Video Game / Board Game Online

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Board Game Online is an interactive, HTML-based board game with a ridiculous premise and a slew of references. Gameplay is a mixture of pure luck and experienced strategy, and the developers have really put in a lot of variety.

The site was relaunched on June 27, 2014, giving it fancier site graphics, a better chat system and a way to tell what was all in a game before you joined in. They also added a friends and foes system, Personal Messages, and Presets to save for games. It also features the donation thermometer being animated, filling up with coins as people donate and the stretch goals explode. More features will be added as time goes on.

Relevant tropes:

• Academy of Adventure: An expansion is literally all about the Academy of Adventure - it's very aptly named. Giving up a turn and some rupees allows you learn a passive skill taught by such teachers as Baron Munchausen, Dumbledore, Axel Foley, Mathias Shaw and Doctor Gregory House.
• Anachronism Stew: Teleporters, lassoes and a hookshot? Just your run of the mill inventory. Nobody raises an eyebrow.
• At the Crossroads: An event in the game is an actual crossroads, where you can pick between four ^note five if you have the Pathfinding feat events.
• Baa-Bomb: One of the items you can buy at The Engineering Shop is an Explosive Sheep, which can be sent out to have it move several spaces forward (or backward) per turn. You also gain an Activator, which is what you use to detonate the sheep (but not before it lets out a cute little baa).
• Badass Santa: In games set during the Christmas season, you can gain a buff called "Nice" which will cause you to receive a gift of your choice from Santa. This gift can include a pogo-stick, a tractor beam, or a goddamn lightsaber. Where does Santa get all those wonderful toys?
• Banana Peel: An item you get after eating a banana. Dropping one behind you will cause any player who lands on that space after you to slip and fall, losing a turn.
• Bears Are Bad News: Sometimes, a bear will break out of a zoo and become a randomly-encountered hazard that forces you to run backward a few spaces (unless you have an item capable of placating it).
• Black Comedy: When the humor isn't referential, it's pitch dark. Or both.
• Black Comedy Rape: There are a few events that involve being on the receiving end of non-consensual sex, and certain items and skills, such as the Dildo, Chloroform, Free Drink, and the Succubus' "Seduction" allow you to rape other players. In fact, this is central to the Succubus' gameplay, as they want to be infected with as many STDs as possible while spreading them to other players in order to debilitate them. Given the Black Comedy tone of the game, none of this is played particularly seriously.
• Blinding Camera Flash: Using a Camera, a player can temporary blind another. If the blinded player skips the camera operator gets 4-6 rupees and a small chance to create a Torn Memento half.
• Boring, but Practical: Many of the items from the original version of the game are very plain, but produce the most immediate or useful results. Examples include:
  • The Hammer: Knocks an opponent 4-6 spaces back. Not the flashiest, but as most killing or incapacitating abilities require your opponent to be on the same space as you, this is an incredible boon.
  • The Time Travel Condom: Allows you to remove an STD. Only costs 3 Rupees, helpful in avoiding the many debuffs that STDs cause (unless you're a -cubus), and given that this is a game where STDs can be obtained not just from other players, but randomly from the game itself, this is a key item to have on hand.
  • The food items at the "Flava O' Da Jungle" shop. They are very simple, don't provide any flashy additional buffs (though the Watermelon and Banana do create secondary items that can be used against other players), and are fairly cheap. They are also great to keep on hand for two big reasons. Firstly, the Hungry Games event can start at any time, and having food already on hand is a huge leg up. Second, these items can often be used to make a mad dash toward the finish line when a player is close enough.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Notably averted, as while donating can grant access to special and powerful classes, said classes are available to all players in the session so long as the sum of every player's donations is above a certain threshold. The perks that aren't shared with everyone in the room are cosmetic or fun things that don't affect gameplay.
• Bullet Seed: Eat a melon and you get 3 seeds that can be spat to knock nearby (within 10 spaces) players backwards.
• Butterfly of Doom: One possible outcome of time-traveling to prehistoric times is that you step on and kill a fly. When you come back, everyone's names are replaced with random celebrity names, e.g. Oprah Winfrey or Saddam Hussein. Sometimes the finishing line moves slightly too.
• Catapult to Glory: One of the random events. You can launch certain items or yourself. It usually kills you, but can be survivable with the Parachute, the Floating buff, death immunity, or even just by pure luck.
• Character Class System: Several classes can be chosen from during a game, giving you certain buffs and special skills. Donators can create games that allow two classes to be chosen, and sometimes there are Triple Classes available.
