Rejoice! For Dreaded Board Game Foot-itis Will Soon Be a Thing of the Past

Whoever designed my house was an idiot. The largest bedroom is upstairs. The bathroom is downstairs, and clear across the house. This was all bad enough pre-kid, but these days a night-time trip to the bathroom means risking my feet to the demon that is tiny bits of plastic STUFF.

Seriously, how do kids have so many small plastic things that look so innocent by day and develop razor-sharp teeth and spiky claws by night?

The LEGOs. The Polly Pockets. The game board pieces.

Although the beauty of technology is the latter is finally being dealt with. I was wondering around the (admittedly rather lackluster ... sorry, it has to be said) vendor section of BlogHer a few months ago, and one of the few that really caught my eye was the Pressman booth. They had a whole mess of iPads set up, and on them were a whole mess of board games.

Yeah, so the iPad is taking over, what's new? Well, iPieces are!


Instead of buying a huge board game, and all the pieces that come with it, you get just a few crucial pieces in a little box (seriously, this thing isn't much bigger than my iPhone 4). The bulk of the "stuff" is actually contained in an iPad app.

The game I played at BlogHer -- looking like an overgrown 7-year-old -- was the classic old Fishing Game, where you tried to hook the big one with a little rod. Only I was the one hooked. We're big on Family Game Night in our house because, yes, we are that family. We actually sit around the living room floor and wage massive Sorry battles.

We have piles and piles of board games. And I've had more than my fair share of tiny game pieces gnaw on the sole of my foot in the middle of the night. Cutting down on at least a portion of both appealed to me.

I loved the idea so much that I've spent months trying to find it in real life. Every time we've hit one of the big box stores (confession, yes, I shop at them ... you try living in the boonies and finding some of your must haves), I've looked.

And then out of the blue I got one of those blogger emails I couldn't say no to. They wanted to know if I'd be interested in checking out iPieces. And since I was already hooked, I said OK.

My daughter and I spent an afternoon playing iPieces Air Hockey with, get this: two little discs. That's it. Well, that and my iPad -- the app is a free download.

I don't need to have a huge air hockey table. I don't need to find room for a game board. I don't have to worry about stepping on a gazillion little pieces. As they expand the line, I might even be able to get rid of the pile of board games (please, pretty please!!).

At least this once, I'm pretty OK with the iPad taking over. How about you?

Do you find yourself stepping on game board pieces in the night? Do you even HAVE all the pieces to your game boards?


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Disclaimer: Pressman provided me iPieces to facilitate this review, but I wasn't otherwise compensated. All opinions -- and failures to just put on a pair of slippers in the middle of the night -- are my own.