My game shelf tells two different stories. Left side’s got my video game collection – all neat and organized by console, special editions sitting pretty at eye level where I can admire them. Right side? Complete chaos. Board game boxes stacked every which way like some kind of cardboard Jenga tower that’s about to collapse and bury my coffee table. But there’s this weird middle ground where these two worlds crash into each other, and honestly, it’s been one hell of a ride watching video games try to become board games.
Started back around 2005 when I wandered into this game shop in Denver – can’t remember the name anymore, it’s long gone – and saw this massive World of Warcraft board game box. Thing was huge. I mean, I’ve hauled plenty of heavy stuff on construction sites, but this box looked like it could house a small family. My first thought was “How the hell do you turn an online game into something you play on your kitchen table?” Sixty-eight bucks later (still remember the price because it hurt), I’m struggling to fit this monster in my truck.
My buddy Frank came over that weekend, took one look at it and said, “Tim, we’re gonna need more than beer for this one.” He wasn’t kidding – took us twenty minutes just to punch out all the tokens. My dining room looked like a cardboard factory exploded.
Here’s the thing about turning video games into board games – it’s like trying to rebuild a house using completely different materials. What works great when you’re clicking a mouse and staring at a screen doesn’t always translate to dice and cardboard. Real-time action becomes “wait for your turn.” Those beautiful digital landscapes become some artist’s interpretation on a game board. Complex computer AI becomes a deck of cards you shuffle. Sometimes it works magic. Other times… well, let’s just say some games should’ve stayed digital.
The DOOM board game – the newer one from 2016, not that old clunky version – might be the best example I’ve seen of getting it right. Now, I’ve probably put a hundred hours into DOOM on my PC, ripping and tearing through demon hordes until my wrist cramped up. When the board game came out, I was skeptical as hell. How do you capture that frantic demon-slaughtering mayhem when you’re sitting around a table taking turns?
Turns out, you don’t try to recreate the exact same experience. Smart move. Instead, they made it about tactical combat and card management. My neighbor Carlos, who’s even more obsessed with DOOM than I am, came over for game night convinced it would be terrible. “This is stupid, Tim. DOOM isn’t about taking turns.” Three hours later, he’s standing on my couch waving this BFG card around making explosion sounds like he’s twelve years old. I had to tell him to keep it down before Mrs. Peterson next door called the cops again.
The Civilization board game gets it right too, but in a totally different way. Now, I’ve lost entire weekends to Civ on my computer – you know how it is, “just one more turn” until suddenly it’s 3 AM and you’re wondering where your Saturday went. The board game version couldn’t possibly include every single feature from the digital version without needing a manual the size of a phone book and games that last until next Tuesday.
So they didn’t try. Smart designers distilled it down to the core stuff – tech trees, expansion, different ways to win – and made it work in about two hours instead of twenty. It feels like Civilization without making you want to throw your back out from sitting hunched over a game board all day. My daughter tried it when she visited last Christmas and actually said, “Dad, this is pretty cool.” Coming from her, that’s high praise.
The secret sauce seems to be understanding that theme and mechanics are different things. Some designers get so hung up on copying every little detail from the video game that they forget they’re working with cardboard and plastic now, not pixels and processors. It’s like those terrible movie adaptations where they try to film every single page of the book – misses the point entirely.
But man, when these adaptations fail, they fail hard. I got all excited about this Assassin’s Creed board game – Brotherhood of Venice, I think it was called. Looked incredible in the photos. Detailed miniatures, gorgeous artwork, the whole nine yards. Set it up for game night, invited three friends over, spent forty-five minutes just getting everything ready.
The actual gameplay? Pure torture. All that fluid parkour and stealth stuff from the video game turned into this tedious token-shuffling exercise. My friend Rita, who’s usually patient with complicated games, threw her hands up after an hour. “I could’ve assassinated half of Renaissance Italy in the actual game by now,” she said. Box went right back on the shelf, hasn’t been touched since.
