Recs for turn-based mobile games?

[liv]

So months ago untonuggan wrote a really interesting post about bad childhood experiences of games. And it's a theme I've seen quite a lot, that the only reason adults would want to play competitive games with children is to bully them. Which is very different to my experience; adults played games with me mainly because they wanted to entertain me and spend time with me. And in fact I turned out to like gaming a lot better than most of my influential adults did, so I carried on playing games into adulthood. My parents play bridge and Scrabble voluntarily, for example, but generally otherwise see games as something they don't really have to do any more now their offspring are adults.

So when I play games with kids, particularly my partners' kids, I'm mainly trying to share an enthusiasm with them. I play games because I enjoy it and I hope they will too, but accounts like untonuggan's make me worry that I'm creating experiences which will undermine their confidence and that they will grow up resenting me for making them play games and possibly with anxiety around competition. I mean, I don't think it's very likely that I'm inadvertently harming the children, because if I thought it was likely I wouldn't be doing it, but, well, I personally enjoy competition and I am aware there's a fine line between purely playful competition and actually overpowering people. Also my OSOs are pretty intensely a gaming family, and I generally trust the parents' judgement that their kids are actively enjoying the games we play and not being coerced into anything by domineering adults.

I wrote a long comment on untonuggan's post, which I probably should have yoinked over here as a top level post because it's mostly about me. So I shall reproduce it here now, belatedly. My family growing up were pretty competitive, but we four siblings are close in age, so there was a reasonable chance that the younger kids would win at least some of time, and that we could find games that were enjoyable for all of us with only a five year age range between the oldest (me) and the youngest. The adults we played with, mostly parents and grandparents but some friends as well, never "let" us win just because we were children, but did offer a bit of advice on strategy when it seemed appropriate. I have a very vivid memory of the first time I beat my father at chess, when I was four and he was nearly forty, but I remember it because it was a meaningful victory, he didn't just throw the game as a concession to my young age, though he probably didn't play to his utmost ability either.

Now I'm in the position of an adult playing with young children, and I've tended to follow the role models I had growing up. I play competitively, but I select games where a bright three-year-old can grasp the rules and strategy of the game and have a reasonable chance of beating me. At least these days, maybe not so much when we were kids, there are options in between pure chance games like Candyland which are boring for over-fives, and games like Scrabble where adults just have infinite advantage over children. I set up adult-child, or older kid-younger kid, teams, or encourage older and more experienced players offering advice to younger players. Valid advice, and no cheating by taking advantage of finding out secret information in the course of giving the advice.

I don't encourage gloating or psychological gamesmanship / borderline cheating. Everybody celebrates the winner and everybody is kind to the losers. So I hope the kids will not pick up the idea that losing a game means terrible humiliation, and that they will be able to enjoy the competitive aspect of games, which for me is part of the fun, though I completely understand that the very fact of competition is horribly stressful for many people. And equally I am trying to learn from the children that playing just for the sake of playing can be a different kind of fun, things like tag and I Spy they prefer to play just for the joy of running around or pointing out things in the environment, and don't care at all about even temporarily winning.

Many of my friends are gamers too, which is not surprising since I hang out in geek circles mainly. And many of them are introducing their kids to their hobbies, and I really don't think they're being horrible in the ways portrayed in the linked post. I think part of not being awful is picking games carefully, ones that don't require unreasonable amounts of analysis or long-term strategy, and certainly not ones that depend on world knowledge. Trivial Pursuit is kind of a terrible game anyway but it's particularly terrible with mixed age players. And honestly there's such a wide range of games available these days, I feel there's a cornucopia of options of things that are simple enough for children and fun for habitual gamers. I don't really like the solution of pure chance games because although it means younger players win a proportionate amount of the time, they're just not fun.

Anyway, one thing that seems to be working quite well is playing games on smartphones or tablets. Not video games in the conventional sense, but traditional or Euro-style multiplayer games that happen to be instantiated on the phone. I'd really like some recommendations for more of those! One that we've been playing a lot is OLO (basically digital shove-ha'penny). What I want primarily is games that can be played on a single device, passed between players.

I'm also interested in asynchronous games, essentially play-by-mail but with the phone handling the tedious bit where you have to write your move down and put it in the post. The sort of model espoused by Draw Something, a very good implementation of digital Pictionary except that it got bought out by evil Zynga the day after I bought the app. And along the lines Yucata, but for phones rather than desktops. Yucata is a website, so it works approximately on modern smartphones, but it's fiddly on anything less than 10'' and all the development work is geared towards desktops. Those games are nice to play with adult friends because I can make one move a day or even slower than that, and it's a little bit of connection and a few minutes at worst of distraction. I can imagine in the not too distant future such games might be nice to play with the kids as well, just as a way of saying hi while I'm not around.

