGs at the moment but if we could get the capacitive pattern tech and expand that to work on digitiser layer on a tv sized screen, i would be really cool.
It depends on the size of your table, of course. The area looks no bigger than game's i've played that use a battlemap or like a little miniature scene with dungeon tiles. Bigger is certainly better as we age or if the physical table you play on is huge though.
As a player: What's the lag? Does it depend on the game and the gesture?
As a developer: I'd like to implement a "game" which would be ideal for Dynamicland (tens of cards with ID stickers on the corners), but this might be a simpler platform to set up and use. Would that be possible with the board as sold?
Also curious about latency. In the past I've worked around latency using video sensors for high-bandwidth high-latency features, then literally glued a contact mic to my interface to get low latency tap detection. How does the Board hide latency?
My hot take is that there are seem to be really two markets here:
1.) Candy crush type board games targeting kids with well-off parents. Basically really focused on immersive and interactive visuals like effects and cutscenes.
2.) Serious board games targeting older teenagers and adults playing heavy games with BoardGameGeek weightings of above 3.5 with money to spend on their own hobby. Think games like 18XX, Brass Birmingham, Dune, Terraforming Mars or Gloomhaven. They would find the digital board game experience useful for accessing expansion maps (i.e. 18xx) or expansion campaigns (Gloomhaven). Additional features of interest might be solo play against automated players, game state/score tracking, game tutorials.
It almost feels like these two groups would have such different profiles that two separate marketing approaches should be attempted.
This looks super cool, thanks for sharing! Very interested. How much storage does a typical game require? I assume the SD slot allows for storage expansion? Are you able to share what it's running on under the hood? I assume Android/Linux?
It's cute but it's definitely niche, especially given the price. It's got some real potential for immersive D&D games though if the Board could use feedback from pieces people placed on the board.
The concept of combining a digital game with physical game pieces really reminded me of Osmo [1] (although their games are more focused on education and most are single-player). This could definitely enhance that experience significantly.
Good luck with the project! I hope it turns out as good as it looks (or better :D) and that someday I can justify the cost!
This looks really cool but at $499 I wouldn't let any kids near it. Hopefully it can come down in price by a lot after a few revisions, because it sure looks fun.
Just launched today at TechCrunch Disrupt. Our 12 game launch portfolio was all developed in Unity using our sdk, and we cannot be more excited to see what developers can make with our launch piece sets!
Looks a lot like The Last Gameboard[1], which almost worked well (but didn’t, at least for me). It had a mechanism for detecting and tracking pieces, and a module for FoundryVTT, but the tracking was too glitchy. And the hardware was too slow.
Marbotic does the same kind of stuff with specially crafted wooden pieces on a regular android/ipad tablet. Maybe focusing on kids wasn't the best path to success...
https://www.youtube.com/@marbotic
It’s been an idea before but personally until it’s an e-ink display that looks indistinguishable from printed game boards I won’t bother. Don’t like the digital aesthetic.
This looks like a perfect match for the music synth ReacTable, something that never ported well to ipad because of the lack of physical pieces.
But my concern would be that this becomes just another Ad platform, but targeted at kids.
For me a board-game is offline time. So I would picture this with no WiFi and SD card based games. Which could still be profitable via an other-device app store. But would also avoid temptation for developers to add these more addictive online/networked games.
If you didn't see it, the FAQ partially addresses your wifi concerns: "Does Board need WiFi or batteries?
Board plugs into the wall, no batteries required. WiFi is only needed when you want to download new games. Once it’s powered on, you’re ready to play."
Obviously they could add ads later, but it's a little reassuring to know that it's designed from the outset to work without an always-on connection.
Not sure. As a developer I like the concept, but the more I read of the legal, the more concerns I have. It reads more like an online tablet, but without service guarantees. Maybe some of the legal was for the website, it wasn't clear to me. But there was also mention of social media, complete game usage collection, and phone and email direct marketing, defaulted to opt-in.
That's fair but not universal. Plenty of communities exist around playing board games online and often that's the only way to meet players of equal strength or run large tournaments.
Sure, but then maybe it should be two models; one with WiFi for adult gaming, and one that is 100% offline safe model for kids to play with. With the added advantage that the SD card based games can be managed by parents to help manage 'game time'.
At $500 for a large screen and CPU/GPU, my first concern would be power. This is a small company, so it's not realistic to expect iPad performance. I'm curious what the underlying hardware is, and if it's an existing mediaboard.
Mediaboard hardware is notoriously underpowered, especially with 3D. The touch response times are also questionable, usually designed for tap instead of swipe.
Dude I had jamboards with this idea but I could never get root on the device to make it work but clearly the hardware must exist. In the end I had to sell the damn things.
There's currently a Unity SDK, we're just super focused on our launch and haven't been able to flesh out those pages. We'll be fleshing it out over the coming weeks, email developer@board.fun to hear about it the moment we update!
Pretty cool! Did you think about a way to handle games that need some secret elements (e.g. cards with roles/resources) that should be kept away from other players?
We've played around with detecting various hand and arm gestures to digitally reveal/hide hidden information, but none of our launch titles ended up needing it. If you've got an idea that requires it, happy to work with you to make it happen!
what is the accessibility story with this? One of the most difficult thing for blind people is having accessible board games where multiple cards or board state should be remembered and AR-ing the table seems to have some potential. If the board can pair with airbuds and the state could be easily described, it might have lots of blind clients.
How many people can use a Meta Quest 3 at the same time? Since you're positing this as an alternative.
Or what about getting a desktop PC instead for that same price? Or a snowboard? Obviously neither of these things are alternatives to a table-top device meant for playing table games together with other humans...
