A few years ago, Tabletopia (Free) pitched their idea on Kickstarter. In a nutshell, instead of having a million different individual digital board games, why not just build one super solid virtual tabletop that can effectively support any board (or card) game? Clearly, it resonated with tabletop gaming enthusiasts as they raked in just under $134,000 from their original $20,000 goal. The “full" version on PC has over 500 available games in it, and the platform monetizes by limiting how many games you can be involved in at once. Without paying anything you get access to a smaller, non-“premium," game library and you’re limited to two game sessions at a time. For $4.99 a month you get access to the “premium" games, and can play up to six games at once. For $9.99 you can have 10 sessions and invite guests to play the “premium" games with you. All in all, it seems like a fair setup, as I’m sure that money is being split a gazillion different ways as many of these digital versions have physical counterparts that are often quite expensive.

The iPad version launched this morning, and while it’s fairly limited, it shows some serious promise. Six games are playable right now: Sub Terra, Hansa Teutonica, The Shipwreck Arcana, Burgle Bros, Mint Works, and Champions of Midgard. Basically, it’s just a few games to test out which are local pass and play tabletop games that don’t require any information in the game to be private. More games are on the way soon, as is online multiplayer.

This trailer is for the Steam version, but it gives you a good idea of what’s in store for iOS:

I think Tabletopia is a super neat project, and I’m really excited to see it continue to be developed on mobile. If you’re at all interested in the Tabletopia system, and have an iPad, be sure to give this a try.