Opinion: Some board games (eg Space Hulk) don't translate well to video games

[Matty]

Greetings again....

Many years ago I had the tabletop board game "Space Hulk". For those who don't know and can't be bothered searching online - it's a turn based space ship corridor shooter with a handful of missile armed space marines fighting against hordes of bug like aliens. Think the movie Aliens as a board game.

A good number of hobbyist developers, including myself, over the years (and on the blitz forums) have tried replicating it as a pc game. There's a number of pc versions that have been released every so often from 1990s onwards.

But in my opinion it's always rather clunky as a pc game, and one of the really main simple reasons is this:

PC Game turn sequence - player has to manually move through every single square their units move through, click, click, click, click.

Actual board game - when two intelligent players with decent experience are playing a huge number of actions can be resolved not in their true sequence - merging a bunch of 'actions' into their final result...eg "I'm going to move from here to here through these squares and take n shots with my boltguns" - player simply moves from start to end point without all the intervening grid squares being 'clicked on' ala the video games and just picks up the dice and rolls them sufficient times.

Basically there's "efficiency" ways of playing that occur with most board games where smart experienced players know that the general A-Z set of actions can be resolved without having to step from A-B-C-D-...._Z manually bit by bit.

PC Games can't do that. You can't click on a marine in Space Hulk in any pc game version and say, I'm just going to move down this corridor 4 squares and take a shot on each move at the door in front of me by simply positioning the marine 4 squares ahead, and rolling the dice 4 times or until the door explodes.

That's the benefit of an actual tabletop game to a pc game in some situations.

[angros47]

It's well known how some board games cannot be ported well to a computer game. Games like Snakes and ladders, or the goose game, would be extremely boring, because the player and the computer pieces would act exactly in the same way

[Derron]

Just mentioning I have a similar game (Space Quest) (German localization) here on top of my board games wall/shelf
Paid over 120,- DM that time.
And I have the Lords of rings boardgame which has to be played with a compuer tablet next to the players.


Regarding "smart handling":
People NOT so experienced in the game would think of it as "cheating".
The game could ask "hey, you are moving right out of the door, want to shoot the creeps left and right? Easy win for ya and you can even move some steps further afterwards".
This is like "guided gaming" then.

PC-Games can offer you taking notes for you, calculating damage done, presenting "options", marking you the "walk to area", can remember buffs, debuffs, ...
So they _assist_ and also are able to take the role of the game master.
PC Games also are able to animate the world, to dynamically fudge together your "game tiles" which in board games often is a bit ... tedious.

Any added "convenience" might lead to above described "cheating/guided gaming" thing.


bye
Ron