Board Game Stats

Review by eFreeware

If you play board games regularly, you probably have a rough idea of what hit the table last month, but not much more than that. Board Game Stats is built for the people who want the full record: which games, which players, what scores, and how all of it trends over time. It costs $5.99 up front, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases for extra features.

The app is a tracking tool rather than a rulebook or a way to play games digitally. You log sessions, scores and collections, and the app turns that into statistics and graphs. With more than 100,000 installs and a 4.8 average from 2,514 ratings, it has clearly found an audience among hobbyists who take their play history seriously.

What makes it more than a simple log is the depth of what you can record. There are tailor-made score sheets for over 2,500 games, support for teams and cooperative scoring, and the ability to note locations, player roles and play duration. It also syncs with BoardGameGeek, so a collection you already maintain there can be pulled in rather than rebuilt by hand.

Logging a game night without slowing it down

The core job is entering a play. You pick the game and any expansions, set the players and location, and fill in scores. The app can calculate running totals as you enter plus and minus adjustments, which suits games where scores shift during play rather than being tallied once at the end. Teams are handled separately, so a partnership game gets the right structure.

A timer is available if you want to know how long a session actually ran, and you can attach a note to a game that appears each time you start a play of it. Player roles can be recorded, and the app remembers roles used before so you are not retyping the same ones. Anonymous players are an option too, which helps when someone joins for a single game and you do not want to create a permanent profile.

For groups where more than one person tracks plays, a saved play can be sent to other BG Stats users, so only one person has to do the data entry. If you already have history elsewhere, plays can be imported from BoardGameGeek, Yucata, Board Game Arena and ScorePal. Posting back to BoardGameGeek is supported as well, including an option to post automatically after each save.

The collection side of the app

Alongside plays, the app manages a collection. You can record games you own, games you are interested in, and everything in between, with statuses such as Owned, Wishlist and Want to play. Specific versions and images can be chosen, and multiple copies of the same game can be tracked separately, which matters if you own two editions or keep a copy at someone else's house.

Notes, cost and purchase date each have a place too. Filters let you pull up subsets such as games you have played but do not own, or games you own but have never played. Custom filters can be set up to narrow the list to what fits a particular group, which is useful when you are choosing what to bring to a specific table.

The BoardGameGeek collection sync runs automatically, so changes on either side flow across. That connection is the app's biggest structural dependency, and the developer notes that changes to the BoardGameGeek site or its API can temporarily break the related features, with no guarantee that they will keep working. That is a real risk to weigh if your collection lives on BoardGameGeek and you expect the two to stay in step.

What the statistics actually show

Once plays are logged, the app turns them into statistics for games, players and combinations of the two. You get pie charts, play time and duration graphs, and score charts, along with insights for different time periods. The data you enter answers questions about high scores, playing partners and whether your own results have improved.

The app also tracks hobby-specific measures: an H-index, fives, dimes, quarters and centuries, plus a personal H-index and win percentage for each player. Cost per play is calculated for games where you recorded a price, which is a neat way to see which purchases have earned their shelf space. Insights charts and 3x3 images can be shared.

Two in-app purchases extend this. The Power Expansion adds charts broken down by player count, filters on players, locations, periods and counts, winning streaks and tiebreakers, role- and board-based statistics, a heat map of plays and durations, cost per hour and per player, and tags for games, players and locations. It also brings advanced multi-criteria filters, combined game statistics, tag syncing with BoardGameGeek, and the ability to create challenges from filters or tags. The Challenges expansion focuses on structured goals: templates, x times y challenges, ongoing H-index targets, and filters for which players, locations and player counts count toward a challenge.

Setting up and keeping data safe

Getting started is mostly about deciding where your data lives. The app works offline, so you can log plays without a connection, and it can sync with BoardGameGeek if you want your collection mirrored there. If you already have plays on BoardGameGeek, Yucata, Board Game Arena or ScorePal, they can be imported rather than entered again.

For backups there are export and import functions that work with a range of services. Syncing between your own devices is handled by BG Stats Cloud sync, which is an in-app subscription rather than part of the initial purchase. That distinction matters: the $5.99 buys the app, while cloud sync and the two expansions are additional costs.

The developer says it follows Android design, supports dark mode on Android 10 and later, and adapts to tablets and landscape. Recent updates have addressed sort states not being remembered between launches and fixed reported crashes, which suggests the app is being maintained rather than left to sit.

Who gets the most from it

This is a tool for people who play board games often enough that memory is not good enough. If you have a shelf of games and a regular group, the value comes from being able to answer questions about your own history: what you have played, with whom, and how scores have moved. The more consistently you log, the more the statistics have to work with.

It also suits collectors who want more than a list. Statuses, versions, multiple copies, prices paid and acquisition dates turn a shelf into a database, and the cost-per-play figure is the kind of thing that appeals to anyone who has wondered whether a big-box purchase was justified. Groups where several people track plays benefit from the sharing feature, since only one person needs to enter each session.

The people who will get less from it are those who play casually and rarely, or who are happy with a rough sense of what they have played. The app is built around record-keeping, and its value scales with how much you put in. It is also worth noting that it is a paid app with optional expansions and a subscription for cloud sync, so the total cost can grow beyond the initial price depending on which features you want.

A record-keeper for regular board game groups

Board Game Stats does one job thoroughly: it keeps a detailed, searchable record of your board game collection and plays, then turns that record into statistics. The score sheets for thousands of games, the player and team handling, the BoardGameGeek sync and the depth of the charts all point to an app made by people who understand the hobby. At $5.99 with no ads, the initial ask is reasonable for what it covers.

The caveats are the ones the developer sets out. BoardGameGeek-related features depend on a site the developer does not control and can break temporarily. Cloud sync between devices costs a subscription, and the Power and Challenges expansions are separate purchases that unlock a meaningful share of the more advanced statistics and filtering. If those extras matter to you, budget for them rather than assuming they are included.

For a regular group that wants to know who really wins at a given game, how long sessions run, and whether a purchase has paid for itself in plays, this is a well-established option with a strong rating behind it. If you want a lightweight way to note what you played now and then, the depth here is more than you need.

What's new in version 6.17.1

• Fixes last sort states not being remembered between launches. • Reported crashes fixed.