Games - Tile-based game

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	Games - Tile-based game

A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. It has different meanings depending on how it is used. There are many traditional games which use tiles, but when referring to video games, normally a tile-based game means a game which uses tiles as part of its graphic output.

Traditional games

Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment game. Some Board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout.

Each tile has a back (undifferentiated) side and a face side. Tiles are usually rectangular, twice as long as they are wide and at least twice as wide as they are thick, though games exist with square tiles, triangular tiles and even hexagonal tiles.

Traditional Tile-based physical games

Chinese dominoes
games
Dominoes
Mahjong
(may be played with special playing cards instead)
Rummikub
Scrabble

Tile based games that use non-rectangular tiles

Tile-based board games

Video games

A tile-based video game is a type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular, square, or hexagonal graphic images, referred to as tiles. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a tileset. Tiles are laid out adjacent to one another in a grid; usually, some tiles are allowed to overlap, for example, when a tile representing a unit is overlaid onto a tile representing terrain. Tile-based games usually simulate a top-down or isometric view on the playing area and are almost always two dimensional.

Tile-based games are not a distinct game genre; rather, the term refers to the technology a game engine uses for its visual representation. For example, Ultima III is a role-playing game and Civilization is a turn-based strategy game, but both use tile-based game engines. Tile-based game engines allow developers to create large, complex gameworlds efficiently and with relatively few art assets.

Early video game consoles such as Intellivision were designed to use tile-based graphics, since their games had to fit into video game cartridges as small as 4K in size. Regardless of their outward appearance or game genre, all Intellivision games are tile-based.

Notable tile-based video games include:

The Ancient Art of War
Centipede
Civilization series
Dig Dug, Bomberman
and Super Boulder Dash, all of which highlighted the presence of tiles to create a scrolling video game version of a board game
Heroes of Might and Magic
series
Gold Box
D&D RPG series
Neverwinter Nights on AOL, the first graphical MMORPG
Pac-Man
Rogue
SimCity
Ultima
series
Utopia, Intellivision

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