PC tabletop adaptation Hive swarms Steam for its queen
Tabletop games are pretty great, but losing pieces or having to play with faraway friends over video calls can be less than ideal. Digital adaptations with online mulitplayer solve both of these problems, as is the case with Hive, Blueline Games' translation of the Mensa Select board game.
In Hive, players swear allegiance to a queen and use their mess of bugs to surround the ruler of an opposing army. A turn consists of moving one bug to a new space. Each of the hexagonal pieces in play must be touching at least one other however, so no, you can't just gradually move your queen to a table corner while advancing the rest of your arsenal.
Each species has its own movement attribute, so cunning unit placement is crucial to victory. Ants can move to any open position on the outer ridge of the board, while the spider can venture exactly three spaces per turn. Grasshoppers can jump over any straight line of creepy-crawlies, but the one-space-per-turn beetles can climb on top of units from either team, allowing for a slow-but-straight shot for the opposing queen. You can also move the queen itself one space per turn.
Hive has made its nest on Steam for PC users and is currently on sale for $7.99, down from its normal price of $9.99. There's also DLC for the Pillbug, a critter that can pick up adjoining pieces and move them, regardless of which queen they serve. If your friends know better than to challenge your tactics, Hive also has AI opponents with five levels of difficulty, depending on the aptitude of your strategery.
[Image: Blueline Games]
