I previously shared my experiences of games nights with friends who are all in different places, briefly touching on the different platforms available, but focussing more on the experience and what to do to make it feel as close to being together as possible. Now I want to look at the different ways I have played games remotely with others in more detail. I hope it will help you find a solution to your situation.
In my second review of online gaming platforms I look at Yucata, a free website that is all about a great, friendly community of people who love playing modern German-style tabletop games. It was started by Kay Wilke back in 2001, but since then he and many helpful people expanded the selection on the site into what it offers today - over 140 multi-player games for your enjoyment.
In a new type of review, I talk about Happy Meeple in this article, a free to join website where you can play tabletop games online against other people as well as AIs. The brainchild of Nicolas Guibert, the website aims to introduce more people to modern tabletop games, which is something I highly encourage, by offering an easy way to learn these games, as well as creating a friendly, welcoming platform.
As you may know, I'm very active on Yucata.de, a website where you can play over 60 games online with other people around the world on a play-and-pass basis. I also frequent The Crucible Online a fair bit, where I play with my KeyForge decks against others. You can find me as "oliverkinne" on both, so feel free to invite me to a game. I also play a few games against an AI on my smartphone, such as Star Realms and Terra Mystica. I would say I still prefer playing with my friends and family, because I love the face-to-face social element that you just don't get with online games. However, online games, and I include apps as well as websites in this term, offer a number of advantages that make playing that way more enjoyable in other ways.
Oliver KinnePost read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on KeyForge: Call of the Archons (Saturday Review) KeyForge: Call of the Archons by Fantasy Flight Games is the first Unique game - and the word "unique" has a very special meaning, but I will talk about this later. KeyForge, for short, is a competitive two-player-only card game where players aim to forge three keys, each costing six Æmber. As players draw and play cards, they can attack their opponent and collect Æmber. The player to first forge their third key is the winner. So far it's very much like any other card game of their kind, but it is the uniqueness of the decks that is new and is what interests me about this game.
Yes, it is nearly the end of 2018, so it is time to list Tabletop Games Blog's top 5 games of the year. It has been a great year for tabletop games in general, and I have been lucky enough to play no less than 23 games over the year, including playtesting, PnPs, online games as well as games played during our weekly games night and at MeetUp sessions. So I thought choosing 5 out of those 23 games would be a good number.
Digidiced has been very kind to offer me the opportunity to review a number of the games they have converted to digital, and I decided to start with Lookout Spiele's award winning game Le Havre: The Inland Port which is one of the many popular games by designer Uwe Rosenberg. The game is set in the 18th century in the maritime city of Le Havre in the Normandy region of France. Players are harbourmasters who try to build the best harbour by constructing great buildings to attract trade. It is a two player only resource management game with a large action selection element - but with a twist.
Tabletop games can be enjoyed in a large variety of ways. There are many people who prefer to play solo, usually playing against some sort of AI or automa, others prefer two-player games, often co-operative, but also competitive of course, then there are people who prefer games with several players, and of course there are plenty of people who enjoy a mix of all of the above.