I imagine that it would be difficult to hold the knob in place on the touchscreen while you turn it, especially given that the car screen is close to vertical. If I'm understanding right, the knob for the Board is a simple cylinder (no moving parts inside of it), so by rotating it, you're inherently breaking the static friction that would help hold it in place. You'd want either A) magnets to hold it in place or B) a two-part knob, like the Surface Dial.
Does Foundry have any of the interactive features this product offers? I'd imagine the real killer feature would be to place your miniature (I'm sure somebody could make a killing selling Board-compatible minis) on the board and have its position update in the software.
Honestly it's nice enough as an encased screen for TTRPG virtual tabletop play. I have a few friends that have built custom tabletops to hold consumer TVs or have set up top down projectors (worse)... those are solutions for the deeply dedicated. Something even simpler that this is a pretty nice form-factor for a somewhat more modest table.
Board games suffer a lot from lack of progression and narrative compared to video games.
Take Mario 1, there are so many different worlds, and enemies, it's a constant wow.
In comparison, board games are always the same. I play a fair amount of board games, but as much as I like the 'IRL' experience, the game play just doesn't compare.
Some board games try to replicate this with level bags and legacy things and what not. But make a Final Fantasy that can be played on a board with my kids, and I am definitely in.
Progression is your level of skill as you get better at a game (whether it's something simple or its chess). I've had narrative events happen in games that, because they are guided by decisions of other players, I still remember more than actual stories in video games.
The idea is interesting, but at the same cost (or more) as a console, or the cost of a dozen board games, it falls into a space where the market is going to be limited.
I would definitely try this if it was available at a board game cafe, just not something I need for home.
Me and a dungeon master friend of mine are interested in developing for this. Is there a cost associated with the SDK? Or can we just buy a Board and get to it?
Every country has different requirements and regulations, it's unfortunately not just about shipping. We own all the games, but are focused on the USA for right now.
I was looking for more info about developing for Board on https://board.fun/pages/developers and became confused because the page mentions an SDK that can be accessed but does not explain how or link to any other information. Poking around the website some more, I found https://board.fun/pages/support?hcUrl=%2Fen-US%23article-289... which clarifies:
> Can I add or create my own games?
> Soon. We’re building tools that will let anyone design their own Board games, starting with developers and expanding to players. The future of play is one you can help create. Learn more at board.fun/developers.
So I think I understand the SDK is not available yet. Can you clarify that developer tools are not yet available but are coming soon on https://board.fun/pages/developers to avoid confusion?
To expand on the topic of the SDK: will the SDK be open-source? Will I need to register as a developer or pay a fee to get the SDK? If the SDK is open-source with no registration or fees required, then you have my attention.
The SDK is open-source, no fees required. Coming in the next week or two. We're figuring out the specific details regarding registration, and would love feedback one way or the other if this is critical for you. If you want to be notified the moment it hits, email us: developers@board.fun
> The SDK is open-source, no fees required. Coming in the next week or two. We're figuring out the specific details regarding registration
It sounds like you've already figured out that the registration would have to be optional, as you're planning to make it open-source (it will be open-source once you release it, it isn't open-source yet :) ).
Open-source could still have tivoization and require registration, like Android mandatory developer signing that is supposed to be on the way.
Yeah, I guess they could offer a downloadable .tar once you've filled out your email on their website, or email it to you or whatever. Not sure you'd wanna add that sort of friction at that stage though, makes more sense to ask before publishing what you've built.
Cool! I don't have any concrete plans yet, but I'm looking forward to checking out the SDK when it releases. I'm relieved that you aren't going for the Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo approach.
I can tell this is much more than just “Tabletop Simulator on a tablet”, although at $500 you’re likely to get a lot of attention from the Twilight Imperium and Gloomhaven crowd. I know more than a few childless people in my local gaming circle who would drop a half-large on accessories that simplify game execution.
But clearly this product isn’t about making existing board games easier to set-up/play/clean-up. I think the marketing dept has a lot of heavy lifting to do, convincing buyers that this isn’t just Juicero for existing board games.
I play games like Gloomhaven and TI4. Not sure how this product would simplify anything. Far too small for any of the more complex board games. I guess I could scroll around but then what does physical piece detection give me? Then it’s $500USD. My game group and myself got Gloomhaven from Epic for free and played through the campaign together. BGA subscription is cheap. So many games have online implementations that are free. And I can buy a lot of boardgames for $500.
What’s the draw here?
I really think in-person Gloomhaven is a great use case, if it's handled well.
Scene 0: Enter player count / difficulty / etc.
Scene 1: Map. Press UI to pick a location / scenario
Scene 2: Loads hex map and enemies, manages all NPC activity for you
Players still use physical cards, and importantly, physical stands for their characters. Would be worth discussing if the screen handles modifier cards... for physical cards the names might be on screen, then the players select their actions (top or bottom) and define movement or action targets. Some animation and NPC health / reactions are handled by software.
So there's a reduction in set up (hex maps, NPCs) and a reduction in managing NPC actions (which is why the PC versions are so appealing in the first place.) But instead of all players focusing on their own screen, they are still getting some face time and tactile board game play.
it does open up some possibility for mechanics that exploit the fact that the play area ("board") is almost infinitely mutable.
But honestly concepts like this, mixing of physical and digital, have been tried to very little success in the gaming space for years. Out best success is wii-motion controls and rockband-era .. elaborate controllers. But there have been card games that utilized cameras to read the cards, skylanders, etc.
Actually this is closest to some of the things that original run of microsoft surface tables could do. I played some backgammon on one with physical dice and disks. It was .. fine, but it was just backgammon, they were just showing off the object tracking features. The only thing you could do with the board was some fancy animated board themes.
Anyways all of that stuff is largely abandoned. So I wish these guys luck.
Building diy multitouch tables has been possible for a long time now, given time, space and budget for that project.
