The Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game created and written by Erick Wujcik, set in the fictional universe created by author Roger Zelazny for his Chronicles of Amber. The game is unusual in that no dice are used in resolving conflicts or player actions; instead a simple diceless system of comparative ability, and narrative description of the action by the players and gamemaster, is used to determine how situations are resolved.
Risk is a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the world, divided into 42 territories, which are grouped into six continents. Turns rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls. Players may form and dissolve alliances during the course of the game. The goal of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and, in doing so, eliminate the other players. The game can be lengthy, requiring several hours to multiple days to finish. European versions are structured so that each player has a limited "secret mission" objective that shortens the game.
Civilization is a board game designed by Francis Tresham, published in the United Kingdom in 1980 by Hartland Trefoil, and in the United States in 1981 by Avalon Hill. The Civilization brand is now owned by Hasbro. It was out of print for many years, before Gibsons Games republished it in 2018. The game typically takes eight or more hours to play and is for two to seven players.
Pachisi is a cross and circle board game that originated in Ancient India. It is described in the ancient text Mahabharata under the name of "Pasha". It is played on a board shaped like a symmetrical cross. A player's pieces move around the board based upon a throw of six or seven cowrie shells, with the number of shells resting with the aperture upward indicating the number of spaces to move.
Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999. It is played with Icehouse pyramids on a chessboard. To play with a number of players other than two or four, a non-Euclidean surface can be tiled to produce a board of the required size, allowing up to six players.
Button Men is a dice game for two players invented by James Ernest of Cheapass Games and first released in 1999.
In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, a ludeme is an element of play like the L-shaped move of the knight in chess. A game's mechanics thus effectively specify how the game will work for the people who play it.
Evo: The Last Gasp of the Dinosaurs is a German-style board game for three to five players, designed by Philippe Keyaerts and published by Eurogames. The game won the GAMES Magazine award for Game of the year 2002. It was nominated for the Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game 2000. In 2004 it was nominated for the Hra Roku. The game went out of print in 2007, and a second edition was released in 2011.
Four-player chess is a family of chess variants played with four people. The game features a special board typically made of a standard 8×8 square, with 3 rows of 8 cells each extending from each side, and requires two sets of differently colored pieces. The rules are similar to, but not the same as, regular chess. There are a variety of different rule variations; most variations, however, share a somewhat similar board and piece setup.
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends is a science fantasy real-time strategy video game for Microsoft Windows, made by Big Huge Games, and published by Microsoft. It is a spin-off of the popular Rise of Nations, released in May 2006. However, rather than being a historical game, it is based in a fantasy world, where technology and magic co-exist. It was released on May 9, 2006 in North America and on various dates around May 26, 2006 in the rest of the world.
Chaturaji is a four-player chess-like game. It was first described in detail c. 1030 by Al-Biruni in his book India. Originally, this was a game of chance: the pieces to be moved were decided by rolling two dice. A diceless variant of the game was still played in India at the close of the 19th century.
Yari shogi is a modern variant of shogi ; however, it is not Japanese. It was invented in 1981 by Christian Freeling of the Netherlands. This game accentuates shogi’s intrinsically forward range of direction by giving most of the pieces the ability to move any number of free squares orthogonally forward like a shogi lance. The opposite is true of promoted pieces which can move backward with the same power.
Judkins shogi is a modern variant of shogi, however it is not Japanese. Credit for its invention has been given to Paul Judkins of Norwich, UK, prior to April 1998.
Amun-Re is a game designed by Reiner Knizia and first published in 2003 by Hans im Glück in German and in English by Rio Grande Games.
StarCraft: The Board Game, published by Fantasy Flight Games, is a game inspired by the 1998 computer game StarCraft. Players take control of the three distinctive races featured in the video games, the Terrans, the Protoss, or the Zerg, to engage in battle across multiple worlds in order to achieve victory. Each of the three races features a fairly different playing style. A prototype of the game was shown in BlizzCon 2007, with pre-release copies sold at Gen Con 2007 and Penny Arcade Expo 2007. It was publicly released in October 2007.
Starfarers of Catan is a multiplayer board game loosely based on the Settlers of Catan series of games. It was created by Klaus Teuber as an official spin-off and is distributed by Kosmos in German and Mayfair Games in English.
Small World is a board game designed by Philippe Keyaerts, Illustrated by Miguel Coimbra and Cyrille Daujean as graphic designer, and published by Days of Wonder in 2009. The game is a reworking of Keyaerts' 1999 game Vinci. Small World has won several awards, including Games magazine 2010 Game of the Year.
Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame is a 2002 board game created by Glenn Drover based on the Civilization series of video games, in particular, Civilization III. Drover himself was a sales manager at Microprose during the original development of Civilization, though he was not directly involved in the creation of the video game.
Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game is a 2010 board game created by Kevin Wilson based on the Sid Meier's Civilization series of video games and published by Fantasy Flight Games. While the previous board game based on Sid Meier's Civilization, published by Eagle Games in 2002, was based on Civilization III, the 2010 version takes its primary inspiration from Civilization IV. Its expansions, Fame and Fortune and Wisdom and Warfare, also began to incorporate concepts derived from Civilization V.
Fireside Games is a US based board game publishing company owned and operated by Justin De Witt and Anne-Marie De Witt. Based in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in 2007. They published their first game, Castle Panic in 2009, and have published several expansions and sequels as well as other titles since then.
