Teburu could be the digital board game system that finally catches on

After covering Gen Con, the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention, for nearly two decades, I’m tired of hearing about digitized board game tables and consoles.

Touch-sensitive screens, motion-sensing cameras, RFID-enabled bits, AAA-licensed titles, virtual reality solutions… I’ve heard literally every pitch that’s been made in the last few years. The problem is that almost everyone who owns a digital board game console is selling an overpriced solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Thank you, there are many great board games out there right now, most of which can be shipped to my house overnight and none of which require a firmware update to run.

But what if there was a digital solution that actually adds something to the experience, a near-transparent digital platform that adds to the immersion and speed of the game? Earlier this month I was introduced to Teburu, a startup project by the veteran game developers at explored. I was skeptical at first, but if something succeeds in this imaginative little niche, I think it could look a lot like Teburu.

At the center of the Teburu system is a rectangular game board that is about your average size monopoly Blackboard; It’s just that this one is covered on one side with a thin pre-printed adhesive sheet full of sensors. A compatible board game comes on top. On the underside of each of your pieces are RFID tags that the game board can recognize as they move across its surface. A dongle with two antennas is attached to the game board – one for connecting to the RFID chips and one for Bluetooth. That goes for the dice, two simple six-sided dice that are just smart enough to know which side is up, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices like speakers, tablets, and smartphones. The trickiest part is a unique, fancier base for larger miniatures – call them boss miniatures – that lights up with a multicolored LED light in four places along its edge. That’s it: Four slightly smart peripherals by today’s standards, all connected to the smartphones that everyone carries in their pocket all day anyway.

So what can you do with this digital kit? Well, first of all it allows the game to always know where the players are on the board. This allows developers to program behaviors into enemies or environments that start based on where you move your pawn. In my demo of The bad karma and curse of the zodiac, which meant that each of the four player characters had a unique sound for their footsteps. As my character stepped over a lava pit, I could hear the popping and hissing of molten rock underneath. Using my smartphone, I could choose an ability to use from a small handful of cards displayed on my screen. When I picked up and rolled the dice I got a six and that made a unique sound as I managed to hit the boss. This boss’s pedestal lit up, indicating that I dropped his shields to his rear left side. Then play passed to the player on my left, whose turn began with a unique musical flourish.

At every moment during the demo, the Teburu system supported my efforts to play the game. Hyperlinked keywords were accessible and small menus popped up immediately, reminding me of their in-game effects. The UI’s focus intelligently wandered around the room, drawing the entire group’s focus to the main screen – a tablet – displaying global information about the encounter, and alternately to my own screen, which served as my personal sideboard. It’s easy to see how Teburu could enable solo gameplay, a hugely popular option in board games since the pandemic began.

Rather than being an annoying oddity or the sole focal point of every interaction in the game, Teburu just helped me along by enriching the experience without distracting from it. It was wonderful.

“[The hardest part was] the user experience or the flow of the game,” said Riccardo Landi, Head of Design at Teburu. “You have the board, you have the physical dice, you have three or four – five! — Screens to watch. [It’s about] how the game tells you what to do, when the game tells you what to do. It’s all about the timing and rhythm of the game because if it goes too fast you lose control. If they happen too fast, you won’t want to play.”

For someone who’s spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on fancy plastic terrain, trays, dice towers, paint and other odds and ends to support my favorite tabletop games, Teburu suddenly makes sense. I could definitely see myself shelling out the required $100 or so for the system to update my favorite games.

However, the catalog of just one game – which hasn’t even shipped to backers yet – is pretty limited. The team tells me that most of the hardware work is complete at this point. Development began five years ago, says founder and CEO Davide Garofalo, and resulted in nine patents. To ensure the company has enough hardware to meet potential demand, Garofalo says it stocks the necessary components to produce more — mainly the hard-to-find specialty chips and antennas needed for connectivity . They’re just waiting, ready for the next wave.

The only thing missing are more great games, and at least two more have been announced so far. The Jewel in the Crown is a new partnership with Paradox Interactive. Soon, Teburu will begin developing original games based on the European publisher’s World of Darkness properties. Start with Vampire: The Masqueradetheir hope is that the line will be extended to both Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Hunter: The reckoning. The Teburu team wants the trilogy of games to be connected in some way, with the events of one game flowing naturally into the next.

“It’s going to be a game of city government,” said founder and CEO Garofalo, “where you’re anarchs willing to rule Milan over the Camarilla. Then we’re going to do a werewolf title and a hunter title, but they’re going to be kind of intertwined in a cross-chronicle [way].”

Rather than turn-based tactical adventures as in The bad karma, these World of Darkness games will be narrative driven. Imagine a cooperative RPG campaign in a box Gloomhavenbut with a computer taking on the role of dungeon master.

“Imagine something like this Arkham Horror Second Edition, where you go to a place and take a card,” Garofalo said, citing one of the top app-supported board games out there right now. “Rather than taking a map, we have a whole narrative design – like in a video game – based on who you are, what the moment is, what’s happening in that moment in the timeline, and so on. The system suggests the right narrative event for you and lets you choose between different options. They can be narrative, investigative, or related to the other characters [in the game with you at that point in time]. So it’s not an RPG; It’s a board game experience – but very narrative.”

But when talk of the metaverse and virtual reality takes up so much of the innovative development and marketing energy these days, why not go all out with an augmented reality or virtual reality system? Garofalo believes that this is another solution to finding a problem. After all, man is still a physical being who likes to socialize around the table.

“I think we’re still monkeys by the monolith,” Garofalo said with a hopeful grin, “or a tribe by the campfire.”

Look for more Teburu crowdfunding campaigns in the months and years to come. The bad karma and curse of the zodiac comes with the base Teburu system and is available as a late pledge reward through Gamefound for the equivalent of $178.