I fully agree that it ultimately boils down to software: Can I implement my favorite board game for my multitouch interface? Yes. Can I bring that game to the table faster by just buying a physical copy? Yes.
I happen to have two 42" touch displays set aside for such a project - a unused backup unit destined for the living room for 200€, and damaged unit for dev work (for free). Since I bought them about 2 years ago, I also bought at least double that value of physical board games in retail, plus a Kickstarter board game. Go figure why.
However, I did play the digital version of Root on one of them, and enjoyed it very much. I should get Dune, too.
NB: I regularly see multitouch tables at trade shows. Nice eye catcher and useful to present some products or the multitude of services big companies offer.
mt tables are fine and dandy and exactly what friends have built. There are several solutions for augmenting consumer panels for multitouch. This product is a bit further than multitough though.
The problem is that I see few reasons for playing boardgames, with friends, on them. You loose a lot of 'delight' factor. Physical pieces are very important to most people. I think if you asked two chess players if they would rather sit in a park and play in the sun with a physical set or play with a touchscreen inside, they would probably select the first.
I have played many digital board games, especially during covid. It's harder for me to concentrate on the game, it's less delightful. However for solo experiences and some extremes (gloomhaven) I do prefer digital games. (I also learned root digitally so that I could hurry my understanding of each faction before I played it physically with players who had a few games under their belt, and I play a lot of solo dune imperium because i love that game more than my friends it seems)
Can this product's support for physical pieces crack the 'delight in physicality' problem. Maybe. Like I said, I had some experience with this on the surface table like 15 years ago.
I think, in my experience at least, that they only time I've wanted a digital table is for TTRPG play for very tactical tables it just keeps the game moving faster than drawing a battlemap to put minis on. There is a reason I first started seeing them during D&D 4th edition where the combat was so 'on grid'. I imagine as we try out 'Draw Steel' we may revisit that more heavily as it's combat system is very 4E aligned.
The product is a concept that I want to work more than it, historically, has.
If you missed physical objects, they did not do ftir with fiducal markers, I guess? There were some nice demos back when that was novel, like over a decade ago.
Some of the tables I saw at trade shows (e.g. E-World in Essen) this year also had them. On one you could place 3d printed power plants and various energy storage systems onto a map. To adjust their output, you could turn them like a knob. The company sold a management system for small grid operators, which then reacted to those demo inputs.
> The product is a concept that I want to work more than it, historically, has.
Sad but true. But then they don't exactly fit into the usual living room. However, as specialized board game tables are getting more popular every year, we might yet see a market for smart variants emerging long term. Not a huge chance IMHO, but larger than zero.
Maybe they need to work with the creators of Gloomhaven etc to design their next game specifically so it can be played on this tablet, to cut down on the need for bookkeeping.
The main problem with games like Gloomhaven and TI4 isn’t the book keeping. It’s getting the people around a table at the same time. Need 6 players for TI4 and the same group multiple times for a campaign. Hence why I’ve been playing the digital versions online with my group.
That problem extends into a lot of spaces of adulthood.
That's fair, I do believe there are games where bookkeeping is a problem though.
You’re right. But it’s only a problem if you can play in the first place. Of course solving book keeping effectively can lead to more possible times to play since you don’t need as long.
Online platforms like BGA solve both problems and are pretty cheap and constantly implement new games. And I can play with friends that have moved overseas! And if you have a regular group, you only need to pay one subscription. Could have an old fashioned LAN party for online boardgames for an order of magnitude less money.
Exact same thoughts here. This should, imo, be marketed at boardgame nerds, who are adults, and not 3-7 year olds which it seems to currently be. Which toddler is asking for this for christmas? I suppose a boardgame nerd might buy it to use with their toddler, but that is a niche of a niche of a niche.
Maybe if they pitched it as a way to get your kids away from solitary iPad usage and interacting with each other instead?
Well, parents could also set some ground rules for iPad usage and enforce them! I don't think another screen is a good solution to get someone off a screen. You can just play a normal board game with the kids.
Board seems cool, but it's not a way to consolidate your collection of euro, war or 4x games into one surface. The appeal to me is making new experiences involving physics, exciting visuals, and sound. Sure maybe you can replicate some smaller abstract games, but this would make playing TI or Gloomhaven absolutely miserable. People that don't play complex games assume that the scale and number of components is a burden, but they're carefully designed to give the ability for the players to make sense of and organize the scale and complexity of the game itself (especially in TI)
I don't think the existing board game community is their market, but it's for people who like to be early adopters of tech and think they'd like to play games and have extra money, which is a pretty small market.
I don't really play board games, but if I did I can imagine being worried about forced updates, general online connectivity, inevitable ads, microtransactions, longevity, etc being a concern.
The current people behind Board might promise to deliver now, but who knows what will happen 5 years down the line.
Nice job! Very slick demo video. As a dev, a couple of things immediately stand out to me.
1. Launching at $500 means it is going to be a "relatively" boutique product. At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.
Which leads to my second question:
2. Are the included physical pieces modular / generic enough such that prospective game developers could leverage them in future apps, or would they essentially need to design, 3D print, or contract out to your team to create their own props?
1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback!
2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love to work with you to make a bespoke set of pieces to go with the game. Whether the launch sets are modular enough as-is is really dependent on the ergonomics and aesthetics of the game you want to make. We’re excited to make ourselves available to devs who want to explore this though, and happy to work with folks to figure out ways forward.
> 1. super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you?
Yes most of those game don't look like they significantly add anything to the experience over similar already existing games that have or easily could have tablet versions. Even if they are doing a bit more website makes them look like cheap versions of well established computer games.
