With the increase in Smartphone apps you have to feel a little sorry for board game manufacturers with many struggling to compete with the instant excitement a phone based game can bring. However, Cheatwell games has decided that if they can’t beat the opposition then they may as well join them – their new board game come app, APP-Player is due to launch in July combining an iPhone and board game in one.
We snapped the game and had chance to speak to the games designer at the international Toy Fair 2011 in London earlier this week. The game comes with a free app for the iPhone, iPod or iPad and comes complete with four games.
These include masquerade, a charades based game where a player has to act out an entire phrase (not just a word or action), Humm Bug is a timed game where players are given a song that they have to hum into the iPhone device for 30 seconds – we managed to draw Take That’s Shine, an easy win for us! The songs can be selected from different eras so the whole family can play.
The two other games offer a standard trivia game, much like trivial pursuit and an interesting title called Tension. Tension involves a subject, for example things that hold money, one player has to name at least five things with the other player or team ticking off the correct answers – very simple but very fun.
The game comes with a reversible game board with two ways of using each game and can be used by two players or more. It also comes with a speaker that tethers to your Apple device via the 3.5 mm jack.
The whole game will cost just £29.99 when it goes on sale in July, the games designer told us that “lot’s of add-ons will follow at app store prices, so 79p for new titles that can use the same board”. He added “spot the intro would be a perfect fit, players can use their own music catalogue to play the game, the same with the drawing games we sell – it will all work with the generic board with a huge amount of apps that can be added in the future”.
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The suitably titled App-Player could be a big hit when it launches later this year, what do you think of the concept?
