Tabletop games continue their push into the electronic space, with at least a dozen digital adaptations released in 2019—and that’s not counting the numerous games in Early Access (like Gloomhaven) or approaching beta (Charterstone). Below, I’ve ranked my eight best of the year based on app quality, play experience, and purchase price.
Other games were either too buggy or just not good enough to include. I’ll give an honorable mention to Takenoko, which was released in early December and looks fantastic… but is just too buggy to recommend right now. For example, if you switch out of the app mid-game, the app usually restarts and loses your progress, and the app requires you to tap too many times during AI opponents’ moves. (Surprisingly, it’s from Asmodee Digital, who typically does such great and bug-free work, so I expect these problems will eventually be resolved, but for now I’d say hold off on purchasing even if you love the tabletop version.)
But these eight are each worth your time. We’ll kick things off with…
8. Mystic Vale (Nomad Games)
This one showcases the game’s great artwork.
This one showcases the game’s great artwork.
Mystic Vale is a “card-crafting” deckbuilder, where you buy cards from the market and use them to enhance cards that are already in your deck. Each card has three slots you can upgrade, and you can only add a new card to an existing one if the right slot remains unused. As with most deckbuilders, you’re trying to acquire as many victory points as you can, mostly through card values, but here there are additional points in a shared pool that you can acquire through the right card combinations.
The digital version does a great job of letting you scroll through the two rows of the market and through your two rows of cards (cards in play and permanent cards), expanding or removing focus as needed and highlighting what cards you can legally purchase and play on each turn. My one quibble with the app is that the game ends so abruptly—there’s no warning unless you’re watching the victory point stash to see that it’s nearly exhausted.
