In recent years the trend to adapt video games into boardgames is just increasing.
Games like Stardew Valley, Civ, This war of mine and many more coming like Terraria or Call of Duty.
Some of these games like Civ are extremely complex games and I always wondered how well these translate into a boardgame. The production value of these games is often high, but I have my reservation that Stardew Valley the boardgame really captures the same “magic” as the video game did.
What are your thoughts on them? Any really good ones out there worthy checking out (lets exclude Dorfromantik here)?
I’ve found a lot of these types of games tend to be a miss for me.
Things like what Steamforged put out are more focused on the production and for me lack an interesting game.
Elsewhere we have the “adaptations” of a decade ago which were usually theme slapped on thinly to a deck builder or something like that (think Uncharted or Resident Evil card games and you’ve got what I’m thinking of). I think we can be happy we’re not in this era anymore, though I’m sure there are still some being made.
It’s a lot more interesting to me when they don’t try to simulate the video game experience because they’re such different mediums that it’s hard and often a lot less interesting. While the XCOM board game had a number of issues, I liked how it abstracted concepts from the game and made it a strategy game a few levels removed from what you do in the game. If they hadn’t done that it would’ve just been another tactical miniatures game, which we’re not short on.