A magical world made of tables
So we already have Tabletop Simulator, but a new challenger approaches. Tabletopia aims to bring board games into the digital space in a similar manner, and it has taken to Kickstarter for its last push in funding.
It works by providing pieces and artwork for a game, but contains no artificial intelligence to handle the rules. As a result, players must still know what they’re doing in order to use it, but they can also institute house rules and variants with little headache.
Tabletopia is set to run as a subscription service, with basic accounts available for free. Premium accounts will have access to a larger catalog of titles to play, from some noteworthy publishers. Still, several of the bigger board game publishers are missing from Tabletopia‘s list; there’s no mention of Fantasy Flight, Days of Wonder, Asmodee, or Z-Man, for instance. Still, Terra Mystica (Z-Man) is shown off, so it’s possible some games will appear from a publisher without that publisher pledging full catalog support.
The Kickstarter campaign for Tabletopia just kicked off today and it has already made more than half of its $20,000 funding goal at the time of writing. It is planned for release on Steam in early 2016, then on mobile devices later in 2016.