Bloogs -> that's just lemmings
Spycraft -> doesn't look like something you couldn't design touchscreen controls with little effect on puzzles
Omakase -> you are selecting positions + direction within grid, don't see why press and swipe on touchscreen wouldn't work
Mushka -> the tamagochi style game. All that the special pieces achieve is select an action which could easily be done with touchscreen menu and afterwords positioning it with finger
Cosmic crush -> again one more game where all you do is move single game piece per player on a grid
Space rocks -> asteroid like spaceship shooter
Snek -> just point the finger directly on touchscreen without special game pieces
Out of all them maybe 2 look like they are trying to consider unique strengths of the physical game pieces. The cooking game and 3d block game. And even for those it feels questionable whether it provides sufficient improvement compared to existing games.
By it's nature product like this means that you get worst parts of niche gaming console and a physical board game. Niche console means that the set of available games will be very limited with many of them either being ports from other platforms using generic pieces (meaning you can just play them on those other more popular platforms) or the gameplay isn't as good due too limited budget. Hardly any developer is going to spend years to design unique game for niche platform with very limited player base. And like with physical board games you need to buy the pieces in physical store or have them delivered.
Tilt-5 also tried to fill the gap between digital and physical board games. They had much more interesting value add but that wasn't enough.
Looks really cool though did not see what the SDK is or languages it requires? I've built game tables before with flat panel TVs and web tech, but have wanted to integrate miniatures, position, etc into the apps.
Currently the sdk is built for Unity, we’re working on Unreal/Godot though!
How are the pieces sensed?
Not the OP, but in the TechCrunch Disrupt launch, founder Brynn Putnam says, "capacitive material manufactured into the pieces."
If you put capacitive material in a unique pattern on the footprint of each piece, and the rest of the piece material was conductive enough to carry your body's charge to register a touch, the shape of that touch could be unique per-piece.
There's no mention of syncing pieces, charging pieces, keeping pieces in view of a wide-angle camera, anything like that, so that's my bet. (This would also mean moving a piece using a non-conductive material would be a way to cheat by having it not get registered!)
I just shared this on LI this morning, linking back to a video showing showing related touchscreen explorations I did for a colleague in early 2013, sensing different coins by their radii as you touch them: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vmiliano_a-vertical-triptych-...
This is nearly bang on correct. The pieces don't contain any electronics or sensors, they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house. Our custom software stack processes the raw data from the device's touch sensor using embedded ML on the NPU, which detects and tracks the pieces in real time.
That said, the device can detect the pieces whether you touch them or not. Touching them absolutely does change the response, and we pass that along as a parameter to the SDK.
Your coin exploration is seriously cool, please hit me up when you're next in NYC!
> they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house.
Would this be something a home 3D printer could do? I'm not a maker but I could see the value of others being able to quickly build a universe of playing pieces if that was possible.
It's possible to make your own pieces with a multi-material 3d printer (our early prototypes have been made with Bambu X1C & H2D printers), though it's pretty finicky to do so, and requires some rather expensive filament. Happy to help anyone along though!
This was my immediate thought. I have a Bamboo X1C; buying special conductive filament is fine if you're just making a few pieces.
Board is MUCH more interesting to me if I can easily program it for my own games, especially if I can share them with others. I'm thinking about TTRPGs and other army building games where each piece has unique capabilities and rules.
It would be nice if I could buy smart bases, kind of like RFID stickers. Something I can glue to the base of an existing miniature with a 10-20mm round/square/hex base.
With those tools, I would build deep accounting assistance for complex games. If it's cheap, you could put custom terrain pieces on the Board with smart properties (hard cover, soft cover, blocks line of sight, etc).
Obviously there are lots of partnership opportunities there. You could get the table top game publishers to publish Board editions of their games that automatically keep up to date with the latest rules.
If that all works, the obvious next limitation would be board size. a 24" screen can do a lot, but many games would benefit from a screen measured in feet. That would be expensive and hard to move around though, given the current thickness.
Perhaps an intermediate solution would be support for tiling Boards. Everyone brings their own, you shove them together and have a much larger playing surface. Bezel width would be annoying here.
i imagine the special filament might only be needed for a layer or two (assuming the board contact surface is the top or the bottom that is)?
It might be easier to 3d print normally, then separately 2d print the capacitative layer, then stick it on the bottom of the 3d printed piece: https://youtu.be/ON-6bdhQHpI
It would sound more logical to me to buy a stack of pre-made patterns (e.g. coin or cube form-factor) and glue them into a like-shaped slot in a 3d-printed playing piece. Assuming that is possible, and you'd still have to make a conductive path to the person touching the piece, but this would be much easier than printing the pattern yourself.
Sure, a modular system would work as you suggest.
It is not a requirement to provide a conductive path to the person though. The patterns (glyphs as we call them) are detected and tracked regardless of whether they are being touched. However, when there is a conductive path to the person, the system detects that which provides another input vector.
This screams for compatibility with 3d printers. eg: design a piece to be "absorbed" by a LEGO brick (2x4, duh!), and design a capacitive pathway for "two buttons" a-la: https://a.co/d/f7wm3GA
3D print your goblin army, snap it to the base, touch the sword arm to attack, the shield arm to defend, etc. light up the base via capacitive to 0/1/2 inputs and you're set!
Have you played the zAPPed games?
Should Mars After Midnight be released on Steam?
Reminds me of some ~10 years ago I found a dirt cheap game in a budget bin in some store. It contained a few plastic, pre-painted, miniatures, that had some kind of special base with bumps on (possibly in some unique pattern for each miniature?) and then you were supposed to install an app game on a tablet and place the miniatures on the tablet to move them and have their locations (badly) tracked. Seems like it may have been a similar technology, but you only had to pay for the playing tokens and use a standard tablet. Not sure if special hardware is needed for better tracking of enough tokens or if a standard tablet today could be used with the right software?