I'm specifically not looking for networked games, where you both have to be fully concentrating and reliably connected to the internet for the whole duration of the game. That's less interesting to me whether I'm in the same place as the people I'm playing with or whether it's a long-distance thing. There seem to be a lot more of those around, which is a bit surprising to me as I'd imagine it's more difficult to code a networked, synchronous game than a turn-based game. But for example, I really like the phone version of Ticket to Ride, except for the fact that if you want to play with humans you have to both be online at the same time and there's not even a way to save the game, you have to play through the whole game at once. If I have an hour free to spend time with a friend, I'd rather chat to them than play a phone game. Also, I want to be able to add friends by username much more than I want to play against strangers, but I really don't want to sign up to the horrible Google Play Games thing which will spam everybody I've ever contacted through Gmail every time I get a highscore in a silly casual game, and force me to join Google+ (I just can't wait until Google finally admit that horrible travesty is dead and stop trying to trick people into signing up).

I'm sure turn-based asynchronous games like this must be out there, but I'm having a hard time finding them as all my searches turn up everything that's vaguely in the genre of electronic versions of board games. So I'm hoping my human friends can do better than search engines. Even really traditional games like chess, go or backgammon would be lovely to have, as long as I can play with specific individuals not anybody who happens to be online, and I can make a move and have the phone transmit the changed state to my opponents, allowing them to respond in their own time. Any ideas?

Comments

[pseudomonas]

I like this Free Software Scrabble implementation for Android (available on Google Play store here and F-Droid here). It's pretty bare-bones but it works just fine and doesn't have lots of adware or geofencing or whatnot.

[pseudomonas]

also I like that you invite people to join a game by email, and there's no creating accounts or giving the app your email address or any of that stuff.

[liv]

Ooh, I thought you might have a good Scrabble. I like that a lot, it's exactly what I want from a phone implementation of a board game. Cheers!

[wychwood]

I was going to suggest Ticket to Ride, actually - my version has a "pass and play" version you can use for playing with someone else in person, which you don't mentioned and might not know about?

Another potentially-fun one for in-person games is Spaceteam, which requires a device per person (either all on wifi, or all iOS devices on Bluetooth) - the idea is that you are all in a spaceship each of you at a different console; you get a series of instructions, some of them for the controls in front of you and some for other people so you have to shout the instructions out, follow the ones for you, and listen for other people giving you instructions. It's kind of infuriatingly awesome to play, and I wish I had more opportunities. Maybe give it a try and see what you think of it for your purposes?

[liv]

That's good to know that TTR has a pass and play mode. I think in person I'd probably rather play the physical game, as I find it slightly fiddly on the phone. I mainly want an asynchronous online version, and that's what seems to be lacking.

Spaceteam sounds awesome, and for when the kids are a bit older I think it would be really good to play some games like that where the phone is a prop to facilitate interacting with humans. My general expectation of games played between multiple devices is that you end up spending a lot of time faffing around troubleshooting the connection, and perhaps technology is good enough nowadays that it just works, but as a rule I tend to gravitate more to pass and play.

[wychwood]

Yeah - in person in a house the boardgame is probably easier, but I did pass and play with my tablet on a coach trip, and that actually worked quite well!

Spaceteam has required a little bit of fiddling, in my experience, but not a huge amount and certainly not every time - sometimes it just works, at least. And it is a lot of fun :)

[lovingboth]

I look at the cost of the physical games and the video version - also available on Linux / Mac / Windows - and think I have no need to buy the former.

[ambyr]

I'm afraid I mostly only do mobile games in pass-and-play mode, which doesn't sound like it's relevant to what you're looking for. I like Agricola and Carcassone for that, and if you're looking for a cooperative I have friends who love the tablet implementation of Sentinels of the Multiverse. (I am not a fan of the game myself, but that's a whole other conversation.)

Desktop/laptop-wise, the implementation of Race for the Galaxy is pretty good at allowing you to play networked games over a prolonged period of time, as long as your opponent(s) don't mind the delays. But there is no mobile implementation (probably for the best, or I would never look up from my phone.)

