This week I was able to find a couple of board games that I’ve played in Android form, specifically Settlers of Catan and Dominion. That let me to enjoy playing these games on tablet for a few hours at a time. I actually like playing these games single player (i.e., versus the computer) because you can play fast without having to wait for other people to take their turns. Dominion is particularly good because the AI is challenging. Perhaps I’m a newbie at the game, but I’ve only beaten the AI twice in I am guessing 30 games.

These experiences have motivated me to try my hand at making a board game for Android. Of course, I’m not a board game designer so I am going to base it off an existing game – specifically San Juan, the card game version of Puerto Rico. I’ve decided to call it Condado which is a district of San Juan and also means county in Spanish. Fitting I think.

This will take awhile for me to do, especially coming up with a competent AI. But it should be fun. Here’s what it looks like currently:

That’s the welcome screen when you enter the game. The coat of arms is the San Juan coat of arms.

This is the UI to pick a role for your turn. You swipe left and right to see each “card” and the button updates to confirm your selection.

I’m pretty happy with the way these two screens turned out, but I think the rest of the GUI will be much more challenging (especially trying to fit all the information onto a QVGA screen).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: android, appdev, condado, games