EverBoard Wants to Reinvent Family Game Night With a Giant Digital Gameboard

There are some parts of family game night that are practically traditions.

Picking the game. Arguing over who gets which piece. Discovering that one very important card somehow disappeared three years ago. And, of course, eventually trying to remember exactly who was supposed to put everything back into the box.

EverBoard has a rather different idea.

EverPlay Studios Inc., operating as EverBoard Inc., has announced EverBoard, a new 21.5-inch digital tabletop gameboard designed to bring families and friends around one shared screen for everything from familiar board games to entirely new experiences they can create themselves.

Designed to sit in the center of the table and be played from every side, EverBoard supports as many as six players without requiring separate controllers, physical pieces or lengthy setup. Instead, everyone gathers around the same touchscreen, giving the system some of the convenience of digital gaming while attempting to preserve one of the most important parts of traditional board games: actually playing together.

And there should be quite a few reasons to gather around it.

EverBoard will launch with access to a library of more than 50 games through its EverPass service, with additional titles planned each month. That collection includes officially licensed Hasbro favorites such as “Monopoly,” “Connect 4,” “Chutes and Ladders” and “Scrabble,” alongside puzzles, drawing activities, arcade-style games and original experiences. Every EverBoard will include one month of full EverPass access.

Having classic games immediately gives families something recognizable to play, but EverBoard’s most interesting feature might be what happens when everyone decides they want something that doesn’t already exist.

The EverVibe Game Creator allows players to describe a game through voice or text and turn the idea into a playable experience. Instead of choosing exclusively from a predetermined library, families can potentially start with their own idea and create something new to play together.

That changes the concept in an interesting way.

Board games have traditionally arrived with their worlds already established: a board, pieces, objectives and rules waiting inside the box. EverBoard is attempting to make the board itself flexible, allowing the same tabletop to become “Monopoly” one evening, a drawing game the next and then something created by the people sitting around it.

For all of the technology involved, however, EverBoard is still centered around a decidedly old-fashioned idea.

Everyone sits at the same table.

Rather than giving each player a separate device and sending them into individual experiences, the screen becomes the shared gameboard. Kids, parents and grandparents can all play from different sides, keeping the conversation, competition and inevitable accusations over someone’s suspicious “Monopoly” strategy firmly in the real world.

EverBoard founder and CEO Davin Sufer said the goal was to bring people back to the same table while offering them a new way to play, combining familiar games with opportunities to create and discover something different each time families gather.

It is an interesting attempt to find the middle ground between two very different kinds of play. Physical board games offer the tactile experience of pieces, cards and dice spread across a table, while digital games can constantly change, expand and introduce new experiences. EverBoard is essentially asking what happens when the table itself becomes digital without removing the people sitting around it.

Families will get to find out this holiday season.

EverBoard will launch exclusively through Best Buy in the United States, both online and in stores, with more games expected to join its library each month.

Just remember: putting away the game pieces is no longer an excuse for avoiding cleanup after family game night.