Tabletop gaming found its way into VR in the very early days of the tech’s resurgence. Bringing together modern gaming hardware with classic games everyone knows and loves made for a happy marriage. The latest to do so is All On Board! from The Game Kitchen. But as 131XR’s latest review finds, All On Board! isn’t quite the classic experience you might expect for Meta Quest.
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What is All On Board?
All On Board! is all about bringing tabletop board games to life in VR. The core edition of the game offers Chess, Checkers and a couple more as introductory titles. These can be played solo – if you really want – but the main aim is to join your friends for a virtual session.
You can chat and hang out within All On Board’s virtual environments, taking as long as you like to plan your next move. To get the most out of the game, there are a variety of additional add-ons you can buy. These are far more elaborate and modern games like Istanbul, Escape the Dark Castle and The Binding of Issac: Four Souls.
All On Board! Review
Naturally, that means to get the most out of All On Board! you do need to spend more money to make the whole board game experience worthwhile. However, as 131XR finds in its All On Board Review!, those initial games of Chess or Go reveal, there’s almost no gamification in the game.
For starters, players are expected to already know the rules of all the games. While a brief video does provide some context, there are no tutorials or guides offering step-by-step mechanics. You may already know how to play chess, as it’s very popular, but do you remember every rule? Or when was the last time you played Go? Maybe never. So, unless you have a friend who knows and can teach you, you’ll have to revert to Googling it.
As for the ‘gamification’, this relates to mechanics like a piece being removed from the board. As you’d expect, you always physically move or place your piece/counter, but if another is in the way, it’s not automatically removed. All On Board! takes the tabletop simulation aspect to heart, maybe a bit too much. You can pick up your opponent’s pieces, take turns erratically and not follow any rules if you so wish. As 131XR’s review notes, this hampers rather than frees you in All On Board!
Board games aplenty!
If All On Board! isn’t to your liking, it has plenty of competition. As mentioned, tabletop board games have been appearing in VR for years. The likes of Demeo have woven their own style of gameplay. Others, such as Chess Club have entirely focused on bringing the classic game to life with no distractions. You can find our favourites in our Best VR Board Games list.
Are you a VR boardgame fan? Or does the virtual experience not live up to the real thing? Let us know in the comments!