• Cosmetic Award: As part of the game's Achievement System, certain achievements give you a unique title that you can wear in the lobby.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: So, so many. Ever felt like launching an ice pick into someone's skull via catapult? Or setting a Tyrannosaurus Rex loose on an unsuspecting public? If you can think it, you can do it in this game.
• Death Is Cheap: For the most part, dead players revive after three turns have passed, and there are plenty of items and events that let you revive prematurely.
• The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: Horribly, horribly averted. In fact, the game almost takes pleasure in announcing what kinds of diseases you character ended up with.
• Double-Edged Buff: As part of the various items and skills you can gain as you play, some of these items offer you both an advantage and a disadvantage. This mostly applies to various drugs, such as:
  • Crystal meth, which gives you immunity from skipping a turn or incapacitation, but also dehydrates you and gives you six turns to find a drink before you die.
  • GHB, which moves you a spot forward but incapacitates you.
  • The vague "syringe" item, which gives you two random positive effects and one random disease.
  • Cocaine, which makes you hyper (and thus faster) but also gives you an addiction, which can lead to severe side effects, such as burnout or death.
• Duel to the Death: Specifically a shootout to the death. This event occurs when a player attempts to shoot another player that also has a gun. Both players take turns firing at each other while the other player tries to dodge the bullets. The loser dies, the winner keeps walking. If nobody gets shot after 10 rounds, both duelists die.
• Emergent Gameplay: There are many, many different strategies for winning this game - different class combinations, seeking out specific items, playing defensively vs offensively, even choosing to focus solely on the Pyramid can be viable. The possibilities are absolutely endless, and can only be learned through repeat experiences.
• Enemy Mine: Leading players in FFA can expect all other players to gang up on them, focusing all attacks and debuffs on them until they are no longer in first place. There is even a soundbyte commenting on this phenomenon available in the BG shop - "Focus on the player in the lead!"
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Can happen in a myriad of ways - TNT, the Genesis Device, a nuke strike from the U.N., etc. - but most common is one of the Improbability Device events, which kills everyone except the player who used it.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Could easily be the game's tagline. Other players attacking you from all sides, items that are just as likely to kill you as they are to help you, and even random events where the game can just kill you for no reason, death is not an uncommon feature of this game.
• Extendo Boxing Glove: The Extendo Fist can be fired forwards or backwards 5-7 spaces to knock another player backwards and incapacitate them. If it doesn't hit anyone, it will ricochet back and knock you out instead.
• Extreme Omnivore: Getting the Pac Man skill allows you to eat other players and a few of the living hazards like the bear. Eating people rewards you with Rupees, and eating enough gives you a rare item and achievements.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Plus pop-cultural kitchen sink. From the rough-and-tumble Wild West, to the tranquil Ninja Temple, to the sci-fi world of the Future, this game has it all.
• Frankenstein's Monster: One of the options of the Saloon's upstairs area. If the player sleeps with him, they will be given the "Sick" prefix.
• The Future: One of several locations you can visit with the Time Machine; it's a classic sci-fi future, with items such as lightsabers, tractor beams, and space capacitators being freely sold for a few Rupees.
• Gender-Blender Name: Can happen during the Prehistory event, where a player steps on a bug, causing all of the player names in the game to be replaced with random ones, such as Alotta Fagina or Barack Obama.
• Guide Dang It!: The quintessential trope of this game. Hidden interactions, secret item combinations, and generally high-complexity gameplay means that the majority of the game can only be learned by experiencing it. Some examples:
  • There's an entire section of events dedicated to trolling the player, where the game will offer you a nonexistent item or event, and accepting it results in a pop-up of the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" playing on your screen. A message of your mistake will also appear in the lobby just to rub it in.
  • One alternative way to win the game is by finding the Ankh of the Pharaoh in the Pyramid. This is challenging enough as it is, as the chance to find it is pretty low, but what is not specifically detailed by the game is that you can't just find it - you have to also escape with it. If you die in the Pyramid after finding the Ankh, if you fall out of a trapdoor after finding it, or if another player somehow terminates your Pyramid run prematurely, it does not qualify as a win, and the game continues as normal. You get to keep the item, though.
  • All sorts of unique interactions are hidden behind certain item, class, or event combinations. For example, if you die while holding the Spelling Bee and Silmaril items, there is a random chance for one of the game developers to Break The Fourth Wall and block your death. By contrast, casting the Detonation spell while at the bomb shop in Yello World will cause the entire shop to explode, immediately ending your turn.
