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Tabletop Simulator


I wanted to draw your attention to this game, this simulator that is on Steam for quite some time. It started as a indie project and I was on board with it almost from the beginning, probably because two things:
devs really were (and still are) engaged with their community and because the one very important aspect of this game that was a big deal for me which I will explain later.

Tabletop Simulator is a shell of a game that makes available to play ANY (and I really mean ANY) board or card games, miniatures, dexterity games, party and social games or activities. All you need is to find correct people and subscribe to a workshop mod, and you will have hours of fun, guaranteed!


Game of ARKHAM HORROR

How this works? Well, you have a virtual room with table. Onto that table you can spawn (load) a physical game (well, virtually), and interact with it like you would do in real life, moving pieces around, chuckling dices, setting game tiles, shuffling and playing cards from your hand, flipping and tossing stuff... And you do this using mouse and your keyboard. Controls are very intuitive and easy to use once you get accustom to them. Game has a good tutorial.
By subscribing to workshop mods you will get games, and there is like 6000+ games in the workshop when I last check, with new games been added on the dally basis by people from the community (me among others).


GAME OF THRONES the board game[/I]

You will find many new and old games, and for those that like board and card games, names like Legendary Encounters, Warhammer Quest, Mansions of Madness, Cthulhu Wars, Lord of The Rings LCG, Shadows of Brimstone, Bloodborn, Relic, Talisman, Blood Rage and so on, will be familiar... All these games, and many more, I have played, but one thing that really engaged me with TTS is an ability to mod.
Now, as I said, many people are making mods of existing games, but when I saw I can make MY OWN games with this 'tool', that's were TTS became much. much more fun to me.

Now, game also has a global chat where you can find people to play with, but sometimes you can also find game devs online, and when I said that they listen to their community I wasn't kidding. They actually implemented a thing I suggest while I was talking with Kimiko (the main dev of TTS) and that is, for me, quite amazing. They update their game regularly adding and tweaking their product, and you can see that it's their love child.


X-COM the board game

Since many times people asked me: but what about griefers? Thing, where you can have someone connect to your room and toss things around and mess up your game sounds bad, but reality is different. Yes, a troll can enter your server and mess things, but you can ban him (blocking him completely) or kick him out. Game has a rewind option and one or two clicks undo any damage in seconds, also you can always lock your room or seats so you can talk with people first (yes, game has built voice chat).
So, no big deal.


Miniatures game, X-WING

Now, I must say some negative aspects also. One, and the most prominent is the current net code. Devs are still tweaking things in that segment, and before it was much worst, but depending on your location and internet connection, you might be passed through proxy servers which will make your ping high. But, since the game is not about who has more latency (it's not a FPS game), you don't even notice. Anyway, had to be said, since a bad internet connection you have might lead to disconnecting mid games, which is a real problem.

Other thing is, for game to truly shine you have to have some good friends. And i mean people that are willing to spend a good hour of two engaged in the game, and not to leave before you finish or flip table in rage that they have lost. XD

Anyway, those are the main things about TTS. If you have any question ask me, I have spend like 1000+ h in TTS so far, so I can help you if you ever decide to buy this game. Price of 20 bucks is really worth it (and game is regularly on discount), since you are not baying one game, you are actually baying thousands and thousands of games you can play.

There is a quite strong D&D community, wargames community (Warhammer 40K), people that sometimes even make Chess tourneys. So, check it out, if you are geek like me. ;}