boardgaming on the iPad

I had almost forgotten about the various boardgame apps I had purchased on the iPad. Many were from a long time ago. I was bored one day and decided to pick up Le Havre again. Over the next several days I ended up revisiting several of these older games on the iPad. 

I have always liked Le Havre. The AI's on the iPad are not very strong and I tend to win most of the time. In the recent game I thought I did poorly. I was rusty and I saw the AI's constructing and buying buildings much more quickly than I could. Feeding time came frequently, usually after just two turns, and I felt under pressure to keep up with the food requirement. The AI's beat me to several buildings I liked. Thankfully in this game you can use other players' buildings. You just need to pay an entrance fee. When the game ended, I was a little surprised I managed to win, and by a comfortable margin. I guess the AI's only appeared smart because when they took their turns the animation was fast. 

I play Race for the Galaxy regularly and not only recently. Sometimes it is my bedtime game. I play a few games against AI's before sleeping. Even though I play with all three expansions of the first story arc, a game is still fast. I probably finish a game between 5 to 10 minutes. The iPad implementation is fantastic, and the AI's are good. Usability is amazing. 

It had been such a long time since I played Dominion, the pioneer of deckbuilding games. In the app the base game is free. You only need to pay if you want to buy the expansions. There are so many expansions now. I didn't do well against the AI's in Dominion. I was never good at it, and now I am rusty. 

I like how pretty the buildings are in Puerto Rico. The user interface is good in that you can see almost everything on one screen. However you need to open up a menu to see the building powers. 

I vaguely remember that the AI's are weak, but this time round I lost to them. I probably should pay a bit more attention to what they do and learn from how they play. I didn't do too bad. I was in second place. 

The last time I played San Juan I kept losing to the AI's. This time I did okay. I won some and lost some. They do put up a good challenge. 

It feels good to revisit some old titles. The sound effects, animation and user interface design of most of these apps feel dated, but the games are still decent. This was a nice stroll down memory lane.