  • Item combinations in particular are a huge source of this for new players. While the item recipe window does show you which items can be combined, it does not tell you what you'll receive in result until you actually use the combination - and sometimes, the newly created item was not worth the cost of the items sacrificed to get it. A good example of this is the combination of the Hypno Glasses, one of the most expensive items that can be bought in the game, and the Torch. What does this make? Broken glass.
  • The "Salem's Destiny" event is the biggest example: You first have to have a scroll with Spell Shield and a Pocket Ball, then go to the Magic Shop. While at the entrance, cast Spell Shield on yourself. Buy a Light Wand there, charge it with Remove Curse, then try to leave. When prompted, try to catch the cat with the Pocket Ball, but it will (inevitably) fail. Your Spell Shield will block the Blinding spell that you usually get from trying to catch the cat, so you can see the cat escape. Use your Remove Curse wand on the cat and the cat will be freed, giving you the item "Decursed Collar"... and that's just the first part.
• Hammer of the Holy: If you become a Paladin, you receive a free Hammer if you don't already have one. Most of a Paladin's abilities revolve around the hammer: Their passive ability automatically uses the hammer instantly when an enemy gets on the same space; they can also use Holy Hammer to make their next hammer hit stronger, or Hammer of Justice to throw the hammer at another player (which makes them lose the hammer).
• Hand of Glory: One of the artifacts that can be collected in the Archeology Dig Site. It grants the player passive abilities (sneaky, arcane vision and +1 speed) and the ability to a sacrifice one living item while on fire to remove the flame and root all enemy players within 25 spaces for 5 whole turns.
• Hilarity Sues: The point of the premium class Lawyer. By using the Sue ability, Lawyer can extort 10 rupees from their targeted player if they kill anyone while being sued. If the player doesn't have enough to pay out, they die.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: All the freaking time. Having this happen to you several times is likely how you'll learn to play the game.
  • A common example is when one player pulls a gun on another player. If the target has Hypno Glasses, they can use them during the target selection phase and make the shooter shoot himself instead.
  • Illusionists are tricky bastards who like to sneak fake items into other players inventories, causing instant death if they're used. If the burdened player has Blessing of Vengeance active however, using the fake item results in both the target and the Illusionist dying, with the Blessing reviving the target immediately afterward.
  • Inexperienced players will drop mines or TNT into a group of opponents and then use other items to escape from the pack before detonating them. More often than not this results in a skilled player using a Lasso or Tractor Beam to drag him back, either saving everyone's bacon or not noticing his re-positioning fast enough.
• Holiday Mode: Santa, snow and shenanigans for Christmas. Fireworks for New Year's Day. Love pacts for Valentine's Day. Scary shit for Halloween. Et cetera. (And all with achievements.)
• Holy Healing Magic: One of the items that can be purchased at the Church is a vial of Holy Water, which the player can drink to cure themselves of the various curses they can get inflicted with during the course of the game. Paladins also have this ability innately, being able to remove curses as one of their skills.
• Holy Water: One of the items that can be purchased at the Church is a vial of Holy Water, which the player can drink to cure themselves of the various curses they can get inflicted with during the course of the game. It can also be used against enemies in certain events, like mummies, ghosts, and zombies. It can also used to make literal Holy Hand Grenade's.
• I Have Many Names: Every new title you get in a game prefixes whatever you already had. It can get a little ridiculous if you keep accumulating them.
• In-Game Banking Services: The game features a bank the player can either store their money in, get life-insurance from, or attempt to rob.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Rarely, a purchased lightsaber will be purple, which kills everything on your space and within one space of you with a single swing. Murdering people is much easier when you don't have to be directly on top of them. It also doesn't lose energy over time as the regular laser blades do.
• Instant-Win Condition: There are quite a few of these, all of which send out a unique message in the main lobby:
  • The main goal of entering the Pyramid is obtain the Ankh of the Pharaoh and escape the pyramid with it alive. There's no way to know where the treasure room is, and it's entirely possible to keep running into rooms with the same traps, but if you're lucky and reach the exit with the treasure, you win the game.
  • The English Breakfast is made up of four items: Eggs^note obtained by using a Chicken, Sausage^note obtained by "combining" a Cow and a Sword, Bacon^note obtained by having a falling pig land on your War Helmet, and Spam^note obtained by being the first player to close all of the spam messages in its respective event. These items are automatically combined when in your inventory, and eating all four at once wins you the game, even if someone else has already crossed the finish line (in which case you both win).
  • Some items let you win the game if they are used enough times. Examples include getting 13 kills after using Jason's Mask, absorbing fire 50 times with a Deluminator, and storing enough enchantments to remove 100 of them at once with Queen Alexandra's Birdwing.
