Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

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.

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.

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.

I consider Microsoft's one great, given its C# and .NET based SDK, instead of yet again C and C++.

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.

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.

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.