Retro has gone geek, with board-game creators reinventing or tweaking old favourites to make them relevant and appeal to a new, young player. Be it IoT components, powerful algorithms or an entire migration to computers, these games are finally bridging the gap between generations through the universal language of development. They've upped their game, so to speak. What's your next move, player?
Monopoly: cash to card
Welcome to real-world digital economics. Hasbro, the home of all things Monopoly, is ensuring players get with India’s digitised economy. In its newly revamped version, traditional bank notes that were carefully collected, counted and categorised, have been replaced by debit cards and swipe machines. So players are motivated to thrive in a cashless environment. To top off the experience, expect to stay on top of things such as property values. The interaction with the game is still very tactile thanks to the board set-up and the probability-oriented environment of rolling the die, all of which remains unchanged.
Square Off: yer a wizard!
With chess being the one inter-generational board game that holds one of the biggest communities, Bhavya Gohil and Aatur Mehta of Infivention Technologies embarked upon a mission to create a chessboard for the visually impaired after they were approached by the National Association for the Blind (NAB).
In 2013, through incubator RiiDL, the duo began prototyping and the journey took them to Maker Faires around the world during which the project evolved, by 2014, into an IoT game they christened Square Off. The Internet-connected board allows players to go up against an AI opponent, or with other players located across the world, with the opponent’s pieces automatically moving to reflect their moves, regardless of where in the world they might be.
Gohil explains, “It uses a compact 2-axis robotic arm with a magnetic head beneath the box to move the Neodymium magnetic chess pieces. The game uses an ARM Cortex M0 processor to ensure smooth communication with a smartphone, taking care of decrypting and execution. The most important thing is that it is programmed in a way so that the chess pieces don’t collide during automatic movements.
“We started out with one project and are now working with something very different. We also hope to move Square Off as an instructional platform for those wanting to learn chess, and we’re seeing a lot of interest from parents.”
To make the experience all the more streamlined, the game is app-based (available for Android and iOS) so anyone with the Square Off app can avail themselves of the marvellous benefits while keeping the board itself button-free, retaining the age-old aesthetic and beauty of the game, complete with premium rosewood touches. Gohil adds that the Harry Potter chessboard concept inspired the design and functionality of the project.
Risk: cunning and conquests
Risk has seen numerous upgrades and versions over the years since its initial board game setup in 1957, and playing most versions often put a little adrenaline in our systems, making it a truly name-worthy experience — after all, dealing with world domination, economic strife and potential nuclear war is a collectively stressful experience. So, we can see why the game is such a hit with ‘Hall of Fames’ around the world.
The move of Risk to gaming systems, on the whole, has been met with mixed reviews. A ‘Game of Thrones’ version retains the board-game paraphernalia while shifting the aesthetic to the narratives and environments of George RR Martin's universe while allowing the player to simulate their own battlefields.
If you decide to ditch the board and play the game on a computer, Steam's 'Factions' edition, lets you play against an algorithm masked as an opponent that strengthens in difficulty every time you make a decision or a move.
The migration of AI into age-old strategy games has prevented a monotony for many players, leaving plenty of scope for design elements such as the setting of Westeros or real-world inter-political threats.
Tabletop Simulator: game night goes virtual
If a virtual environment is not a deal-breaker, Tabletop Simulator is a fun game that uses the power of Steam’s community to let players enjoy any board game of choice on a simulated table with friends from anywhere in the world. It already has classic games installed, and newer games are constantly being added through Steam’s Workshop.
The icing on the cake is that it supports VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, for making the experience as close to the real thing as possible.
Found it, fund it
Traditional games need not always be the retro kind. In the realm of card games, crazily inventive and often politically incorrect games like Cards Against Humanity, or the Elan Lee’s Exploding Kittens and Bears vs Babies (created with inputs from The Oatmeal’s Mathew Inman) have taken the fancy of millennials worldwide. In the case of the latter two, the creators used crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to fund their endeavour, proving that the boards and cards are here to stay.
