Quick facts
- AI strengh: world class (PR 4.8) (not 100% sure)
- multiplayer: yes (not tried)
- tutor / analysis: no
- price: free to $100 or so (upgrading anything costs coins cost money).
- App store link
Summary: excellent backgammon that is hindered to be really perfect by missing a tutor and having a really annoying ”move is automatically made after 5 seconds” feature.
Imagine you‘re listening to a really beautiful song, and just when it‘s all perfect, the singer takes out his mouth organ and plays a really ugly mouth organ riff. That‘s a bit how I feel about Hardwood Backgammon (HW BG). It has many great features, and should stand out of the large sea of backgammon apps. But one issue nearly kills it for me.
Let‘s start with the positives. HW BG has nice 3Dish visuals on iPhone and iPad, different boards, backgrounds, checkers and dice (and more for money) to choose from, features everything a full backgammon app needs (matches, doubling cube, Crawford rule), and a strong bot to play against.
As we’re talking about visuals: you can spend quite a bit of cash on all kinds of tiny UI enhancements. Invest 10$ and you get 865 tokens. As a background or board design sets you back by 200 tokens, and even a differently colored cube costs 100 tokens, that’s not cheap. Haven’t tried to find out how much EVERYTHING would cost, but it’s certainly in the 100$ range.
It also has online play, but online I‘m so happy with DailyGammon and Backgammon Galaxy and Heroes that I just don‘t try it out.
First you need to invest a few bucks (don‘t remember exactly, something like 2€) to get a “world class” level AI. I couldn’t resist, and yes, this got me a world class AI. The bot plays an aggressive, very strong game. Sometimes it makes small mistakes, particularly it’s a bit too fast at the doubling cube, but after two 3pt matches and two 5pt matches XG2 rates it PR 4.8. Will update this later.
When you start a match, the app selects a virtual opponent for you. I have no clue what this is about – you get a random name, but there doesn’t seem to be any playing character or something similar associated to it. Lilly seems to play exactly like Joan d’Arc, and you neither can get separate statistics or anything else.
Moving is enjoyable, both double-tapping (click on source checker, click on target location) and drag&drop is supported. It’s not totally up to the best (can’t undo a move by moving the checker back to where it was, like in True Backgammon), but very pleasant. I also really like the nice 3D look and feel. Very professional.
BUT… and here’s the big but. Two things nearly spoil the app for me. They are small issues with a big impact for enjoyment.
First, when you have made a move, you see an “end turn” button like this:
This button will stay there for five seconds. Then it will automatically vanish, your move is made and it’s the opponent’s turn.
Now if you’re a beginner, five seconds sound like a long time. But sometimes, in difficult situations, I want to spend much longer looking at the position after a move, weigh different alternatives, before I commit to this or that move. Five seconds is just nowhere enough. These five seconds cause a lot of stress and frustration. Unfortunately, the support of the developer didn’t want to understand my problem when I sent them a mail asking to change this.
Second, the app doesn’t store its game state when you do something else. If you move to a different app and iOS decides to close HW BG, your match is gone and you have to start a new one. Never had this, ever, in any other top BG app.
These are minor issues, but in an app space that is as crowded as Backgammon, where an app competes with wonderful apps like XG Mobile, True Backgammon, Backgammon NJ, these are showstoppers, particularly as the app is missing any kind of tutor or similar that could teach you how to improve your game.
Still, go ahead, try it, if you’re moving fast and not playing long matches with long breaks, and if you own another app for improving your game, there’s nothing wrong about this good app.