Game(s) that you were supposed to play was not very fun, in addition to the tracking not working well, as I remember it, but I may still have the miniatures somewhere. There was another game from the same company that I also bought at the same time, but that one was made to be played with a phone camera as some kind of AR game instead, moving some plastic objects on a table, that also worked about as well as the other game.
> At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.
And why that’s worth $500. I can’t think of any game(s) that are so fun or unique I’d pay $500 to be able to play them, even with my family.
Not quite the first such product, Microsoft's original "Surface" advertised similar boardgame potential. But if it worked well, I don't know of anyone who was rich enough to try it!
Hopefully the technology has matured since then.
(Disclosure: I worked on both)
Detection technology on Board is much more robust. The MS Surface FTIR approach was lovely, but so over-featured no one could imagine a scoped-down (ie. cheaper) version of it.
Aha, so there are ex-Surface developers working on this too! That's reassuring actually. Yeah, the boardgame demos of Surface were gorgeous, and I was definitively disappointed that this cool technology didn't "arrive" even as the years went by. Wishing you all good luck, and I may have to see how hard it is to get my hands on one of these...
I have a first gen surface in storage. Company I was working for wanted to get rid of the heavy as hell awkward thing... There is a backgammon app on it, when i played it years earlier there were physical dice and pieces. Buy lost from my table or not included, but playable by tap as well.
I played games on a Surface table in 2012. It was fun but very finicy with input. I imagine this as 10+ years of better input detection technology.
I think I used there was a Surface used at the "Sum of all thrills" attraction in Epcot in Disney World.
It behaved very similar to the Board. It definitely had a "knob" that you placed on a screen could spin to make adjustments.
Not the first, has everyone forgotten the Surface/PixelSense table?
https://blog.azureinfra.com/surface/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Surface_table.JPG
https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/19/3096652/microsoft-surface...
"Microsoft Surface PixelSense 'Coffee Table' Hands On"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh9cOlVFItQ
Granted, this is very hard to search for, when not being around the time it was available, as most results will be about the current tablets marketed as surface.
But perhaps the first well-executed?
All the best to them, this remains to be seen, including how the SDK tooling will look like.
I consider Microsoft's one great, given its C# and .NET based SDK, instead of yet again C and C++.
The Unity SDK is C# and slots right into the typical Unity patterns for touch input.
Two contact types are provided: Finger – Representing a single touch point, e.g, a finger Glyph – Representing a tangible object
For each contact, you get ID, Position, and Phase. For Glyphs, you also get orientation and touched status, as in the system knows whether the object is being touched or not. There tunable parameters for the tracking system as well.
For event systems (e.g., menus, etc), BoardUIInputModule in provided in place of Unity's default InputSystemUIInputModule.
Please reach out if interested to develop: https://board.fun/pages/developers
Thanks for the overview, and all the best for the project.
Godot SDK should be the goal
I think this is a neat product but not one I have any interest in. I play board games in part to avoid the digital world.
If a board game needs a computer to handle the rules, then it is a needlessly complicated board game.
Surely a companion app wouldn’t count, right? I couldn’t DM without it. I would need binders and binders of information or my iPad. I prefer my iPad.
It 100% counts. As a somewhat irregular DM, DnD is a very poorly designed game.
Using digital tools as a DM for any sort of TTRPG is justifiable for the same reasons we use computers instead of books.
But the real problem is that players need digital tools too as the character sheet for any character with spellcasting is unworkable by hand.
Any prepared caster would need to manually copy every spell of the right level from their spell list onto paper every few level ups. If they don't write out the spell exactly as written (i.e, if they summarize) then you're opening the flood gates of rules lawyering and googling/book opening mid session.
Many other TTRPGs don't have this problem because they are designed with "playing with paper" in mind.
Book opening is fine. Post-it notes exist. You can easily open the book to the right spell. Just write down the names of the spells you have chosen to memorise for the day on a piece of paper and cross them off when you cast them.
As for rules lawyering... That is just playing by the rules. That is how the game is meant to be played: rules as written except as modified by the group by agreement. Rules lawyering just means sticking to what the rules actually are.
Maybe you mean something else?
As for googling, why would you need to google a spell?
It's a horrible experience. I can only suggest you try out TTRPGs that don't need this. I haven't tried it yet but Daggerheart seems to avoid the problem by providing spell cards. You can do the same in DnD and I suggest doing so, but it's not assumed by the game's design.
All the old-school OSR inspired stuff doesn't have this problem.
You should not need to repeatedly and consistently open the rule-book to play what is essentially a board game. That's ok the first time you play a board game, not ok the 20th time. You google a spell because it is much faster than opening the book. DnD combat is already way too slow as it is.
Investing in a refillable printer and card stock is great for this.
I used to make MTG style cards for spells, quest items, etc. something physical the players can keep with them.
This made casting extremely efficient as the caster has the card with the info on it. All they have to do is turn it in, roll the dice, and describe their action.
It isn't a board game. Maybe that's your problem. It is a roleplaying game. The mechanics of spellcasting aren't very important because combat just isn't very important. Most people don't even play with a grid and figurines (at least traditionally).
You haven't explained why it is a "horrible experience" to look at a photocopied piece of paper or to open a book to a post-it note bookmark. I do these things every day with other books, for things like work.
Are you just bad at reading books or unfamiliar with how to use them?
> Most people don't even play with a grid and figurines (at least traditionally).
This is simply not true. If you want to play a pure roleplaying game, play a rules-light one. DnD is not that.
Everyone homebrews little bits so I'm not going to harp too much on that, but there's no point discussing the issues of DnD's design if we're not talking about DnD's design but rather whatever your homebrewed version of DnD is.
Did you know the game is balanced around 8 combat encounters per session? Do you know how many tables actually play that number of combats per session? It's a badly designed game.
