Handpicked Software » Board Games

Sloppy Sokoban – Addictive Japanese classic puzzle game

Robert Ellis — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:40:05 +0000

Sloppy Sokoban is an addictive puzzle game modeled in the tradition of the ancient Japanese classic released in the early 1980’s. It sports features like hand drawn animated graphics, an original music score, keyboard and point-and-click control, multiple level graphics, and up to 10,001 undos and redos. Sokoban includes fifty built-in levels and fourteen extra level-sets, composed of hundreds of levels all-told.

What’s New:
Version 1.8:

Play Fullscreen or in a Window
Over 200 New Levels included
New Game Ending
Hold the Shift key to run
Tweaked Level Stats Display
Some small Audio bugs fixed

Developer’s website: SloppyDisk Software

Technorati Profile

Yagol – Based on traditional game of lines

Robert Ellis — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Yagol is a game based on the traditional game of lines with a few enhancements. You have to line up 5 or more pieces in a grid to remove the pieces before running out of space. It is a rather addictive game.

Developer’s website: Alienrat Design Ltd

Arensus Crossword Puzzle Editor – Create custom crossword puzzles

Robert Ellis — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Arensus Crossword Puzzle Editor can create custom crossword puzzles fully automatically using your own databases or built in clue-answer dictionaries. Puzzles can be exported as JPEG, PNG, EPS, PDF and HTML or published as Online-Game with our Crossword Puzzle Java Applet.

What’s New:
Release notes not available currently

Developer’s website: Phyrum Tea

Anagrams – Anagram generator game

Robert Ellis — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Anagrams is a fast and friendly anagram generator for the Mac. It is also a handy companion for Scrabble and crossword fans. The main design goal was to make it fun and easy to find interesting anagrams for any given text.

Developer’s website: Andrew Trevorrow

PokerPages School – Multiplayer poker network for fake money

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

PokerPages School is a multiplayer poker game network that allows you to login and play poker for fake money against real live players across the Internet. You must first register with PokerSchoolOnline through the application before you can start playing.

Developer’s website: PokerSchoolOnline, Inc.

DemineX – Minesweeper game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

DemineX is a smart clone of winmine for Mac OS X, with 9 levels with different size and difficulty. DemineX is available for Mac OS X in English and in French.

Developer’s website: skymac.org

Hardwood Euchre – Classic card game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Blends classic game play and fantasy appeal together into one work of art. Vivid imagery, special effects and cool characters breathe new life into the classic game of Euchre with a new charming atmosphere. Express yourself in the online multi player mode with character customization features and magical effects like Lightening, Kisses, and Fireballs!

Neat features:

Internet play (together with both OS X and PC)
Large friendly player community
Solo (offline) play
Over 30 customizable characters
Fooms (fireballs, kisses, lighting strikes), a fun tool to express your self while playing
Cool Magic sparkling stuff, always a plus!

What’s New:
Version 1.3.25: Universal Binary

Developer’s website: Silver Creek Entertainment

j2chess – Chess program written in Java

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

j2chess is a chess program written in Java.
Consequently j2chess can run on any platform where a Java Virtual Machine is installed (version 1.4.x or later recommended).

j2chess includes an opening book of 15,000 games and can play games in three different modes; casual, blitz and blitz Fisher.
j2chess can read “.pgn” library files and therefore can be used as a “.pgn” browser as well.

As a matter of fact, j2chess is a pure hobby project and its development progress is fairly slow! But who minds? ;-) I just hope I’ll give you the opportunity to have fun playing chess. You can also help me to improve j2chess by sending me your feedback via email. j2chess is a freeware but if you enjoy it you can always say “Thank you” by making a donation.

What’s New:
Version 2.9:

new features:

Português do Brasil language support
New Language option: it is now possible to choose j2chess language regardless of the OS locale (j2chess restart required)
Game log renderer: little icons are now dislayed (, , …) instead of letters (N, K, …)
PGN libraries: columns can be dynamicaly sorted

geek stuff:

Layout: GroupLayout has been replaced by JGoodies Forms layout manager

Developer’s website: Denis Frayssignes

Simbabwe – Political tyrant board game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

You have to burn a lot of houses to become one of the world’s foremost tyrants.

Welcome to Simbabwe, where the property is already owned and the houses built and you compete to burn and dispossess them. Plunder farms, deny grain silos to opposition supporters, rig elections, gaol opponents and taunt the Commonwealth as you use intimidation and stooges to create a mugaboly on power.