  • The wild mode To Infinity and Beyond revolves around the Infinity Gauntlet, with players scrambling to obtain and steal the Infinity Stones and the Gauntlet. Once a player obtains all six stones and the Gauntlet, that player gains an ability that lets them win the game (along with a whole bunch of other godly abilities).
  • Lastly, there's the One in a Million event, which immediately moves you to space 1,000,000, thus ending the game. The odds of getting this event are, rather fittingly, one in a million.
• Interface Screw:
  • The spell Blind blacks out the entire interface for a few seconds. Hopefully you don't need to get rid of a bomb.
  • Smoking weed, or being near another player who is smoking weed, covers the screen in rainbow lights.
• Intoxication Mechanic: Drugs and alcohol affect the player in different ways. While alcohol mostly just gives the player an Alcohol Hic, drugs can have a variety of buffs and debuffs. Meth, for example, gives the player extreme focus and immunity, but also dehydration; weed makes you stoned and hungry, causing you to randomly eat any food items in your inventory, and cocaine gives you boosted speed, with the chance for addiction and burnout to follow.
• Laser Blade: Lightsabers are genuine items in the game, commonly found in the Future Shop. They function the same way as Swords, just with a battery instead of a static three uses and cutting through Shields easily. The color of lightsaber you get is decided at random.
• Magical Defibrillator: Can be used to bring any player back on the same space as the user, with the caveat of setting them on fire. Players can also make them literally magical by enchanting them to be Ethereal and reviving themselves whilst deceased. Finally the defibrillator can be used to defeat the Small Golem at the Archaeology digs.
• Magic Potion: The Potion event can trigger random events to happen if the player chooses to drink it. These include removing all curses from them, forcing them to swap spaces with a random player, or make them go crazy and say a random line during their turn.
• Mundane Utility: You could use that Concoct skill to cure curses, make yourself irresistible at the Brothel, steal the ability to No-Sell bullets... Or you could use it to ensure you don't die of dehydration.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: You can do this by using a Red Card, a Whip, or Lawyer's OBJECTION! on a player who is about to escape the Pyramid with the Ankh of the Pharaoh to prevent their victory. There is an achievement for doing exactly this.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Due to the effects of several events, as well as some pre-game options, a very common name to see is Macho Macho Sorcerer Paladin Macho Incubus Vamic Baratheon.
• No Plot? No Problem!: You are a pawn trying to get to the finish line first. Everything that happens in between is completely up to chance.
• No-Sell:
  • The "No." skill lets you do this when another player tries to fire a gun at you.
  • Rarely, a player will find reflective shades. Any attempts to hypnotize that player results in incapacitation.
  • In the wild modes Massacre Arena and Board Game Royale, all players gain access to the Defensive Stance. For 30 seconds, if another player tries to kill you, the death is blocked and the attacker is incapacitated.
• Optional Sexual Encounter:
  • The brothel, though it's a crapshoot whether you get someone like Alizee or someone like the World's Ugliest Dog. Wearing Night-Vision Goggles or having Arcane Vision, however, will reveal who it is before you decide to sleep with them. The Mojo perk will make sure you never screw up though.
  • The pirate ship's largest number of spaces available to move comes at the cost of having sex with the crew, and getting an STD for your trouble.
  • Though it's more of a trial you can walk out on, there's still the penis demon in the Archaeology digs...
• Post-Mortem Possessions: As Death Is Cheap, there's a verity of Items, effects and buffs that allow normal items (but not skills) to be used whilst dead.
  • Most items can be made/cursed Ethereal, making them useable only in death (unless you have the rare buff Ethereal Heart). This can be done by savvy players to use items (such as the Defibrillator) to Self-Revive.
  • The Ethereal Dagger is weapon that can only be used when dead. Usually to take revenge on the player that killed you while they're still on the same board space as you.
  • The Ethereal Gloves can be made by combining the Gloves with the Ethereal Gem. These also allow item use without having to make the items themselves Ethereal, but only have five uses.
  • Finally, the rare buff Ethereal Soul can allow Item usage when dead like the gloves but has no degrading. It can either be temporary or last for the rest of the game.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: An easy way to stop a potential shooting, if you have a pair of Hypno Glasses handy.
• Randomized Transformation:
  • The Quantum Physicist class is entirely based on RNG. One of their abilities involves changing items into other random items. Using the global version of this ability also affects items in other player's inventories.
  • The Improbability Device can be used to transform items into other items.
  • The Dark Spell "Polymorph" can turn a player into a random animal, forcing them to gain karma to turn back.
• Rasputinian Death: Try using an Improbability Device inside the Pyramid.