The game isn't balanced at all. Are you playing the modern version or something? I'm talking about D&D which was always traditionally a roleplaying game and not a rollplaying game.
To be honest as someone who's built a dozen dice rolling and dming tools for myself I've recently switched mostly back to paper. There's just something really nice about rolling physical dice on a physical table while flipping through physical books and notes. It's super cumbersome and I don't think there's anything wrong with using digital tools. I play most of my games over a digital tabletop since those I play with aren't near by.
Yes on the physical dice rolling, no on the tombs and tombs of dead trees to lug around with me. Even just the handbooks are over 1,000 pretty printed shavings of poplar pulp. Having a cardboard paper screen and a small scratch pad and empty character sheets is the most paper I’ll bring.
Physical books feel better because it’s physical. You can touch it, you can smell it, you can read it, and some you can hear (when you open them or turn the pages). This is why we prefer it. However, I reserve those for the shelves at home.
Referring to books as "dead trees" is such a pathetic thought-terminating cliché.
If you don't want to cart books around that's fine but you can easily play the game with only the basic three (and players just need one).
If you are using a book just for a spell or an item or two you can just photocopy the page.
Sir, I’m in the middle of a 20 year campaign…
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Ok, I’ll bite.
We have a lot of pages, books, novels, notes, story from the last 10 years or so that would make it physically impossible to bring with me. Bringing just my iPad and a notepad is way better for me.
There's plenty of games where either the setup is tedious, or some of the rules create confusion. Game of the year "Wingspan" confused everyone in my group the first time we played, and only made sense after watching a YouTube explanation. A confident system would have been great.
Setting up a game can be tedious as well; Axis and Allies is notorious for taking longer to set up than to play, but it's a lot of fun once you get going.
I actively avoid boardgames with overly long setup times. There's no reason to spend more time prepping than playing if you can play something else with better prep time instead. Time is in limited supply as an adult. If a game needs a digital support device, then there's no reason to waste time on the "board" aspect. Why not just play digital game instead?
Confusing rules can be ok, it depends on how complex they are (as in, what interactions they have). If the confusing rule is mostly self contained, then after playing a few times you'll learn it and it's no longer a problem. If the confusion stems from how the rule interacts with other rules, then it's a much bigger issue since you constantly need to cross-check the rules reference or worse, youtube videos and forums, on what to do.
One of my favorite games, Arkham Horror the card game, has some pretty complicated rules, but as long as they're just part of the player cards or base mechanics you eventually learn them and they become a non-issue.
It's a whole other issue when the complex rules are on specific campaign cards. Each campaign is only played a few times, so that means you never get familiar with the rule and learning it doesn't really "pay off". The campaign experience is lessened because you had to stop the game to check youtube or a forum to resolve the discussion, or just bicker and argue until a consensus is reached nobody is happy with.
As new campaigns get released the complexity of the campaign cards just keeps getting worse, requiring more prep-time as well, and my enjoyment of the game lessens as a result. The first couple of campaigns remain the most enjoyable, even on repeat plays, because they're just easier to explain to new players.
Cool product. Is the SDK open? Any time I play a complex board game like Ark Nova, Spirit Island, etc. game running consumes a lot of time. So this tool is to me better showcased with a complex game that needs game-running that computers handle better. Also I'm curious about the board pieces and how more could be made. Do they have stickers on the bottom I could just transpose onto existing pieces, etc
Yes, the SDK is open. It's built for Unity in C# with Unreal/Godot to follow.
Please reach out if interested to develop: https://board.fun/pages/developers
My colleague has some discussion here about how pieces are made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45754851
Reminds of Microsoft Surface, the original coffee table [1]. It was quite cool at the time, but too expensive for what could have been useful application.
Hopefully for them, this will have more luck.
On a side not, the website is completely blank on Firefox.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRU3NemA95k
Not really a coffee table, it's more akin, at least the one i have, to an old arcade cocktail cabinet in almost every way.
As someone who plays amount of “boardgame arena”, I appreciate this. Having software mediate rules helps bootstrap games.
But you still need physical pieces to loose and store.
Reminds me of a “digital roulette wheel” I saw in a casino.. which was wierd, untrustworthy yet somehow very cool.
Conceptually, it reminds me of DropMix by Harmonix. The physicality of it was really cool, but it also ended up being really unsuccessful, and I can imagine why: - Compared to a traditional board game (well, most of them), it was expensive and hard to procure; - Compared to a pure videogame, it had many moving parts that are more difficult to transport, manage, store, etc; - Since it was a multiplayer experience, that created added friction on top of everything else (everyone needs to be in the same place as the rare, expensive gadget and parts).
The issues seem exacerbated in this idea, however I think it's just as cool. I would love to play on it.
There is a huge demand for an off the shelf device like this for TTRPGs. There are entire companies making animated maps that are predicated on people laying a TV on its back on a table and building a custom case for it. I imagine they would all love to sell their maps on a dedicated off the shelf product.
Yes, I could see a lot of GMs being interested in plug in and go product that fills that niche. Implementing the right feature set is challenging, as existing dedicated virtual tabletops have already shown. But something like a simple Owlbear Rodeo extension that adds basic miniature recognition might be all we need.
Sure! It's smallish, but ttrpg players are accustomed to filling in with their imagination. You might even have a pan feature that would shift the map and show markers to help minis get replaced correctly. This might help with the size problem a bit.
Many say they would be useful for RPGs, but how? I know those that play with a large screen (i.e. old tv) on the table to display maps while playing. You do not need to track the pieces for that though? Typically the GM has a phone or laptop with a UI to control what is displayed when, to reveal new areas etc. I can't imagine a game or time when it would make sense that a player moves a miniature/token on a digital board and triggers something that happens automatically? Maybe if you were playing more like a solo or coop CRPG without a GM, but that is a completely different kind of game and everyone here is specifically mentioning using it to support TTRPGs.
