What shall we play tonight?

Which board game fits tonight's group? You say how many of you there are, what you are in the mood for, how much thinking you are up for and how much time you have — the page sorts your collection by that and suggests what to put on the table. Whatever does not fit is not dropped silently: it is listed below with the reason.

An Android app, and underneath it a single HTML file: no build system, no dependencies, no account and no request to the internet unless you ask for one — even the fonts are baked in. The same page runs as a web app (for iPhone and iPad, or any browser) and opens from a local file by double-clicking it.

The shelf starts empty: you add your own games. To try the app first, the empty shelf offers Load example games — nine well-known titles you can remove one by one later.

On your phone: download the latest Android app.

In the browser / on iPhone: https://dr-nerdlove.github.io/board-game-recommender/ — the same application, no installation. How to keep it on an iPhone is described below.

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As an app on your phone (Android)

1. On the phone, open the latest release and download the file game-night-1.2.3.apk (the number is the version).
2. Tap the downloaded file. The first time, Android asks whether apps from this source may be installed — confirm once.
3. Done. The app sits in the app drawer with its own icon.

A newer version installs over the old one and the collection survives. Exception: anyone still on a version up to 1.2.0 has to uninstall once — back up the collection first, uninstalling deletes it. The reason is in the changelog under 1.2.1.

Every version gets its own release, which stays unchanged afterwards. What changed is written there and in the changelog. Which version you are running is at the very bottom of the page.

The app contains everything and needs no network (only Find data does). Your collection lives in the app's storage, on this phone.

Backup — important before switching phones. Under Edit collection → Backup & moving:

• Copy as text — always works. Paste it into a note or an e-mail.
• Save as file — in the app, Android's share sheet opens and you choose where the .json file goes. "Save to files" puts it in the Downloads folder, for example; mail, Drive or a chat work just as well. In a browser it lands in the Downloads folder directly.
• Read a file — on the new device, pick the backup, then Replace collection.

The app reminds you after 30 days without a backup (from 5 games on; the first reminder comes two weeks after you start, at the earliest). Later snoozes it for a week.

Building a new version:

• Android app: the Actions tab → Android-App bauen → Run workflow, with the "veroeffentlichen" (publish) box ticked. A few minutes later the new release is there with its APK. Without the tick it is only a trial build. Pushing a tag v1.2.3 does the same thing. The APK never builds on its own.
• Web version: updates itself — every push to main that touches the web files publishes it again (Web-Version veroeffentlichen).

The app is signed with a fixed key of its own; the fingerprint is given with every release. Because it does not come from the Play Store, Android still shows a warning when installing.

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On iPhone and iPad (web app)

Free, and without the App Store (which would need a paid Apple developer account): the page is also published as a web app.

1. Open https://dr-nerdlove.github.io/board-game-recommender/ in Safari.
2. Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.

After the first visit it runs offline.

Important — two things on iPhone:

• Add it to the home screen first, then enter your games. Safari and the home-screen app keep separate storage: games entered in a Safari tab do not show up in the home-screen app. Already started in Safari? Move the collection over with Backup & moving → Copy as text, then paste it into the app and tap Replace collection.
• As a plain website tab, Safari deletes the stored data after about 7 days without a visit. On the home screen that does not happen.

For everyone using the web version (iPhone, Android browser, computer):

• The collection lives in that browser on that device — every browser has its own, nothing syncs. Moving between devices works through backups.
• Clearing browser data clears the collection too. Make a backup now and then.
• The first visit needs the internet; after that it works offline. Only Find data always needs a connection.
• Updates arrive by themselves the next time you open it online.
• On first save the page asks the browser to keep its data permanently (Firefox may show a prompt for that). That protects against clean-ups when storage runs low — not against Safari's 7-day rule.

The Android extras (Material You colours, the back button, per-app language) are simply absent. "Save as file" puts the backup in the Files app.

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What the page does

• Hard filters: player count, time budget, difficulty, mood. Whatever drops out is listed below with the reason ("up to 4 only", "takes 60 min or more").
• Teaching time: games nobody knows yet can be marked Still needs explaining in the form. The time budget then adds the surcharge, derived from the difficulty: light +5, medium +10, demanding +20 minutes. A 45-minute medium-weight game therefore needs 65 minutes and falls out of a one-hour budget, with the reason given ("with the explanation, takes 65 min or more"). Once the game has been taught, untick it.
• Ranking: matches are sorted by fit. The best suggestion sits at the top in large type, and the bars show how well a game suits the group.
• Sweet spot: a game that plays best at exactly this player count gets a badge of its own.
• Let the dice decide: when the discussion drags on, the button picks at random from the better half of the matches.
• Last played: every card has Played today at the bottom. Tap it once and the page remembers the date — tap again to undo. Older dates are entered by hand under Edit collection → Change. Games unplayed for a long time then rise in the ranking and recently played ones fall (sharply under two days), but they never disappear entirely: a rematch should stay findable. The chip Only long-unplayed under Additionally shows only what has not been touched for over 90 days.
• The last settings are remembered in the browser.

Keeping the collection up to date

At the bottom of the page: Edit collection.

