In which MetalJim tells you to stop reading and go play some cool games already…

Consider this list as a plug for a geeklist on BGG that’s already been online for some time.  This list is dedicated to providing links to free, downloadable games for your PC that just happen to be digital versions of your favorite boardgames and which also happen to have some sort of AI to enable you to play by yourself.

Now, this geeklist is a couple of years old, so some of the links may no longer be functional.  As these titles are mostly freeware, well, you get what you pay for.  Documentation is, in most cases, a little weak.  Of course, with an excellent resource like BGG to back you up, you can probably find the rules online so that you have some idea what you are supposed to be doing in these digital equivalents.  It’s also worth pointing out that this geeklist has over 150 items, ranked in the same order as the overall game rankings on BGG, which puts Puerto Rico at something like #25, because for some reason the unranked games come first.

Anyway, a few highlights that I have spent some time with during the past week or so…

RA — yes, you already know how much I love this game.  Click here for a link to a direct download of the game files.  You will, of course, have a hard time with this if you aren’t already familiar with the game, but the interface works well enough.  I had to disable some of the “continue” checkstops because it required too many mouseclicks to play the game, but on the whole this is bug free.  I found the AI to be tolerable, but a little uneven, and no match for my superior skills at this game.  It’s like the AI will make a good, believable decision one minute, and then really overpay for something the next, or else pass altogether on an important lot.  So, although I have lost once or twice in 4 player games, I’ve also won a half dozen games or so, usually by wide margins.

Roll or Don’t — This is a renamed version of the Sid Sackson classic Can’t Stop.  It’s a press your luck dicefest, but there is some skill that goes into the decision making process.  Since the game decisions are relatively straightforward, it is no surprise that the AI players are quite competent.  In 3 player games, I have won 22% of the time after 18 plays.  The interface is very bland, but conveys enough information about what is going on.  In fact, I don’t even need to look at the window where the dice are shown — instead I just look at the checkbox where I decide which dice I want to use, and then decide whether I want to keep rolling.  It’s not that hard to play a complete game in under 5 minutes, but maybe that’s why I am losing so often.  Anyway, this would be a perfect little dowload to sneak onto your work machine for when you have 10 minutes to kill at the office.

Yspahan — At first glance, the physical version of this game seems to have a lot of dice (which it does) and that might suggest that the game is a luck driven dice fest.  In fact, the people who are drawn to this game are the same ones who like medium-heavy Eurogames with a sharp focus on resource management.  The dice may determine which actions are available in a given round, but after that the game depends on a draft mechanic that still provides you with lots of good tactical choices.  The software package here is an excellent implementation of the game, but this will still be totally confusing if you haven’t played the physical game at least once, or unless you spend a lot of time reading the online version of the rules.  The primary dowload zip is in german (as is the documentation) but you can download an English language pack a little further down the page.  The AI is pretty weak at the lower levels, but really good at the high level, and at that setting this package will provide a real challenge to seasoned Eurogamers.  The program only tells you at the end of the game which “strategy” file that the various AI players were using.  It is very cool that not every AI plays the game the same way. 

Anyway, feel free to go exploring the list of available games, but I suspect that our friends at Micro$oft have shut down some of the “free” versions of the games that are now showing up in the Xbox Live marketplace, including Settlers of Cataan and Carcassone.  Still, there’s plenty of fun to be had here, especially if you can stumble across a tolerable version of one of your favorite board games.

Your comments make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.  Go ahead and tell everyone about your favorite PC quick-fix for those boardgaming urges!