Same problem with the Resident Evil 2 board game. Looks like Resident Evil, has all the right characters and monsters, but playing it feels nothing like the video game. All that tension and genuine scares got diluted into some generic dungeon crawler. My nephew Jake was visiting last summer, huge RE fan, got all excited when I pulled it out. Kid can play video games for hours without blinking, but halfway through this board game he was checking his phone. When a teenager would rather browse social media than play a board game based on his favorite franchise, you know something went seriously wrong.
Pacing is probably the biggest killer. Video games can keep you on edge with instant feedback and non-stop action. Board games? There’s all this starting and stopping – checking rules, waiting for turns, setting up new scenarios. The Dark Souls board game is a perfect example of how this can go sideways. The video game’s brutal difficulty feels fair because you’ve got precise control and can jump right back in when you die. In the board game version, that same difficulty just feels mean-spirited. Die in a boss fight? Great, now we get to reset everything and spend another twenty minutes getting back to where we were. Fun times.
Not that complex video games can’t work as board games. The Fallout board game actually does a decent job capturing that “wandering the wasteland” feeling, even though “open world” and “board game” seem like they should cancel each other out. They focused on exploration and story choices instead of trying to recreate the minute-to-minute gameplay of scavenging for bottle caps and shooting raiders.
My friend Michelle had never touched a Fallout video game in her life, but after playing the board game at my place, she went out and bought Fallout 4 the next week. That’s the kind of crossover success that tells you the adaptation actually worked. It introduced someone to a franchise they’d never considered before.
The production quality makes a huge difference too. Good components and artwork help sell the illusion that you’re still in the same universe as the video game. The Portal board game – and yes, they made a Portal board game, which sounds impossible – doesn’t try to recreate those mind-bending physics puzzles. How could it? Instead, it’s got that perfect Portal humor and high-quality pieces that make it feel authentically Portal despite being completely different gameplay.
But sometimes it feels like publishers are just slapping familiar characters on generic games and hoping nobody notices. Won’t name names, but I’ve got a few video game adaptations sitting in my closet that turned out to be boring card games with a thin coat of recognizable paint. Bought them because I recognized the characters, played them once, never touched them again. My wallet’s gotten smarter over the years, but those early mistakes still sting.
The cooperative aspect is interesting too. Most of the video games I play are solo experiences – just me versus the computer. Board games work better with multiple people, obviously. The XCOM board game actually turns this potential problem into a strength. Everyone takes different roles, working together like you’re actually running the XCOM project. Even uses a smartphone app to keep some of that digital unpredictability. Clever solution.
I’ve learned to set expectations when introducing these games to friends. Can’t just say “Hey, want to play the board game version of that video game you love?” because they’ll expect it to play exactly like the digital version. Instead, I go with something like “This captures some of the same feelings as the video game, but it’s definitely its own thing.” Manages disappointment better.
My living room’s seen some epic victories and spectacular failures over the years. Had this amazing Gears of War session where my usually quiet coworker Steve got so into it that he literally roared when he chainsawed the final boss card. Had to tape the card back together afterward – probably should’ve warned him those weren’t meant for actual dismemberment. Then there was the time we spent an hour setting up the Starcraft board game only to realize the actual gameplay was confusing and boring. “Anyone just want to play the actual game instead?” someone suggested. We were online and playing within five minutes.
More of these adaptations come out every year. Some look promising – there’s a God of War card game coming that might be decent. Others make me scratch my head – did the world really need a Five Nights at Freddy’s version of Monopoly? But I’ll keep trying them. When they work, they offer something unique – a way to experience familiar worlds with friends around a table instead of alone at a computer screen. And when they don’t work… well, at least the miniatures might be useful for my D&D campaigns.
The whole phenomenon fascinates me because it’s two hobbies I love trying to merge into something new. Sometimes it’s brilliant, sometimes it’s a disaster, but it’s always interesting to see how designers try to solve that fundamental puzzle of making digital experiences work in the physical world.
Timothy discovered retro gaming at forty and never looked back. A construction foreman by day and collector by night, he writes from a fresh, nostalgia-free angle—exploring classic games with adult curiosity, honest takes, and zero childhood bias.
