There are hundreds of popular card/board games. Some of them are very old, and have been around for thousands of years. They are time proven and we might call them classic games with full certainty. Usually, they utilize an abstract design of game elements: pieces, boards, and rules. With time, their look has become more universal and indifferent to the vicissitudes of cultural influences (and this makes them the common heritage of mankind). Well-known examples are Chess, Go, Backgammon, Draughts, Dominoes, and Janggi.

A screenshot from adventure game, Machinarium, which uses a tricky variation of noughts and crosses as one of the puzzles

Some games look very much like classic games; they utilize the same minimalistic aesthetics but are a little bit younger, having been invented a few centuries ago. I'm talking about Renju, Reversi, Mahjong, and many other such wonderful games. It's worth noting that the new age does not detract from their value.

The other groups of games are a part of modern history; they were designed in the 20th or 21st century and reflect more concrete contemporary realities. Their game boards are more visual, featuring more illustrative ornamentation, rules are complex and deep, game pieces and tokens may represent real-life objects: houses, cars, soldiers, and so on. The first thing that comes on mind is, of course, Monopoly. It was created in the 1930s and is now famous all over the world. Then there is Scrabble, which is equally well known. Don't forget about the very charming game Cluedo, which illustrates the flexibility of a card/board game paradigm, it can tell any type of plot, in this particular case, the game is a fascinating detective story:

A screenshot from Cluedo for iOS, developed by Electronic arts. Unlike many others digital versions of board games, this one tries to provide the story in the nontrivial form of an adventure game

There is also a special class of modern games—role-playing game (RPG)—which was introduced in the 1970s and met with huge success. The pioneer of that genre was the Dungeons & Dragons game, which later became a franchise. Such games let a player travel through the game world, developing the abilities of his character. This can be done by resolving various quests, taking part in fights, and so on. As the game moves forward, the game character receives new talents and tools. The RPGs can be called the personalization of a modern board game's spirit because they can include almost all components of a board game in almost perfect form. The rules can look like a thick folio with a lot of nuances being described inside. The game boards are complex and well crafted. And there are a lot of cards in decks, illustrated very professionally with great attention to detail, and non-cubic dice that are real works of geometric art: tetrahedrons, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, and other unusual 3D shapes.

The game pieces can look similar to tiny figures molded very skillfully and it is worth having an art collection of them.

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Magic: The Gathering successfully settled down in digital universe, this is a screenshot from Magic 2014 developed by Wizards of the Coast. As you can check it for yourself the basic principles remain the same: game table and a collection of cards

As would be expected, the beauty of such game elements soon gave birth to a passion for collecting these items. But it is boring to collect some items and not to use them sometimes in the action, so a new genre of games was born based on the specific cards players have to collect to play the game. The genre became known as collectible card game (CCG) or trading card game. It encourages the desire to search for new cards not only from the aesthetic point of view, but for gaming purposes as well because the player can organize his own playing decks, developing his original balance of powers and abilities. The first game of this type was the now illustrious game Magic: The Gathering, published in 1993.