In my previous post, I mentioned two board games that use programs. Yesterday, Fantasy Flight Games released one of the most controversial games of the year, Descent: Legends of the Dark, and it's also based on software. The game currently has 308 user reviews on BoardGameGeek, where 148 are 10 and 107 are 1 . And it seems that neither 10 nor 1 is about the game, it's a hybrid of a board / video game. Some people who like board games don't like using apps, and some people who like video games don't like using a relatively expensive board game box full of scenery and miniatures. As someone who loves board games and video games, here's my take on the matter.
First, let me say that I have Gloomhaven, an app-only board game. When I play it, I use two third-party apps: Gloomhaven Helper to track the battle and Forteller to add sound. My wife and I love two player story games. So either we both try to read the text at the same time, or one of us has to read the text to the other, or we use an app that reads the text for us. It's pretty easy to see that having an app that reads history is a plus, not a disadvantage. Depending on how you use the app to track various game scores, your mileage may vary. I think for a complex game like Gloomhaven this could be useful.
Now story games that don't rely on software have a storybook in a box. It often works like a Choose Your Own Adventure book: you are given an initial phase and then prompted to move to another phase depending on your choice or the result of a skill test, e.g. Such a book gives you maximum freedom to cheat if you want. You can continue reading, go back if you don't like the result, etc. Lands of Galzyr , which I mentioned in a previous post, has a back button, so if you make an innocent mistake *or* want to cheat, you can go back. Also mentioned Destinies have no back button. Some may welcome the removal of the cheat, but if you can't undo it, it's annoying to accidentally hit the wrong button.
I really don't like apps used for secret information. In simple board games, you not only have to make decisions and roll dice, but you also check whether the dice rolls are successful or not. I love Lands of Galzyr, which always tells you whether the skill check is easy, medium, or hard before you decide what to do and roll the dice. I don't like the program in Destinies where this information is hidden from you, you go in blindly, enter the results into the program and then determine if what you throw is good enough. There are a number of other uses for hidden information where Destinies monitors something and changes the results based on it without telling you why. I prefer transparency.
In Lands of Galzyr, the program effectively replaces the book, thus saving the tree. In Destinies, as well as previous games from Fantasy Flight Games such as the new Descent game and Journeys in Middle -earth, the app also provides a game map. You end up with the odd situation where you basically have two copies of the board: a physical one on your table with the tiles and a virtual one in the program that tells you how to place the tiles. I have to say I'm not a fan. You spend a lot of time comparing the two versions of the map and wonder why you need the physical version. If you're playing solo, you can *only* play Destinies with a program card. For now, only cards with a player mat and physical game objects remind you that you're playing a board game.
In conclusion, I'm not totally against the use of apps in board games, but I like to limit their use to controlling the story (and reading aloud if possible). If I wanted a game where important game mechanics like measuring success or how the game decides what to do next are mostly hidden from the player, I'd play a pure video game. And no, I'm not buying Descent: Legends of the Dark. Not only because I use one program more than I'd like, but also because the 3D landscape seems buggy and unstable to me, and the $180 price tag is pretty high.
