Learn how to – Awesome Digital Tabletop Gaming Apps for iPhones and iPads

Learn how to – Awesome Digital Tabletop Gaming Apps for iPhones and iPads.

Tabletop games, aka table games, include such a vast range of indoor games that they have to be further subdivided into seven separate categories. However, it took several millennia for the tabletop games to evolve, diversify, and become so vast in their numbers. That’s right, the likes of Senet, Checkers, and Backgammon are older than the Pyramids!

Now that we are well into the digital age, several ancient and modern table games have been adapted to the digital format. Thanks to smartphones and tablets, we can now play chess with players from across the globe or try our luck at blackjack any time we like. However, not all apps are created equal, even when they are all trying to digitise the same table game. In this post, we will take a quick look at some of those games and the respective apps that have managed to get it right for iPhones and the iPads.

Exploding Kittens®

If you are interested in tabletop card games, then this modern hit should be a very familiar name to you. The best part is that Exploding Kittens® for iOS and iPadOS is the official, digitised version of the same card game that took the world by storm after it was crowdfunded into existence back in 2015. The only difference is that with the digital version, you will never lack enough players to start a game and get blasted by or defuse the exploding kittens! There are a lot of knock-off apps on the App Store that look to apply a similar idea with a different twist, but no one can possibly do it better than the original.

Roulette

Two popular versions of roulette are found in online and offline casinos today: American roulette and European roulette. If you are serious about winning, then stick to European roulette because it significantly lessens the house edge. European roulette is easy to identify because the table will only have one 0 if it is a European roulette wheel, while the American version will always have two (00). The exclusive benefit of playing the game digitally is that any decent casino app should have both versions of the roulette table available for players to choose from.

Just like how it is with other classic table games, there is no shortage of casino apps with built-in roulette on the App Store. However, only a handful of them are even worth your time. Check this list of the top casino apps for Canadians with built-in roulette, blackjack, and other classic table games found in online casinos. Each of the casino apps listed are available on the App Store to download for both the iOS and the iPadOS.

Chess

Chess is not the oldest tabletop game, contrary to what people believed earlier because that honor goes to Senate and perhaps Checkers/Draughts. However, chess did evolve from Mesopotamian checkers and both games still share the same 64-square board. Note that even though chess is not the oldest strategy game in the world, it is still one of the oldest tabletop board games in existence today (1400+ years). Furthermore, chess is the world’s most popular classic strategy game even in 2022.

Over the decades, no other classic board game has been digitised as many times as chess, but they were not all as good as they should have been. Thankfully, we do have a few great chess apps for iPhones and iPads available on the App Store that replicate the real-life board game in beautiful 3D via reliable online servers for multiplayer games.

3D integration is important because the usual 2D interface we are all used to seeing in digital chess fails to create the same visual effect as you would have while playing a real game of chess. With that in mind, there are two chess apps available on the App Store right now which are quite good. Real Chess 3D has decent AI and excellent graphics, while Champion Chess from Chess.com is the best game in terms of both AI and multiplayer integration.

Although you can play any of the games mentioned here on both iPhones and the iPads, keep in mind that you will have a better experience on the iPad. iPad apps are specially designed for the larger screen and a larger screen does make all digitised table games look a lot closer to their real-life counterparts.