Adventures in Network Gaming

We had lots of fun this evening playing games. We had six connections and eight people, and off we went. First up we tried to play Colt Express. This was hilarious. Not because it ever worked, but because our attempts to get everyone registered into a single game and signing up turned out to be at least as much fun as playing a proper game. So we moved on to Ticket to Ride, another game that we’ve enjoyed in real life. And another game that didn’t work. It’s a probably a bit cruel to berate Admodee Digital for their horrid network experience, what with all the extra traffic that they are probably seeing. But, having said that we saw just twelve people trying to play Colt Express (and six of them were us) and it still didn’t work, with “Network Error 17” being a particular favourite. In this day and age that kind of performance is rubbish. My advice: don’t pick up either of these games if you want to play them over the network.

So, around an hour in, with no games played, we moved onto Tabletopia. This is web based platform that just provides a sandboxed environment in which you play the game. And by play I mean you move all the pieces, pick your cards up and look at them, and try really hard not to put them back on the table with their faces visible.

We were playing Secret Hitler, which is a great game. After a while we managed to surmount the challenges of the virtual world and stop ourselves showing our secret roles. You can have a go for free, one player starts the game and sends out links to everyone else to join in via their browser.Although you might find that the site is very, very busy.

It was hilarious. It wasn’t quite the same experience as live play, but it was good enough to make we want to have another go.