I have always been a fan of board games since I was a kid. Nothing was more fulfilling than those moments when I was a child and thunderstorms left us bereft of electricity, our family huddled around the table and, with candles lit, we would game. Our games spanned a wide variety of board games, card games and various hybrids.
I remember when I was young, watching my older brothers play D&D, GURPS and the West End Games version of Star Wars, always wanting to take part, but being far too young to grasp the mechanics. As time went on, I watched them go into games like Samurai Swords and Axis & Allies. Now, as an adult, money had always been a tight and precious commodity, having to rely on friends to fulfill my board game habits.
I introduced a friend of mine to
Will Wheaton's Tabletop series on youtube and he was hooked. He grabbed a few games, particularly
Pandemic,
Forbidden Island,
Tsuro, and
Castle Panic. We have put in so many hours and had so many great memories playing these games. Truly entertaining games.
He has moved on to college, sadly, so our time to board game has been diminished greatly. Luckily, we have been playing a LOT of
Tabletop Simulator, a sandbox, physics based simulator created by Berserk Games. At first, I saw this as a half-assed simulator game, akin to games like Goat Simulator and Surgeon Simulator, making it a buggy, glitchy mess that's core value is in the random things that happen.
After some research, I found it to be exactly the opposite. This is a real, honest to goodness simulator of the tabletop experience. The game supports mods and there have been an enormous embrace by the modding community, putting tons of amazing board games out there for people to play.
I have been playing around with it with Cronozilla and said college-going friend and we have been having a blast playing games like, Forbidden Island and
Lords of Waterdeep. The controls themselves take some getting used to, but after a while you get a good flow and everything starts to move very very smoothly.
I invite anyone to check it out and know there are people out there willing to try pretty much anything and everything on there, so come talk to us and spread the joy of tabletop gaming in a virtual medium for a much much cheaper cost.
