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League of Legends' creators made a board game
Riot Games is best known for League of Legends and now the developer-publisher is pushing into board games. Mechs Vs. Minions is the studio's debut effort, and it features miniatures, a modular board system, dice, a custom sand timer (think an hourglass, but on a smaller scale), quest cards and an overarching story. In addition to all that, there's a physically large mystery item locked away in the box, according to a feature article from Polygon.
Hasbro and Indiegogo want your board game ideas
Despite the ever-growing number of screens at our disposal, there's still a desire for traditional board games that rely on paper, card and plastic. Hasbro, an industry titan that owns Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit and other tabletop classics, is now looking to the community for fresh ideas. The company is teaming up with Indiegogo for the "Spring 2016 Next Great Game Challenge," an open competition to find and publish a user-created board game. Any enthusiast designer from Canada, the US, France, Germany and the UK can submit their ideas online, up until May 15th.
Arcade Table's Stealth brings high design, crazy price tag to tabletop arcade
The tabletop arcade market isn't exactly a crowded one these days, and for the most part we'd say that's for good reason -- remember those Pac-Man-induced neck spasms? Then again, most arcade tables don't look like this. The Stealth console system from the aptly-named Arcade Tables offers 60 classic games, including Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Galaga, in a high gloss cocktail table, sporting an HD LCD screen with an 89-degree viewing angle, built-in speaker system, and two-player controls. Okay, so the thing costs $3,300, which is more than a touch too rich for our blood, but wouldn't it be nice if more throwback consoles looked a little more, well, Stealth-y.
Settlers of Catan in development for Microsoft Surface, still can't help you trade sheep for wood (video)
It's a pretty well-known fact that The Settlers of Catan / Die Siedler von Catan is fantastic fun, and though the original board game has seen a few digital incarnations, all the cutthroat hexagonal colonization sim ever really needed was a giant screen with multitouch. MayFair Games let Vectorform build this version for Microsoft Surface, which is on display at the Origin Games Fair this week; CNET reports the final version will be available this August. Good luck finding enough resources to trade for the table to play it on. Video after the break, more details at our source links.
Surfacescapes puts Dungeons & Dragons on Surface, makes your d20 obsolete (video)
We've seen some fancy applications for Microsoft's Surface, the touchable, strokable, caressable computing device/big-ass table, but not a single one has made us twitter in nerdy glee like Surfacescapes. Created by a team at Carnegie Mellon University, it's an implementation of Dungeons & Dragons in 3D, something that has of course been done dozens and dozens of times before, but this is different. Way different. It brilliantly brings the tabletop style of play to Surface, with players moving real figurines over virtual battlefields, rolling virtual d20s and d6s to deal real damage against digital dire wolves and the like, opponents who can move and attack automatically. Sure, it takes some of the imagination out of the experience, but it'll also make re-rolling your character a heck of a lot easier -- not to mention eliminating the dungeonmaster's folder of magic, mystery, and crudely drawn maps.
Philips to demo Entertaible at IFA
Philips is ready to put the funk back into Internationale Funkausstellung, where at this year's consumer electronics show in Berlin (Sept. 1 - 6), it'll show off the Entertaible just like it did back at CES. This electronic tabletop game combines more traditional board games (which we do love, by the by) with games of the electronic variety, so you and your loved one can duke it out across the world over the internet. However, while this newfangled table was merely a prototype back at CES, the Entertaible seems like it's on its way to becoming a full-fledged product, but still no info on Philips' timetable or price at this point. One more thing, though -- we're mystified by this part of Philips' press release: "The use of physical objects like pawns and bats to directly manipulate the virtual world enhances the sense of magic." Bats? Magic? We know the Netherlands didn't do so well in the World Baseball Classic, but c'mon guys, that's no reason to provide tools for people to beat each other up with, y'know?
