I love Apple products. They are elegant and they do what you need them to do.
Apple has designed the most popular smartphone on the planet.
Why, then, do they not have a mobile-friendly version of their website? It seems somewhat counter productive to me.
If you’re a board gamer, there are a number of iPhone apps available to assist you. I’m not talking about apps which implement iPhone or iPad versions of games, but ones which help you out in some way when you’re playing the real thing.
The first, and most obvious one is Board Game Geek. This gives you access to the Board Game Geek database, so you can quickly check a game’s rating and read about the game. It also lets you adjust your collection of games (a record on BGG’s website of the games you own), including games you’ve played. This makes it really easy to update your games played as you go, rather than writing them all down and remembering to transcribe that info to the website later. This free app is a must-have for any serious board game player.
Next up is Board Game Tools. This 4 screens – one to roll up to 6 standard dice, one as a timer (which I don’t think adds anything to the iPhone’s built in timer), one as a buzzer when you tap it, but most useful, one as a virtual score pad. It’s fairly simple, but it does what you need it to do, is completely generic, and the app is free.
Dominion Kingdom Deck is an app that makes randomizing the set up for Dominion a snap. You select which expansions you have and then allow it to pick a random set of ten. It has a number of options for guiding the selection, like the suggestion in Alchemy that if you have any Alchemy cards in your set up, you should have 3-5 of them. It also automatically determines if you will have Platinum and Colony, if you’re using Prosperity cards. It also allows you to add your own card sets – this means you can add “fan expansions” which aren’t official expansions for the game, or you can add new expansions that have been published but not yet been added to the app, while you wait for official support. Right now, it’s a little disappointing, because the two latest expansions haven’t been added. It’s a minor inconvenience, but the main reason (from a note by the author on BGG) is that the Young Witch card in Cornucopia causes an additional card to be added to supply, and he stil needs to work that logic in. It’s not hard to work around, but it would be nice to have it properly included. For a free app, this is great.
Tichu Tracker is an easy way to score the game of Tichu. Add the player names into the seating positions (or randomize seating if you like). It keeps track of who should be dealing, and you mark if anyone called Tichu or Grand Tichu. Then when you record scores, you select the score for one team, and it automatically selects the score for the other. You also mark if any of the called Tichus were made. You can look at the scoring history of the game, and also make adjustments if an error was made. Easy to use, and free.
7 Wonders Score is a free app for scoring the 7 Wonders game. It adds up the scores from the various categories (and can even do the Science calculation for you) to give you your total score. It’s fairly easy to use, and it keeps track of regular players so you can add them to the next game easily and it also keeps a history of old games so you can go back and look at them.
Lastly is Score. This app, which costs 99c can be used as a basic score keeping app. The real gem with this is that it had scoring modules for around 30 games, some of which have complex scoring calculations, like Agricola. This means that it’s much easier to score for those games. These modules are downloadable, which makes the app extensible if a new game comes along for which scoring is not so simple, as long as someone takes the time to write the module.
One quick extra. Not directly game related, but I use it a lot for my board game meetup group is the Meetup app. This is great in particular for checking the RSVP list once you’ve arrived in order to see if there are any last minute changes so you know if you should wait for someone to turn up. Very useful free app.
Are there any other iPhone apps you use to help out when playing board games?
With iOS 5, Apple introduced a new app, called “Cards”. It’s really easy to use. First, select an appropriate category – such a birthday, seasonal, love, travel. Then, select a card style – some have a picture, and most have a little bit of text on the front.
Once you’ve done that, you can add your own picture (to the ones that have a picture), and change the text on the front to personalise it.
Next, you can change the text on the inside of the card. Again, really easy to do. If you prefer, you can go with the default text, or just change it a little.
Then, the envelope, select your own contact info from your address book for your return address, and select a contact for the recipient. If the recipient isn’t in your contacts, you can type in the address.
Once that’s all done, you tap the price, confirm the purchase, validate your iTunes account, and you’re done. A real physical card will be sent.
All in all, it’s an easy app to use. The cost is $2.99 (plus tax) to send to the US, which when you consider the price of cards in the shops, plus postage, is actually quite reasonable, especially as this will be personalised in a way you couldn’t do with a regular card.
One bright idea I had – I purchased an iTunes gift certificate, the ones that get emailed, and sent it to myself. I then copied and pasted the redemption code from the email into the card. The recipient can then use that code when they get the card.
I’m very happy with the app, so far – I await confirmation that the recipient received it and all was as it should be with anticipation.
[Update: I've made some suggestions on how Cards could be improved in a new blog entry]
I’ve not yet really used the Game Center feature of my iPhone. There are 3 games I play that use it – StarDunk, Angry Birds, and Pocket Frogs. However, the first two, as far as I can tell, only use the feature so that you can compare how you are doing against the rest of the world, there’s no direct player interaction. Pocket Frogs is a fun little free game that allows you to breed frogs in order to make up particular sets that are the achievements in the game. It appears to have some interaction in that you can give frogs you’ve bred to your friends, but I don’t have any Game Center friends that also play.
If you’d like to become my Game Center Friend, I’m timotab, but please also leave a comment here so that I know who you are when you request it. If you play Pocket Frogs too, that would be cool, especially as I’m looking for any kind of Africanus frog, so if you happened to have one to give me…
What Game Center enabled games do you play? Do they have lots of player interaction or just allow you to be ranked with your friends?
I know that a number of people have had problems with Words with Friends, the scrabble-like iPhone app. Sometimes is seems a game gets corrupted, and then the interaction between the app and the server gets all confused, and the app just crashes a few seconds after you start it.
Here’s what worked for me. Not entirely sure why. It may work for you, it may not. It’s at least worth a try.
Hope this helps.