I think I'm with you as far as your reaction to untonuggan's post goes. I am sorry she had bad experiences with games as a child, but it doesn't resonate with my own experiences. I loved (and still love) playing games with my parents, and their approach never involved Letting Me Win or We're Just Playing For Fun, although they did mod the rules sometimes for age appropriateness (e.g., they let me use proper nouns in Scrabble when I was in grade school, on the theory that encouraging me to learn how to spell Africa correctly was far more developmentally valuable than having me memorize the Scrabble dictionary) and encouraged me to think of Trying Your Hardest as more important than Winning per se.

Playing with people who don't approach games from the perspective that they're trying their hardest and would like to win is for me like watching a movie with someone who talks the whole time. Like, if you're not interested in this activity, that's fine! Let's do another activity (or just sit and talk)! But it's not fun for me to share an activity with someone who isn't, from my perspective, fully engaged in it.

[rysmiel]

Playing with people who don't approach games from the perspective that they're trying their hardest and would like to win is for me like watching a movie with someone who talks the whole time.

I suppose it depends on what one counts as trying to win. Scrabble with people who are playing to make cool words and open up the board is much more fun than people who are playing strictly to win by reducing the other players' opportunities, for me; and Carcassonne is also a lot of fun trying to build big cool castles collaboratively.

[ambyr]

Which I am not implying means you are doing anything wrong! That is a perfectly fine way to play, if you are playing with people who enjoy that style of play. (Some people like MST3King movies, and that is a fine way to watch movies as long as they're not watching with people who prefer silence in the theater.) It just means you should not play games with me, because that would make me utterly miserable.

[liv]

I do want mobile games with pass-and-play too; that's why I like OLO, for example. What I want with the kids is something where I'm interacting with them and not just separately poking at our devices (though that can be nice too sometimes), and pass and play is great for that. I think something as complex as Carcassonne or Agricola I'd prefer to play with the physical games, but I like simple, short pass-and-play games.

I don't know Race for the Galaxy, shall look into it! I'm not against desktop gaming, I do it quite a lot, I'm just hoping for phone games with a similar, asynchronous mechanic.

[ambyr]

Fair warning: the computer implementation of Race for the Galaxy is fan-developed and was created largely as a practice tool for people who already know the game, which is to say 1) it doesn't include any rules or help text and 2) the AI has only one difficulty setting, and that is very, very strong. It is my favorite game, but I'm not sure the computer version is the best way to learn it! Although, it is free, at least.

I do prefer the physical versions of Carc and Agricola, but pass-and-play is great when I'm on an airplane, or stuck in a broken down car waiting for a tow truck, or otherwise lacking in table space.

[damerell]

I only really caught the boardgame bug in my teens (I blame _DungeonQuest_) and played with other kids, so my only real experience is visiting my friend S (a keen gamer) and one of his sons this year. He seems to be doing OK by playing to win but starting with easy games with a significant random element - and kibitzing like crazy.

I didn't comment on Liz's post because it's bleeding obvious, but there's an obvious false dichotomy between letting someone win and not only playing to win but giving bad advice and cheating.

As an adult, obviously, I feel not playing to win would show a lack of respect for the opponent.

And yes, the only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner. :-/

[davidgillon]

Can't really help with recs as phones aren't a gaming platform I use (PC, yes I could point you at stuff), but this sort of intersects with some thoughts I've been having about gaming.

I come in to this from a slightly different background. I did the family games thing as a kid, but my interests spun off into board wargames as a teen. Mostly I've played solitaire, though there was a wargaming club at Lancaster when I was a student (and some interesting inter-group politics between different groups of gamers), I've rarely had the opportunity to play person vs person since leaving university, but computer gaming caught up with board wargames in the late 90s and there have been playable versions ever since, many of which do offer alternate turns via email (though I still find myself playing solitaire).

I was looking at a game system I've not played in years the other day (turns out it's now available as PDFs on Wargames Vault/DriveThruRPG), and it occurred to me that half the rules that never really appealed to me, such as writing turns in advance (a very popular mechanic in tactical naval games, which this was), are there solely to stop people from gaming the system to win, which it just wouldn't occur to me to do. I might want to win, but I want the win to be because I've been the better tactician or strategist, not because I've found a hole in the rules. I'd far rather have an interesting game and lose than a gamey win.

I've been puzzling over what that says about the general population of gamers, and the only conclusion I can come to is that I'm not typical!

[green_knight]

(No recommendations for software at all).

