Lots of simple games with playing fields, counters, dice (element of chance) and/or other components of game equipment have existed long before the appearance of computers. The talk is of course about board games which have been accompanying the humanity from the moment when first states appeared. The oldest board game from the ones known to historians is "Senet". It dates back to 3500 BC. Pharaoh kings of Egypt used to play this game. Successful board games were spreading among all ranks of society pretty fast. The only difference between board games of the rich and the ones of the poor was the cost of game equipment.
Ordinary mortals limited themselves to making wooden or stone game equipment (later they started to use paper or cardboard for the purpose), and for manufacturing of games for grand people precious metals were often used (such as gold or silver), also elephant ivory and even precious and semiprecious stones.
We should also mention that there were no arcades among the games (in the modern understanding of the word) because all of them were based on hand manipulations with the objects of the game equipment. Well, of course one may consider games like pinball or billiard, which have specially designed playing tables, as arcade games. But such games are much closer to sports games than actually to board games.
Among the variety of board games there ones with thousand years history. They have successfully survived to present days. Now they have numerous fans and a regular system of competitions of different levels. Take chess, draughts, go, backgammon for example. Still the process of appearance of new board games doesn't stop until now. Thus in 1993 first "Collection card game" - "Magic The Gathering" was released.
With the lapse of time computer simulators of some collection card games became available. They provide a possibility to play online or to compete with a virtual opponents. By the way the possibility of playing board games online with other gamers is one of the most frequent characteristics of board game simulators one can come across in the game industry. Most of board games were initially created for competition between two gamers or more.
Besides the games we have mentioned above, we can relate some more games to board games, such as lotto, the simplest mathematical and letter brain-teasers, casino, games with dice and a playing field with counters and also a range of games with different playing mechanisms which have initially appeared as board games.
You can download board games in this section.