• Add — name, player count, length, difficulty and at least one mood; Shines at is optional and means the player count at which the game really shines (the sweet-spot badge depends on it).
• Find data — type the title and the app fetches player count and length from Wikidata, plus a suggested mood (see below).
• Change — fills the same form with the existing game. It also holds Last played as a date field: fill it in, correct it or clear it (empty means "never"). It only appears when changing — a freshly added game counts as never played. Next to it are five buttons for the common cases: Today, Yesterday, A month ago, Six months ago, Clear. The two coarse ones are meant for games you played long ago but never entered here — without a date the page takes a game to be new, gives it a bonus and labels it "never played". The line under the field says in words what is entered. Dates in the future are rejected by the form. Beside it is the Still needs explaining tickbox; games marked that way carry the note "to teach" in the list.
• Remove — immediate, with Undo right next to it.
• Searching and sorting — a search field above the list, plus sorting by name, players, length, difficulty or Long unplayed. The heading Sort by sits above the row — it looks like the filters but does something else.
• Backup & moving — the whole collection as text, to keep, to add to (Merge in) or to replace.

Find data (Wikidata)

Next to the name field sits Find data. It looks the title up on Wikidata, the free knowledge base behind Wikipedia, and fills in what it finds:

• the official title, player count and length,
• a suggested mood, derived from the genre (party game, cooperative, quiz, word game, strategy …) — only if you have not picked one yet.

If several games match, the app shows a short list to pick from. Nothing is saved until you tap Put on the shelf.

What Wikidata does not know: difficulty and Shines at. Those stay with you — the Look up on BGG ↗ link right next to it gets you there quickly. Well-known games are covered well, niche titles sometimes not at all; then the app says so instead of guessing.

This is the only time the app talks to the internet, and only when you tap the button. Why not BoardGameGeek directly? Since 2025 BGG requires a personal, registered key for its interface, and that key must not be shared — so it cannot ship inside an app that other people install.

Difficulty and best player count from BGG

Find data cannot supply difficulty or "Shines at". BoardGameGeek has both:

1. Under Edit collection, type the title into the name field.
2. Look up on BGG ↗ opens the BGG search for that title in a new tab. Click the game there.
3. The BGG page has the numbers at the top right: Weight — and in the Community box, under "Best", the player count it plays best at. (Players and Playing Time are there too, if Find data did not know the game.)
4. Transfer them into the form. The Weight (1–5) becomes the difficulty: up to 1.5 easy, 1.5–2.6 medium, from 2.6 demanding — the conversion is also written under the difficulty buttons.
5. Pick a mood, write a note, Put on the shelf.

The page cannot query BGG itself (see above), hence the detour via the link and the form.

Where the collection lives

On the device you are using — in the app's storage on Android, in the browser's storage for the web version. Nothing syncs and nothing leaves the device; the line above the form says so. Moving to another device works through Backup & moving.

The example games live in BEISPIELSPIELE in index.html; they only reach the collection when someone taps Load example games. An entry looks like this:

{ name:"Azul", min:2, max:4, best:[2,2], dur:[30,45], weight:1.8,
  moods:["gruebeln","entspannt"],
  note:"Fliesen ziehen und Muster legen. Sieht friedlich aus, ist es nicht.",
  noteEn:"Draft tiles, build patterns. Looks peaceful, isn't." },

• min/max — player count as printed on the box
• best — the range in which it really shines
• dur — length from/to, in minutes
• weight — 1 (filler) to 5 (heavy); the three pips follow from this
• moods — keys from the MOODS object above it. These keys stay German in every language (schnell, gruebeln, …): they are stored in the collection and in every backup, so translating them would make existing backups unreadable. Only the labels on screen change.
• note/noteEn — the sentence on the card, German and English. Only the one matching the language is ever stored.

Backups use the same fields (without noteEn), so a backup file is also the easiest way to hand a whole collection to someone else.

Language

The app speaks English and German. By default it follows the system language — a German device gets German, everything else gets English.

On Android 13 and newer you can also set the language for this app alone, without touching the rest of the phone: Settings → Apps → Game Night → Language. The app picks that up straight away.

There is deliberately no language switch inside the app: Android already has one, in the same place for every app.

What the language switch does not touch is your data. Mood and difficulty keys are the same in both languages, so a backup written on a German phone reads perfectly on an English one and the other way round. Notes you have typed yourself stay exactly as you typed them; only the example games pick their notes by language, at the moment they are loaded.

The name under the app icon follows the same rule.

Versions

Numbering follows Semantic Versioning: in X.y.z something fundamental changes, in x.Y.z something is added, in x.y.Z something is fixed. What happened in which version is in the changelog; every version also has its own release with the matching APK.

Fonts

The two bundled fonts are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; attribution is in FONTS.md.

Licence

This project is under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or any later version — the full text is in LICENSE.

In short: you may use, pass on and change the application. If you pass it on — changed or not — it must stay under the same licence and the source has to come with it. There is no warranty.

Excepted are the two bundled fonts: they keep their own licence, the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (see above). The GPL does not change that.