Traditional Board Games in Digital Era: Surging Popularity

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We all have childhood memories of playing games like Carrom, Ludo, Snakes & Ladders and Tic Tac Toe (XO) with our family and friends. Then phones and computers took over and these games were all but forgotten.

But trends have been changing yet again these past few years and these games are back in vogue, albeit in a different form. The childhood board games are now digitized as well and anyone with a smartphone can play them anywhere, anytime. Nowadays we can see people of all ages- kids, youngsters, adults and even elderly, on their phone playing these traditional games in one of the various apps, both online and offline. Through these you can play with anyone around the world- your friends, family or a stranger wherever they may be… never a boring moment!

So we decided to take a look at these games and their surging popularity –

CARROM

I distinctly remember hurting fingertips and never being able to score more than a few pieces… but not anymore (evil laughter in the background). With the digital version of the game, I have as much chance of scoring the queen as anyone else. Maybe that’s why this one is so popular.

A simple search showed us dozens of apps dedicated to Carrom alone with the most popular one having 50M+ downloads! Millions of reviews, 95% positive and 100% talking about how much they love Carrom. Need we say more?

LUDO

Ah… if there is a game that can compete with the popularity of Carrom- its Ludo. Again, dozens of apps with as many variations as one could imagine. With impressive new features… the most popular Ludo app we found had 100M+ downloads. We aren’t even exaggerating, check for yourself.
Moreover, it had millions of reviews too and just as many recommendations. Such popularity!

SNAKES & LADDERS

My personal favorite that came in a combo with Ludo. Even now there are a lot of Ludo apps that have Snakes and Ladders as well but there isn’t a lack of apps solely dedicated to it either. Again, 10M+ downloads with every other app having at least over a million. Plus most of them have really cute graphics. One almost made me want to have a pet snake but then I remembered I already have one by my side- my friend who killed my piece in Ludo earlier. You seriously can’t trust people these days!

TIC TAC TOE

The game that saved us all from boredom in school. A silent game that is both simple and fun- Tic Tac toe or X and O. In the top 5 apps we found for this, 2 had 50M+ downloads while the other three had over 10M each. And why not, keeping aside its everlasting popularity, the apps these apps have dozens of new features and hundreds of levels with varying difficulty levels. Now that’s what I call good use of technology!