Headsets, controllers, stay chat — even once we’re linked, most of us sport alone. Within the void of stronger sofa co-op experiences, entrepreneur Brynn Putnam noticed a chance: a tool that would ship the vitality of a online game with the in-room social spark of a board sport. The outcome was Board.
The $700 tabletop console — an enormous, polished 24-inch touchscreen designed to sit down flat on a desk — doesn’t match neatly into any present gaming product class. It isn’t a do-everything open-ecosystem PC competitor or a tightly walled-off novelty system. It could actually’t change a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Collection X as a AAA platform, and it’s onerous to think about the way it ever may. As a substitute, the Board expertise is constructed round touchscreen gaming that makes use of bespoke bodily items and prioritizes face-to-face play. On a house client degree, there wasn’t very like it, which meant the primary order of enterprise for Putnam’s crew of puzzlemakers and businessfolk was to think about the chances.
“When you’ve gotten a brand new method of controlling, that at all times creates new alternatives in gaming,” Board CTO Ryan Measel advised Polygon on a video name. “We noticed that with the multi-touch display of the iPhone […] we noticed that with the Wii and movement controls. We really feel like that is now one other new alternative.”
That chance begins with the {hardware} itself. Board’s display is a big, sealed show framed like a chunk of furnishings slightly than a gadget. Plugged into the wall, the display is vivid and shiny, and built-in audio system permit for opt-in soundtracking (or silence, for those who quantity all of it the way in which down). Every of Board’s 12 launch video games comes with its personal set of bodily parts: knives and sponges for Chop Chop, the short-order cooking multiplayer sport; stairs and blasters for the Lemmings-like Save the Bloogs; blocks for the 3D grid sport Strata; and spaceships, rings, totems, and tokens for a fleet of different arcade-style face-offs. The items are all constructed for single video games and by no means reused as generic controllers. (i.e. the chopsticks for sushi-themed duel Omakase gained’t work with Tamagotchi-esque Mushka). There’s no common stylus, no one-size-fits-all-play expertise, like a closet of board video games stuffed into one machine.
That design alternative is central to Board’s philosophy, even when it creates apparent challenges for scaling a platform.
“We experimented with generic items and what we discovered is it simply didn’t really feel pretty much as good,” stated chief creative officer and head of video games Seth Sivak. “It didn’t really feel pretty much as good to make use of a triangle to chop because it did to make use of a knife. There’s one thing about that metaphor being that sturdy that actually made the expertise higher.”
What makes a Board sport
Earlier than Board, Putnam based Mirror, the good health show she offered to Lululemon in 2021. In accordance with Measel, the thought for Board grew out of Putnam’s personal family: a multigenerational household the place “household time” had step by step become everybody watching Netflix or scrolling on their telephones in the identical room.
The objective wasn’t to exchange board video games or reinvent video video games, however to discover a center floor. After testing the demo system over a number of days, I’d name it successful. In Chop Chop, my household and I rushed to get out orders in Overcooked model, bodily chopping greens with tiny knives, scrubbing counter tops with sponges, and stirring pots with spoons. In Strata, designed by Studio Chyr, we stacked and rotated the Tetris blocks items to say territory in ways in which wouldn’t work as seamlessly in a bodily board sport or really feel as devilishly aggressive in a conventional online game.
“We had been at all times asking, ‘Does this really feel board-native? Might this sport solely exist on this system?’” Sivak stated.
That query turned particularly necessary because the crew iterated on early prototypes. Some concepts had been shelved fully. Others had been radically reworked as soon as the crew realized that an excessive amount of tapping or finger-based enter made the video games really feel like outsized tablets as a substitute of tactile experiences. Touchdown on the right mix of mechanics, then assigning them to distinctive taking part in items, turned the workflow to perfecting any given Board sport.
“We did not need Wii waggle,” Sivak stated. “That was the type of instance I might at all times convey as much as the crew: Within the worst a part of the Wii hysteria, everybody was simply utilizing the gyroscope for every little thing. And so it turned meaningless and other people hated it. As a substitute, for those who play Chop Chop, there’s a number of touching and dragging and piece stuff — it is not like we do not use fingers, we use fingers when it is smart — however a common piece would have taken away a few of that feeling of make-believe that is a part of the bodily meets digital magic of the system.”
