2y ago

What are your thoughts about Video Game to Boardgame adaptations?

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)?

28 comments

I generally like the trend, gives me something more to immerse myself in.
I've played This War of Mine, and it was a fantastic, faithful, soul crushing adaptation.
Recently got my friend the Binding of Isaac collection for his b-day and we both loved it! Surprisingly magic-like in mechanics but more Munchkin in setup. Like no deck building in that sense, but turn structure, stack and interrupts etc, comboing with items.
He sometimes commented on how they adapted specific items and was generally impressed in how thet made it work.
- hmmm... Munchkin, at least in my personal opinion, is never a good argument, I find the game terrible.
  Maybe I have to give This war of mine a shot at some point, I did enjoy the video game. How well does it play coop?
  
  Yeaht that's alright, i was mostly using it to compare the mechanics of monsters, events etc coming from shared decks.
  TWOM i played solo only, but i dont think it changes much for coop

Civ the boardgame is... ok. It's not great, it's not terrible. There are other boardgames that do what it does much better. It feels very paint-by-numbers and mechanistic. The game is also very slow to play, with fiddly turns that have a lot of extraneous moving parts that need to be accounted for.
Edit: if you want a civ-style game that is a lot better and you don't mind the sci-fi theming, I'd recommend Eclipse.
I recently tried the Witcher board game. Production value off the charts, but it really did feel like nobody actually play tested the thing. There were some glaring problems that should have been noticed after 5 minutes of play with somebody trying to win rather than just experience the game.
The fact that you can win relatively trivially by ignoring 75% of the core mechanics and just focusing on punching other players is pretty ridiculous. The quests feel absolutely useless, and sometimes actually punish you for daring to attempt to complete them. You need to houserule the crap out of that game to make it functional.
The slay the spire board game is a weird one for a different reason. They tried so hard to make it faithful to the computer game that the coop aspect of it feels tacked on and hollow. There's very little interaction between players, and it just feels like you're waiting for somebody at the table to bring their build online, at which point everyone else becomes irrelevant.
- I am with you, I think some games should just stay video games if there are a million things to account for each action you take.
  I have played hundreds of hours of Slay the Spire the Video Game but have very little interest playing it as a boardgame. Same goes for many of the games, I just don't see how this can work very well. Exploration in Terraria vs exploration in the boardgame? Not sure about that, maybe I lack the imagination to see how this could be implemented well.
- @Barbarian @dpunked I believe Civilization actually started as a boardgame, so that's more a boardgame to videogame conversion.
  
  is that so? Whats the original boardgame? Was it any good?

It's funny that you mention Civilization. The first game takes a lot of inspiration from the 1980 board game of the same name.

Starcraft was an incredible adaptation. It stayed very true to the original, including all the game content, and it was simply a very good (but complex) game. Unfortunately Fantasy Flight lost the license very quickly and had to remake it as Forbidden Stars years later... and then lost the license quickly again.
The 2010 Civ game is also an excellent game with the expansions. Although the new one from 2017 with the Terra Incognita expansion seems to be liked even more, but I haven't played it yet.

I'm skeptical of all game and movie adaptations. The fact is, the IP owner almost always a megacorp that specializes in taking as much as possible while giving as little as possible in return. I know that the games are frequently made by known board game designers, but ultimate power over the projects is held by the IP owner and they aren't interested in a good game, only a profitable one.

Neutral, I look at them on their own merits for both gameplay and art. Don't care for overproduced stuff, no huge boxes of plastic for me.
One that I enjoy is Super Motherload. Never played the video game, the boardgame is a neat and fairly unique deckbuilder with a spatial puzzle elment and a sensible production. My understanding is that it's a fairly loose translation of the theme which is totally fine with me if it makes for a better boardgame.
lets exclude Dorfromantik here
Curious, why? Seems like a good example that's on people's minds.
- I think Dorfromantik is the exception. The video game already looks a lot like a boardgame so it could carry over the aesthetics. I think its a rare positive example and I was more curious about other positive ones.

Usually not. I feel like the randomness and complexity in video games is hard to recreate in the boardgame medium. If you end up simplifying those mechanics the game ends up being a worse version of something that already exists.

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.

Starcraft, Doom, Exceed, Sniper Elite, and Space Empires are all brilliant. Personally, I think Street Fighter: The Miniatures Game is pretty good as well (although perhaps not for the price)

I really enjoy the Gears of War board game. It adapts the the cover mechanic and the different weapons pretty well. It’s got an effective and simple AI for the monsters.
It’s also brutally hard.

I'm okay with them if they're done well, but I haven't really seen any that are with one fantastic exception: rampage (or the rebranded terror in meple city)

Mixed. Deep Rock Galactic the board game is STELLAR and I love it. Slay the Spire did not translate well, too clunky. The monster hunter, resident evil, and Dark Souls games are absolutely awful, but that's Steamforged Games' fault, they are totally shit at making fun mechanics. I tried the Dead Cells game on TTS and its meh. We LOVE the Stardew Valley board game despite it drawing criticism. The new Call of Duty game on KS looks fucking awful- hidden movement in an FPS style game? What? And same with the Apex game, just no. So pretty hit or miss but I am always down to see if they are any good.
- Hmm deep rock galactic, is this coop?
  
  Yes! It’s pretty easy easy to learn and play too with enough missions and variability. The minis are super awesome too, working on painting them

I haven't played many, but it does lead to some interesting cases of board games being adapted to video games and back to board games, like Civilization and Europa Universalis.

I haven’t played any yet, but I like the idea of it! I’d really like to give the Frostpunk and Monster Hunter World adaptations a go.

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