For museums and libraries
The game in the case,
in the visitor’s hands.
A board in a case shows how a game looks. Board & Pieces lets your visitors play it, on their own phones: a short account of where the game comes from, a short lesson, and an opponent on the bench beside them or anywhere in the world. All you put out is a printed card.
Saturday · 2:00 pm
A small card beside the case.
Your museum or library is a venue in the app. You print its QR code on a small card and set it beside a case, or on the reading table. Nothing else comes into the room: no screens, no kiosks, nothing to switch on in the morning.
What your visitor sees
From the case
to the table.
This is the app’s real screen, recorded as it runs: a lesson in bagh chal, a game from Nepal.
- 1Where it comes fromEach game opens with a short account of its origins: bagh chal and Nepal, hnefatafl and the Viking Age, oware and West Africa. A few paragraphs, nothing more.
- 2How it is playedA short lesson on the board itself, one move at a time, and then the first game.
- 3A real opponentAnother visitor in the room, or a player somewhere in the world. Never a computer.
Good to know
Common questions,
short answers.
- Is there anything to install or look after?
- No. There are no screens, kiosks or tablets, and nothing to switch on, charge or update. You print a card, and visitors use their own phones. If a card goes missing, you print another.
- Does it cost visitors anything?
- No. The app is free and has no ads, and while your venue is Premium, every game opened at your museum or library is free for your visitors.
- What about quiet galleries and reading rooms?
- Sound is each visitor’s own setting: it switches off in the app, and on an iPhone set to silent the app makes no sound at all. A line on the card asking visitors to keep sound off is enough. And whoever opens a game chooses its pace, so a slow game asks for no more than a glance now and then.
- Many of our visitors come from abroad.
- The app is in fifteen languages, among them English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi. Each visitor reads the story and the lesson in their own, and one card serves them all.
- How is visitors’ privacy protected?
- A visitor can be present at your venue anonymously, with no name or photo shown. Chat opens only if both players accept it, and anyone can be blocked and reported in one tap. There are no ads. Accounts are for ages 16 and over, so the card is meant for adults and older teens.
- Which games, and beside which cases?
- There are eleven: chess, backgammon, go, xiangqi, hnefatafl, bagh chal, oware, nine men’s morris, mū tōrere, patolli and wall go. You decide what each card suggests: hnefatafl beside a Viking Age case, xiangqi or go beside China and East Asia, patolli beside Mesoamerica, mū tōrere beside a Māori collection. In a library, one card on the reading table is enough.
- What happens after the free month?
- If you would like to continue, you start the subscription through the App Store or Google Play, for six or twelve months. If not, there is nothing you need to do, and the cards can come down.
Setting it up
A few minutes,
four steps.
- 1Get the appFree on iPhone and Android.
- 2Find your museum or libraryOpen Venues and search by name. It is probably already on the map.
- 3Claim itTap “Is this your business?” and enter the code we send you.
- 4Print the cardsSave your QR code and print it on small cards: one beside each case you choose, one on the reading table.
The first month is on us
Try it for a month,
in your own rooms.
Tell us the name of your museum or library and we text you a code worth a month of Venue Premium. No card, and no call unless you ask for one.