I am one of those DMs and I've thought before about trying to build a system like this. The main problem for me with the screen is that it is hard from my position to tell exactly what square any particular mini is in. It would be great for me if my laptop's view of the map showed where minis were and where they were moving to.
I agree that I wouldn't want new area of the map to be automatically revealed, but detecting where they were and giving me a one-click option to reveal X squares around the mini would definitely save me time at the time.
That being said, this screen is a non-starter for me because it is just too small. We use a 40+ inch screen and I'd love to go even bigger than that. Definitely not down to a (maybe) 23x13 square screen.
its too small to work for TTRPGs at the moment but if we could get the capacitive pattern tech and expand that to work on digitiser layer on a tv sized screen, i would be really cool.
It depends on the size of your table, of course. The area looks no bigger than game's i've played that use a battlemap or like a little miniature scene with dungeon tiles. Bigger is certainly better as we age or if the physical table you play on is huge though.
would you have a video link to such a map in action? I've never came across this before and sounds very interesting.
As a player: What's the lag? Does it depend on the game and the gesture?
As a developer: I'd like to implement a "game" which would be ideal for Dynamicland (tens of cards with ID stickers on the corners), but this might be a simpler platform to set up and use. Would that be possible with the board as sold?
Also curious about latency. In the past I've worked around latency using video sensors for high-bandwidth high-latency features, then literally glued a contact mic to my interface to get low latency tap detection. How does the Board hide latency?
Pretty cool!
My hot take is that there are seem to be really two markets here:
1.) Candy crush type board games targeting kids with well-off parents. Basically really focused on immersive and interactive visuals like effects and cutscenes.
2.) Serious board games targeting older teenagers and adults playing heavy games with BoardGameGeek weightings of above 3.5 with money to spend on their own hobby. Think games like 18XX, Brass Birmingham, Dune, Terraforming Mars or Gloomhaven. They would find the digital board game experience useful for accessing expansion maps (i.e. 18xx) or expansion campaigns (Gloomhaven). Additional features of interest might be solo play against automated players, game state/score tracking, game tutorials.
It almost feels like these two groups would have such different profiles that two separate marketing approaches should be attempted.
This looks super cool, thanks for sharing! Very interested. How much storage does a typical game require? I assume the SD slot allows for storage expansion? Are you able to share what it's running on under the hood? I assume Android/Linux?
It's cute but it's definitely niche, especially given the price. It's got some real potential for immersive D&D games though if the Board could use feedback from pieces people placed on the board.
The concept of combining a digital game with physical game pieces really reminded me of Osmo [1] (although their games are more focused on education and most are single-player). This could definitely enhance that experience significantly.
Good luck with the project! I hope it turns out as good as it looks (or better :D) and that someday I can justify the cost!
[1]: https://www.playosmo.com/
This looks really cool but at $499 I wouldn't let any kids near it. Hopefully it can come down in price by a lot after a few revisions, because it sure looks fun.
Just launched today at TechCrunch Disrupt. Our 12 game launch portfolio was all developed in Unity using our sdk, and we cannot be more excited to see what developers can make with our launch piece sets!
Looks a lot like The Last Gameboard[1], which almost worked well (but didn’t, at least for me). It had a mechanism for detecting and tracking pieces, and a module for FoundryVTT, but the tracking was too glitchy. And the hardware was too slow.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gameboard1/gameboard-1
At least you got your board unlike many others
Marbotic does the same kind of stuff with specially crafted wooden pieces on a regular android/ipad tablet. Maybe focusing on kids wasn't the best path to success... https://www.youtube.com/@marbotic
It’s been an idea before but personally until it’s an e-ink display that looks indistinguishable from printed game boards I won’t bother. Don’t like the digital aesthetic.
I was about to say "this could make Ticket to Ride scoring so much easier" but then I see someone has actually made an app for that already https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/q4vwdl/ticket_t... :)
Anyone tried just taking a picture of a messy Ticket to Ride-board with ChatGPT?
This looks like a perfect match for the music synth ReacTable, something that never ported well to ipad because of the lack of physical pieces.
But my concern would be that this becomes just another Ad platform, but targeted at kids.
For me a board-game is offline time. So I would picture this with no WiFi and SD card based games. Which could still be profitable via an other-device app store. But would also avoid temptation for developers to add these more addictive online/networked games.
If you didn't see it, the FAQ partially addresses your wifi concerns: "Does Board need WiFi or batteries? Board plugs into the wall, no batteries required. WiFi is only needed when you want to download new games. Once it’s powered on, you’re ready to play."
Obviously they could add ads later, but it's a little reassuring to know that it's designed from the outset to work without an always-on connection.
Not sure. As a developer I like the concept, but the more I read of the legal, the more concerns I have. It reads more like an online tablet, but without service guarantees. Maybe some of the legal was for the website, it wasn't clear to me. But there was also mention of social media, complete game usage collection, and phone and email direct marketing, defaulted to opt-in.
Other than downloading the games and updates, the device is fully functional offline.
> For me a board-game is offline time.
That's fair but not universal. Plenty of communities exist around playing board games online and often that's the only way to meet players of equal strength or run large tournaments.
Sure, but then maybe it should be two models; one with WiFi for adult gaming, and one that is 100% offline safe model for kids to play with. With the added advantage that the SD card based games can be managed by parents to help manage 'game time'.
At $500 for a large screen and CPU/GPU, my first concern would be power. This is a small company, so it's not realistic to expect iPad performance. I'm curious what the underlying hardware is, and if it's an existing mediaboard.
Mediaboard hardware is notoriously underpowered, especially with 3D. The touch response times are also questionable, usually designed for tap instead of swipe.