Compete with Robert Mugabe, Canaan Banana, Cecil Rhodes and Sir Godfrey Huggins to earn a place on the all-time EU travel ban list.

Easy to play but difficult to escape from, Simbabwe is a richly detailed, evolved board game with unscrupulous AI and editorial cartoon graphics.

Familiar gaming metaphors and an authentic OS X aqua interface minimise the download-to-despotism time. Detailed in-game help is provided to get players and their thugs up and burning as quickly as possible.

Features:

Challenging AI
Sophisticated inflation model: watch prices go up and savings erode every time you print money.
International reputation model: your actions determine whether you get aid, a travel ban or a slam dunk in the slammer on setting foot outside Zimbabwe.
Splenetic graphics
Vibrant sound effects
Over 60 dynamically triggered events, including adopting Marxism in 1988, the Land Reallocation Act 1992 and Operation Drive Out Rubbish
Detailed in-game help
Plumes of smoke

What’s New:
Stats floater providing a quick reference for player and national information

Developer’s website: The Daily Grind Network

Kitty Spangles Solitaire – Solitaire with auto-saving and high score logging

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Kitty Spangles Solitaire… The best solitaire for your Mac with 40 great games including Klondike, Canfield, Freecell, Spider, Penguin, Pyramid, Golf and Gaps.

Kitty and her friends bring a brand new style to one of the world’s most popular games. Choose a look to suit your mood from a dazzling range of beautifully designed and animated themes. Solitaire has simply never looked or played better on your Mac.

Develop some healthy competition with your family and friends by creating up to 8 players at a time. Kitty will remember your progress and statistics, including the number of games played and won, the amount of time played, and much more.

Kitty automatically saves your games, so you can play for as long as you like, whenever you like. Kitty was made on a Mac, for the Mac, and it shows: her window can be seamlessly resized to suit your solitaire lifestyle.

Kitty speaks English, Fran�ais, Espa�ol, Italiano and Deutsch.

And, of course, Kitty plays purrr-fectly on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

What’s New:
Version 3.5.1:

Kitty now looks even better with stylish new controls
Added Double Pyramid and Single Card Canfield games
Kitty can now check for and install updates automatically
A new Help window provides easy access to game rules and tips
Smoother animations, effects and card movements

Version 3.5.1:

Fixed a bug in Spider-type games relating to undoing
Fixed appearance of some graphics in the Help window’s game list
Added some language translations for when a hand is won

Developer’s website: Swoop Software

Sigma Chess – Colorful 3D chess, challenge your mind

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Sigma Chess is a master strength Macintosh chess program for both OS X and Classic Mac OS. The feature set includes: Optional HIARCS engine, UCI Engine support, Databases, PGN/EPD, basic desktop publishing, endgame databases, novice levels, a true perspective 3D board, ExaChess compatibility and much more.

Two versions of Sigma Chess exist:

Sigma Chess Lite, which is freeware and can be downloaded here. Certain high-end features are either disabled or limited in this free version. Nevertheless, it’s a complete, full strength chess program with many features… it’s not just a demo. If you’re a casual chess player without the need for special features, chances are that Sigma Chess Lite will do just fine.

Sigma Chess Pro, which is not freeware, but a full featured commercial product. You must pay the $20 fee in order to register and become a legal owner of this version.

What’s New:
Version 6.1.5

Now bundled with the new HIARCS 11.2 engine! This engine is a Universal Binary and thus runs at full speed on Intel Macs. Additionally, a multi processor version is available for even stronger play.
No longer crashes when opening Sigma by double clicking a previously saved game or collection.
No longer fails when importing long PGN games.
The Copy Analysis function now copies all lines in case MultiPV is used.
Fixed a bug where Analyze Game sometimes skipped moves.
Improved the time allocation handling in the low ELO settings.