One in every of Board’s greatest design challenges — and maybe the crew’s greatest hurdle — is attempting to make video games that work throughout generations. The corporate isn’t simply concentrating on hardcore console gamers alone, or households with toddlers, or board sport obsessives. They need Board to work for everybody when it must, realizing they may simply water down the experiences by making them broad. “Everybody desires to do the Pixar factor — enjoyable for teenagers and adults — and never find yourself with Sweet Land,” Sivak stated.
The answer, in lots of circumstances, is function differentiation slightly than issue scaling. In Chop Chop, my youthful child can tackle easier duties — like putting a back-up chef on our soup burners — whereas our older gamers juggled extra complicated duties like allotting veggies and assembling sandwiches. Save the Bloogs, from Webcore Video games, begins very merely, difficult gamers to construct bridges and platforms as their little critters begin marching towards spike pits, and with 100 ranges, Silva guarantees there’s a problem tier for everybody (adjustable with sliders for Bloog pace and a pause button for stumped youngsters).
“That’s not dishonest,” Sivak stated after I talked about assigning sponge responsibility to a youthful participant. “That’s precisely why we designed it that method.”
A number of video games additionally embrace easygoing free-play modes that strip away timers and scoring, letting youngsters merely experiment with the items and techniques. I used to be pleased to search out a number of video games that I truly loved sans youngsters fully; after bedtime, with the fitting pour of wine, my spouse and I spent a stable hour taking part in Omakase, the creation of 7 Wonders Duel gamemaker Bruno Cathala, and Cosmic Crush, an alien-themed battle to clear rows and rating factors that requires simply sufficient technique to keep away from Sweet Crush malaise. It is a bit of a cliché that rings true for Board: even among the many 12 launch titles, there was one thing for everybody — and each consideration span — in our early checks.
What $700 buys you with Board — now and sooner or later
A typical knock in opposition to experimental {hardware} is novelty fatigue: It’s enjoyable for a weekend, spectacular at a celebration, after which quietly forgotten. So the place does Board go from right here, and the way shortly?
“The 2025 problem was: Are individuals enthusiastic about this concept in any respect?” Sivak stated. “Now the 2026 problem is how shortly we are able to get the sport pipeline to a spot the place we’re giving individuals the correct amount of ongoing issues to play.”
Some video games on Board are designed to be infinitely replayable due to rotating playspaces and wholesome competitors. Others are content-driven however constructed for enlargement — it’s simple to see expansions to Save the Bloops and Chop Chop arriving by Wi-Fi-enabled updates down the highway. As a result of the items are bodily, brand-new video games might be offered à la carte slightly than by a subscription. Board isn’t committing to precise pricing but, however the firm envisions expansions touchdown nearer to board sport costs than $70 console releases.
Board plans to open the platform to outdoors builders, too. An SDK is already rolling out to an preliminary cohort, with broader entry deliberate in 2026 — together with the flexibility for customers to sideload homebrew initiatives.
“We see this Founder Version [the version currently for sale] as a dev equipment too,” Measel stated. “By seeding these units of items now, we’re giving builders a spot to launch from.”
None of that adjustments the elephant within the room: Board prices $700, greater than a PS5 or Xbox Collection X, and it exists in a world the place telephones already dominate informal play. (Though by Dec. 31, Board has discounted the unit to $500.) There’s room for competitors; over Black Friday, the $200 Nex Playground, a subscription-based motion-tracker console with a fleet of mobile-skinned video games geared toward youngsters, outsold Xbox.
Sivak doesn’t shrink back from the comparisons, and believes the breadth of programming delivered with higher high quality offers Board room to breakthrough.
“We do see ourselves as a console,” he stated. “We’re transport a console with 12 video games, with lots of of hours of play.”
He additionally frames the worth by way of what households already spend — a number of Switches, tablets, TVs, and $40 to $100 board video games that require setup, teardown, and shelf house. Board has its personal dangers — we’ll see how lengthy I can go with out scuffing up the (seemingly sturdy) display and if future, extra formidable video games encounter slowdown as they check the specs of this primary unit — however there’s apparent enchantment in having the display, the video games, and the items in a single bundle. And by engineering video games designed for in-person competitors and co-op, to be performed in bodily house, over time it is easy to see it filling a spot that Sony and Microsoft and even Nintendo have largely deserted.
“The largest promoting level of the brand new Mario Kart is a 24-player on-line mode,” Sivak stated. “And I feel it is simply going away from what individuals wished. There is a demand for this. There is a demand for togetherness, all in the identical room.”
The Founder Version of Board is at present out there for buy. This evaluate was performed with a demo model of the Founder Version of Board offered by Board. You could find extra details about Polygon’s ethics coverage here.