Kinda related/unrelated, but I'm dying for something that solves the problem of fog of war for tabletop games, while still allowing for physical minis
Hey, Board Engineering team here. Happy to answer any questions.
Please reach out if you are interested in developing: https://board.fun/pages/developers
If I wanted to build one where could I get a touch screen that big?
edit: found this https://arkenforge.com/using-a-touch-screen-with-your-digita...
Dude I had jamboards with this idea but I could never get root on the device to make it work but clearly the hardware must exist. In the end I had to sell the damn things.
Is there an SDK? The link on the site to Developer program just has copy, no actual API docs
There's currently a Unity SDK, we're just super focused on our launch and haven't been able to flesh out those pages. We'll be fleshing it out over the coming weeks, email developer@board.fun to hear about it the moment we update!
Very cool. I love the tactical board game experience but automatic upkeep for rules is appealing.
As a parent I wish it had more details on the durability. I can just imagine spills, slams, non-game pieces being used and abused on this thing.
We've done a bunch of testing with our manufacturer, and have found that it's really resilient against spills, but don't go setting it in a bathtub.
Pretty cool! Did you think about a way to handle games that need some secret elements (e.g. cards with roles/resources) that should be kept away from other players?
We've played around with detecting various hand and arm gestures to digitally reveal/hide hidden information, but none of our launch titles ended up needing it. If you've got an idea that requires it, happy to work with you to make it happen!
what is the accessibility story with this? One of the most difficult thing for blind people is having accessible board games where multiple cards or board state should be remembered and AR-ing the table seems to have some potential. If the board can pair with airbuds and the state could be easily described, it might have lots of blind clients.
Very cool product but at $500 you can get a meta quest 3. I get that the meta quest is not multiplayer but still.
How many people can use a Meta Quest 3 at the same time? Since you're positing this as an alternative.
Or what about getting a desktop PC instead for that same price? Or a snowboard? Obviously neither of these things are alternatives to a table-top device meant for playing table games together with other humans...
I love this! Not in the US but this looks really cool and looks like it’d be a blast to play with an SDK for it!
I love the idea, but none of the games quite fit for me.
What programming language is the games made in?
Can 3d printed pieces be used?
Yes, the SDK is built for Unity in C# with Unreal/Godot to follow.
Please reach out if interested to develop: https://board.fun/pages/developers
My colleague has some discussion here about 3D printing pieces: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45754851
1 year warranty is good? In EU you get two years warranty for everything. I.e. for shoes or a light bulb.
Those knobs made me think we could put (or retrofit) knobs and sliders on car touchscreens.
I imagine that it would be difficult to hold the knob in place on the touchscreen while you turn it, especially given that the car screen is close to vertical. If I'm understanding right, the knob for the Board is a simple cylinder (no moving parts inside of it), so by rotating it, you're inherently breaking the static friction that would help hold it in place. You'd want either A) magnets to hold it in place or B) a two-part knob, like the Surface Dial.
Very very snazzy tech. Get Foundry VTT on it, and you'd do quite well with the TTRPG crowd.
Does Foundry have any of the interactive features this product offers? I'd imagine the real killer feature would be to place your miniature (I'm sure somebody could make a killing selling Board-compatible minis) on the board and have its position update in the software.
Could be neat for DnD.
Or maybe even a proper wargame, although I guess it might be too small.
Are you planning to ship to the EU?
The order form only allows US shipping adresses as is.
Starting with the USA for now, expanding over time!
This reminds me a lot of…something Dynamicland.
Honestly it's nice enough as an encased screen for TTRPG virtual tabletop play. I have a few friends that have built custom tabletops to hold consumer TVs or have set up top down projectors (worse)... those are solutions for the deeply dedicated. Something even simpler that this is a pretty nice form-factor for a somewhat more modest table.
To those who "meh" it:
Board games suffer a lot from lack of progression and narrative compared to video games.
Take Mario 1, there are so many different worlds, and enemies, it's a constant wow.
In comparison, board games are always the same. I play a fair amount of board games, but as much as I like the 'IRL' experience, the game play just doesn't compare.
Some board games try to replicate this with level bags and legacy things and what not. But make a Final Fantasy that can be played on a board with my kids, and I am definitely in.
This has huge potential.
Progression is your level of skill as you get better at a game (whether it's something simple or its chess). I've had narrative events happen in games that, because they are guided by decisions of other players, I still remember more than actual stories in video games.
The idea is interesting, but at the same cost (or more) as a console, or the cost of a dozen board games, it falls into a space where the market is going to be limited.
I would definitely try this if it was available at a board game cafe, just not something I need for home.
Looks awesome
Thank you!
Me and a dungeon master friend of mine are interested in developing for this. Is there a cost associated with the SDK? Or can we just buy a Board and get to it?
No cost for the SDK, we'll be fleshing out our SDK pages over the next couple weeks. Email developer@board.fun to be the first to get access!
Hopefully they offer a large version at some point. This could be a little tricky for DMing.
> Warranty Included
> Every purchase is covered by a 1-year warranty for peace of mind protection.
Uh, why are you marketing a bare minimum (often legally required) warranty as a pro? It kinda conflicts with "built to last"!
You'd be better off not even mentioning it.
Looks really fun, but only ships to the US… such a disappointment after reading up on it, and being ready to buy.
Apologies! We're a small team, and have to focus our efforts on one market for the time being. We'll be looking to expand as soon as we're able.
@nicoles: Understand. Is this just about shipping? Or don't you own the games on the platform, so they can't be shipped overseas?
Every country has different requirements and regulations, it's unfortunately not just about shipping. We own all the games, but are focused on the USA for right now.
Happy to be put on a sendout list if/when this changes.
I don't have a comment on the tech, but Board (homonym for bored) is genius branding.
And also like a board game, which I think is what they were going for.
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