  • Using the Magnet item will almost invariably result in this, especially if you have the Life Shield spell active. This item attracts all metallic items toward you, including guns, hammers, axes, swords, grenades...
• Reference Overdosed: More than half of the game is a reference to, well, everything.
  • There are four reference events that can affect what events happen throughout the rest of a game: Adventure Time, Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, and Rick and Morty.
• Russian Roulette: You can challenge an opponent to this in the Indian Casino.
• Schmuck Bait: Certain fake-out events, such as Diss Card: Destroy, are there just to bait you into a Rickroll. Some items can be this as well, such as any present from an opponent during the Christmas event - there is always a chance it's a bomb, or a poison candy cane.
• Share the Sickness: if you're infected with an STD, having sex with other players will infect them. This is central to the playstyle of the Succubus class, which is passively immune to the negative effects of STDs, encouraging them to catch 'em all, and has a skill allowing them to seduce other players to spread the diseases or receive new ones.
  • The Rat item lets you infect another player with a disease you currently have.
• Shop Fodder: The "Useless Valuable" can be found in random events. It is completely worthless to anyone except the Pawn Shop owner, who will buy it for 25 Rupees. There's also "The Pink Panther", which sells for a whopping 60 Rupees, but is stolen from you if another player kills you.
• Strange Soda: One of the drink items is "Cocaine Cola", which is a play on how Coca-Cola was historically made with cocaine. Given that the recipe is simply combining a potion with the drug, it implies that this soda is literally just liquid cocaine. It gives you a +4 speed boost for four turns, and reduces skill cooldowns as well — makes sense, given that it's a pure stimulant being presented as a fun soft drink.
• Succubi and Incubi: The Incubus/Succubus class can seduce and have sex with other players, passing and gaining STDs.
• Take That!:
  • One Event allows players to get three random hats from an Image Macro of Vladimir Putin. Post 2022 added an option to use a sunflower (a national symbol of Ukraine) to scare the shit out of him, getting all the hats and causing Putin to run away whilst dropping a Fake Fake Turd.
  • The Useless Valuable item, which exists only to be sold to the Pawn Shop owner, randomly appears in different forms with unique flavor text for each variation. One variant is a Make America Great Again hat, with the caption reading, "The 'American Dipshit Helmet' costs only 11 cents to mass-produce in China, yet there remain those who'd pay greatly to buy. Side-effects of wearing include turning into an unlikable, raving cultist."
• Temple of Doom: The Deadly Pyramid, should you be foolish enough to enter it, is filled with different traps and creatures trying to kill you, and making it through it all is a Luck-Based Mission. To top it all off, if you end up dying, any items or buffs that would prevent your death are disabled. At least you get a cool whip if you come back to it enough times.
• Tempting Fate: If you click on your bag of Rupees to brag about how many you have, there's a chance you'll lose some.
• Thanatos Gambit: There are actually a few perks to being dead at the right time; Guns and Arrows won't cause you to run backward, to name one. A well-timed suicide when you're nearing the finish and everyone is getting ready to shoot you is a good way to secure a win (or at the very least, encourage them to turn on each other). Dying in the middle of an event, for example, can even stop the bear from moving you backwards.
  • If you're really lucky you can get an FSM Afterlife, which allows you to keep rolling the dice to move even while dead and revive whenever you want. The only way to stop this is to be forcibly resurrected by another player, which can be difficult if none of them is a Priest.
• The Many Deaths of You: Don't ever expect an easy game: death can happen anywhere, anytime, and sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. It's sometimes better to sit back and enjoy the ride; a good part of the game's humor lies in the over-the-top ways players can die.
• Time Machine: Another one of the random events. It can take you to the far past, the Middle Ages, or hundreds of years into the future, but strangely never into The Wild West.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: A good number of the deaths in the game can be attributed to cartoonish items interacting with a realistic setting. For example, the ACME Magnet attracting everything metallic to you also includes swords and grenades and launching yourself forward from a catapult has a high chance of you simply going splat upon landing.
• Unlockable Content: Averted, for the most part. Almost all of the content is immediately available to free players. Six classes (Illusionist, Lawyer, Druid, Time Twister, Enchanter, and Warlock), however, require you to either play with someone who's donated or donate some money yourself.
  • Three classes (Bard, Ranger, Wordsmith) require spending enough Power Points to unlock them.
• Where's the Kaboom?: Sometimes, the time bomb doesn't explode. It is even accompanied with the trope-naming quote.
• The Wild West: You can fight bandits for reputation or visit the Indian tribe and learn to shoot arrows.