Developer’s website: Ole Kjaer Christensen

BGBlitz X – Ultimate Backgammon game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

BGBlitz has the by far strongest gameplay of all commercial Backgammons on the Mac, is the winner of the 2003
Computer BG World Championship and is the winner of the 7th Computer Olympiad 2002. Some of its features:

Play against BGBlitz, with it’s top neural net technology
Easy to use
Superb graphics
Play over TCP/IP against a opponent at a different computer
Rollout Positions.
Let the tutor improve your play.
Train your skill with position quiz databases.
Analyze interesting positions.
Train your cube handling in matchplay.
Supported languages are English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Hebrew,Swedish,Catalan
And much more…

What’s New:
Version 2.4:

The transition to a modern user interface library that started with 2.0 is finally finished and all old stuff is rewritten. From now on I can start to use more modern user interface stuff and no more interface quirks.
The usability has improved (the boards shows the number of checkers when more than 5 checkers are on one point, the rendered boards can now be scaled as well, the editing dialog boxes are easier to use and several minor things)
Two new easier playing levels are included, so beginners and casual players don’t get frustrated anymore.

BGBlitz has now Better support for systems with restrictive permissions.

Support for up to 16 CPUs. This will be sufficient for some time I guess ;)
Matchparser is improved in several ways and doesn’t rely on the file extension anymore.
No more different versions for Mac OS X “Panther” and Mac OS X “Tiger”
Parts are translated to Russian
3 severe bugs are fixed and half a dozen minor ones

Developer’s website: Frank Berger Software

LexiCastle – Build your vocabulary while building castles

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Build your vocabulary while building magnificent castles!

In this fun word search game, you link adjoining letter blocks to create words and score huge points! The higher the points, the faster you will construct your castles! How many castles can YOU complete?

Game Features:

Huge, 10 x 10 grid of letters!
Over 215,000 possible words!
Words can be up to 15 letters long!
Special power-ups and bonus blocks!
Continue your game from where you left off!
Game adjusts difficulty to your skill level!
Challenge yourself in Action Mode!
Save your high scores!

What’s New:
Version 1.07:

Fixed problem concerning the high score list.

Developer’s website: Blippy Games

BubbleX – Puzzle game where you eliminate bubbles

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Bubblex is a simple, yet addictive puzzle game. You have to get the highest score possible by eliminating as many bubbles. The game even has skins, so you’ll never grow tired of its appearance. If you are feeling creative, you can even create your own skins.

What’s New:
Version 2.0 adds the following:

Carbonized and Mac OS X ready
High scores for every game configuration
More game options
New skins
Various bug fixes

Developer’s website: Sugar Cube Software

Lines – Board game where you line up 5 colored balls

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Lines is a one-player board game. The goal is to arrange five or more balls of one colour in a continuous line so that they disappear. Each time you move a ball, three more balls of random colours fall onto the board, provided you don’t manage to build at least a 5-ball row. Your score depends on how many balls disappear by the end of the game.

What’s New:
Version 1.3.3: Ultimately fixed crashes in Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) with sound enabled.

Developer’s website: Konstantin Anoshkin

HeadBreaker – Puzzle game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

HeadBreaker is a simple puzzle game whose objective is to organize the pieces correctly so that an image is formed. Once the pieces are in the correct order, you will see the image as a whole.

What’s New:
Version 1.2:

built as a universal binary

Developer’s website: e dot studios

Idiot’s Delight – Solitaire card game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Idiot`s Delight (Four Aces, Aces High) could qualify as the most stupid solitaire card game ever. Now available for your Mac, featuring emulated self discipline, advanced cheating options and full keyboard support.

What’s New:
Version 1.3.1: Enabled the minimize- and maximize buttons (sorry, missed them last time!).

Developer’s website: Yok Software

SkalMac Yatzy – Simple Yahtzee game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

SkalMac Yatzy is a Yahtzee game for 1-4 players. SkalMac Yatzy saves the top ten scores in a Highscorelist.

Developer’s website: SkalMac

MacIago X – Othello/Reversi board

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

MacIago is a strategic computer game based on the Othello/Reversi board
game and inspired on the 1984 mac game “Iago” made by David Reed (hence
the similar name).

The game is played with a board on which you have to enclose the
opponent pieces between your own. All the enclosed pieces will be
converted to your own in the eight possible directions. Each move must
result in at least one conversion. When such move is not possible the
turn is forfeited. The game ends when none of the players is able to
make a move. The player with the most pieces at the end of the game
wins.

What’s New:
Version 3.6 is now a universal binary and the board size can be changed. It has also bacome an open source project hosted at google code

Developer’s website: Miguel Marcos

Absolute Backgammon – Backgammon board game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Absolute Backgammon is a backgammon game that has superb graphics, sound effects, speech, and many options and features including 5 skill levels for a fun game of backgammon. Easy to use, even for a beginner. You can also play using just your voice.

It supports game play in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Dutch. Many gameboard designs are available here.

