Designing a Tabletop Companion App That Doesn't Take Over the Table
Companion apps have become a familiar sight at game nights, but the questions players ask about them are often more practical than the marketing around them suggests. Creatio Aura, a studio still in friends-and-family testing, has been working through those questions with its own testers. The studio describes itself as building "for the evening, and the friends you share it with" — a framing that shapes how it thinks about the app's role at the table.
We asked three questions about what newcomers actually want to know. The answers below come from the studio's own testing experience.
The questions the usual advice misses
The first gap shows up early, in two questions a friend asked: "Can you play it without the app?" and "Can you play it without the physical pieces?" Standard advice about companion apps rarely addresses either directly.
The studio's answer starts with intent. "I think you should always consider your intent. Mine is a game I can bust out at a ren faire or around a campfire with friends," they said. On the app question, the answer is no: "it guides and runs the game, and the physical pieces add to that around-the-table feel when the setting's right." On the pieces question, the answer is more open. The game is being built so the whole thing can be played without physical components "if you're short on space, the weather's wrong, or someone forgot a piece." The studio notes these are still design decisions expected to evolve.
For readers evaluating any companion app, the takeaway is to ask both questions before committing to a system — what the app is required for, and what the physical components are required for. The answers define how portable the game really is.
Automation should remove taps, not choices
The second theme came up repeatedly in early testing: if there's a companion app, why isn't it automating more of the turn?
The studio's response is a useful filter for anyone assessing app-driven games. "Turns that take extra minutes because people are mindlessly tapping confirmations don't add to the fun; they just make the turn longer," they said. The work since then has focused on "stripping out unneeded taps and automating where it makes sense, while still giving players a choice."
That choice is deliberate. "Want to flip a real coin? You can. Want to roll physical dice? You can. If not, the app does it for you." The stated goal is that players decide "how much we use the physical pieces, and how."
This is a practical test readers can apply to any companion app: does the automation shorten the turn, or does it just move the busywork onto a screen? A well-designed app should reduce friction without removing the tactile moments players came for. For background on how tabletop games blend physical and digital components, BoardGameGeek's community wiki is a useful starting point.
The setup mistake: one phone, one owner
The third question concerned setup decisions people make too quickly. The mistake the studio has seen most: "leaving the app with just one person." They describe playing several games with physical pieces and an app that runs the game, where "usually the app sits at one end of the table, or only the person who installed it gets to handle it."
Creatio Aura is designed to avoid that. "Everyone at the table can handle the app: pass one phone around, link phones to each other over Bluetooth, or play over the internet," they said. That flexibility changes "who gets to interact with the app, and how."
For anyone setting up a game night, the takeaway is to decide access before the first turn. A single-device setup can quietly exclude part of the table, and fixing it mid-session is harder than planning for it. Guidance on running group game sessions is available from Meeple Mountain and similar tabletop resources.
What this means for players
Creatio Aura is early — the studio is candid that its answers come from testers and people who have seen the game, not from a broad release. That makes the interview less a product pitch than a window into the design questions a companion app has to answer: what the app is for, what the pieces are for, how much automation helps, and who gets to hold the phone.
Those questions apply well beyond one studio. As more tabletop games ship with digital companions, players can use them to evaluate whether an app serves the evening or interrupts it. More about the studio's approach is available at Creatio Aura.