My experiences as a child very much mirror yours: we played early and often. I'm not overly comfortable playing with people who expect to WIN and who will use every advantage, every rule: I like gas much better with people who will cheer a good move, regardless of who made it, and who will allow a certain amount of leeway in 'oh damn, the die landed on the floor, but it's a six: does that still count?' and 'Nooooooo, I should have done [other move]' 'Don't worry''. If someone gives me the feel they're only too glad to crush me under their heel, I don't feel I'm engaging in a social activity anymore; I cannot imagine how horrible that must have been for a small kid.

[lilacsigil]

I think there can be a good balance between trying to win (while playing by the agreed-upon rules) and having fun with different ages and abilities! My family looks competitive from the outside but also nobody is mocked or humiliated and there's lots of leeway for beginners and kids, and games chosen appropriately.

Except Monopoly. Monopoly is an awful, awful game and always ended in tears, so we stopped playing it around 1988.

[zhelana]

We had a trivial persuit game when I was growing up tht ha separate questions for kids and adults. It was a lot of fun, and I still felt like a winner even ehwn I won using children's cads

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, my family has one of these too, and my nephews use the children's cards (some of which are quite difficult!) and everyone has a good time.

[siderea]

Play-and-pass games: Compact Conflict is HTML5, so maybe that works on your tablet in browser? I only play games on my desktop, so not sure.

No mention so far of handicapping, which is how my family handled developmental/experience differences. So the adults wouldn't make deliberate bad moves or go "easy" on us, but start with some penalty. Also, playing to win meant playing to win, not being a jerk about winning.

I learned to play most traditional games from my father, and initial play was always more like tutoring, until I started to get not just the rules but some of the strategy. My father wasn't interested in playing cribbage against a child. My father wanted to play cribbage against a cribbage player. He was willing to invest a bit to get what he wanted. :D

[silveradept]

Cribbage and euchre both are games that require some up front investment in strategy and gameplay, but they pay off handsomely in that they become quick games to be able to play with anyone else who knows how. Although I could sometimes win at cribbage, it was rarely because I could outpeg either my dad or my grandfather.

[jack]

*hugs*

Oh dear, liz's post was really sad :( But I think it's clear that she doesn't think playing games has to be like that, just that she was really angry that it's what it was like for her family. I agree, it's something that can often go wrong, but I think it's fairly clear Oso's children enjoy board-gaming and want to play, and I know I did when I was young.

Damerell's point was also good, that there may be a problem with competitiveness, but there's a much bigger problem with people who don't see a difference between "playing competitively" and "cheating". I'm not surprised, it's a phase many people go through, I think learning to try to win by following the rules is actually something you have to learn and isn't inherently obvious, and learning to cope with people who have different scruples to you is part of learning. But playing ONLY with people who ALWAYS take advantage of you is really horrible :(

I've talked before about how I feel about playing competitively but I find it hard to describe. I don't want to LET people win, but I certainly think it's healthy to not always try as hard as you can. And I've been trying to actively learn how to have fun with goals OTHER than winning (sometimes by observing the children), eg. saying "OK, lets see if I can win with gardens even though I don't think that's best because I want to see if it works and it will be fun trying".

I think that also ties in to a question of how strategically to play. Like, to me, if you deliberately buy duchies in T1 dominion, or some other deliberately suboptimal move, you're clearly letting someone win (unless you're trying a specific unusual strategy). But to me "buying a first card without reading all the cards and deciding a strategy in advance" is EQUALLY MUCH "deliberately playing suboptimally" and I try to do it because it's fun, or so we can play quickly, but I find it difficult. But it seems like to other people, that attitude is just non-existent and doesn't make sense...

[silveradept]

I was going to mention that many implementations of board games have pass and play varieties, but not necessarily of the kind where you can save the progression of the game as it goes on. There are a few good ones probably hiding in my Humble stash, but I can't recall them right now.

Another way I've seen the idea of local play implemented has been with various Jackbox (previously Jellyvision) games, where each person's mobile device is their drawing pad, or the space where they enter answers to questions, or otherwise how they play the game, while a local screen with an attached computer handles displaying scores, questions, and other game action. My siblings and friends use this in conjunction with videoconferencing to play games with each other despite being several thousand miles away.

As for asynchronous games, there used to be a directory of sind sorry where one could find caps play by email-type games. That may have taken into disrepair, but surely some still exist, along with some play by post games.

Game paying in the household was always about having fun and learning, and the parents tended to select games where the kids would have to take on roles like managing the bank or keeping score, so that while we were having fun, we were also practicing necessary school skills. We all caught on to this early on, but we loved playing the fans, so we kept doing it. I don't think there was much competitiveness involved, even when playing Hearts.