Can mobile games be social? Meet Qwidz, a board game gone mobile

Ever wondered why board games like Monopoly, Chess and Risk are still popular?

Unlike mobile and online games, board games increase social interactions, teach quick thinking, and, perhaps most importantly, teach players how to take turns – an important skill educators and parents alike struggle to teach. While mobile games can be educational too, they don’t usually force players to be in the same vicinity. This is probably why time after time we see bursts of new mobile games that become popular quickly and forgotten quicker still. But what if there were a game on mobile that could combine all the aspects of a board game? Would we still get bored of it?

“The trend now is to have people working alone on their cell or online with others,” says Mark Helou, co-founder of Qwidz, a new iOS board game. “We wanted to make a game that goes against the flow.”

The concept behind the game originated four to five years ago, when old friends of Helou and his co-founders Youssef Germanos and Ghada Abdelsater, wanted to make a board game. “The project was revived at the beginning of 2013, when I joined and we decided to build an app based on the original idea. The game concept was further developed and refined by all three of us, and I directed all the aspects of its development into a mobile app.”

The final product, Qwidz, took a year to develop and was officially released this February with an update this May. Now, the app is available globally on the App Store for free.