Works with Tiger and Intel Macs!

You don’t have to concerned about the game being fair. The dice rolls are random and do not favor either player in any situation except by luck.

All of the dice rolls, to the used in the game, can be selected to be saved to a file at the start of a new game. These can be viewed to see that the game is actually using them.

You can also select to use the computer’s dice rolls if you feel it is luckier than you.

Also, the stats, kept by the game, will show that the rolling of doubles is statistically correct for both players.

What’s New:
Version 5.2.3:

in Dutch, the concede menu item was not enabled. Now is.
if a message was given during the time a piece was selected (like wrong direction), it was not cleared when the piece was put down. Now is.
one person reported a problem with the game crashing on startup that was a result of the game trying to determine what language the computer was using. It was changed so it wouldn’t happen.
several other minor interface enhancements
fixed any known problems

Developer’s website: Gammonsoft

TicTacToe – TicTacToe game with different levels of difficulty

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

TicTacToe is a simple tic-tac-toe game written using Cocoa. There are several levels of difficulty.

Developer’s website: ivolution

Xoggle – Remake of the classic Boggle game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Xoggle is an open-source, networkable game of the popular classic game Boggle. Xoggle is available for free download and includes source code and a dictionary word list.

What’s New:
Version 1c82 adds the following:

Completely new word list, with more plurals and less nonsense words
Many improvements to the still under-development multiplayer networking
Loading the word list will no longer take away from game time
End-of-game scoring now works correctly again
Game pausing in network play now works correctly and completely
Loading a word list that does not exist will no longer a NilObjException
Pausing the game when the window is deactivated is now a preference
Fixed some bugs with single player game pausing
Pausing in a network game now works correctly, pausing all players
Added button to reset all preferences to default
Various interface modifications

Developer’s website: Drew Hamlin

Xenophaquinox – Multiplayer puzzle board game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Xenophaquinox is an unusual and intriguing puzzle/strategy/board game for OS X. Xenophaquinox is playable both against your computer and another human, and can be played and five levels of difficulty. Xenophaquinox is simple, but deceptively difficult.

What’s New:
Version 2.1 adds the following:

Improved computer intelligence
Option to play timed games
Interface enhancements
Bug fixes
Documentation improvements

Developer’s website: GoldfishSoft

Jin – GUI client for Internet Chess Club/Free Internet Chess Server

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

Jin is an open source, cross-platform, graphical client (interface) for the Internet Chess Club and the Free Internet Chess Server.

What’s New:
Version 2.14.1:

Added a “Crampled Paper” board pattern.
Added new piece sets from Maurizio Monge
(http://linuz.sns.it/~monge/wiki/index.php/Chess_pieces).
Mac OS X: You can now quickly respond to the last person who sent you a tell
by hitting the F8 key in the console. Previously, this didn’t work on Mac OS X
because the default key used for this (F9) is taken by Expose.
The “Actions” window is no longer resizable.
A bunch of minor UI adjustments to make Jin look better under Mac OS X (and,
hopefully, not worse on other platforms).
Merged the “Move highlight” and “Move input” board preferences panels into one
panel – “Moves”.
Command-W on Mac OS X and Alt-W on other platforms will now close Jin windows
in SDI mode.
Mac OS X: Some graphics were drawn badly, such as vector pieces, square
highlight and arrow. All pretty (and antialiased) now.
Mac OS X: The keyboard shortcuts for moving through an examined game are now
Command-Left (one ply backward), Command-Right (one ply forward),
Command-Home (beginning of game) and Command-End (end of game).
Mac OS X: The keyboard shortcut for entering board fullscreen mode is now
Command-Enter.
Replaced ugly board icons (game previous/next/start/end and fullscreen) with
pretty icons taken from the Tango Desktop Project at
http://tango.freedesktop.org/
Unix/Linux: The default Look and Feel is now Metal, since GTK is still awful.
Mac OS X: Jin is now distributed as a compressed .dmg file (instead of a
.dmg.gz).

Developer’s website: Alexander Maryanovsky

TintinYahtzee – Addictive Yahtzee like game featuring Tintin characters

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:05 +0000

TintinYahtzee is a freeware Yahtzee like
game for MacOS X. The major difference is
instead of normal dice, you will see
Tintin characters instead.

What’s New:
Version 1.0.1 adds the following:

Undo/Redo works better now
Added points on the images

Developer’s website: Anders Wahlby