‣ Company: Temple Gates Games
‣ Owner and CEO: Theresa Duringer
‣ Mission: To work with board game creators to turn their games into apps
‣ App launched: 2024
‣ Team size: 4
‣ Go-to emoji: 👍

With years of family game nights under her belt, Theresa Duringer thought she’d feel right at home at her office’s board game club.

But her colleagues at the AAA game developer she worked at defined “board game” broadly. They were into complex tabletop strategy—the kind loaded with decks to build and victory points to tally.

“I came with my Scrabble board and no one would make eye contact with it,” she says with a laugh.

Duringer came to love sprawling strategy—which led her to found Temple Gates Games. The San Francisco–based indie studio specializes in creating mobile versions of popular board games like Shards of Infinity, Race for the Galaxy, and the groundbreaking deck-builder Dominion.

We spoke with Duringer about the secret of bringing table-hogging board games to pocket-size screens—and a career-changing encounter with the maker of her favorite game.

You started out as a game tester and worked your way up to assistant producer. What convinced you to leave a huge studio and do your own thing?
I met Jonathan Blow, creator of the videogame Braid. I thought, “Whoa, you can do that with your life? That’s incredible!” I had been developing a creative relationship with another game designer, and eventually we decided we can make our own games—so we quit our jobs.

What advantages have you discovered digital board games offer, besides being able to play with far-flung friends?
Accessibility. If you’re in a digital setting, one player can be playing with the text size boosted up to jumbo while another isn’t. But they’re both able to meet and play the same game.

How do you manage to squeeze a complex board—and hundreds of tokens and cards—onto an iPhone or iPad screen?
We do dynamic UI layouts, and we absolutely optimize for everything. And we think about how we can expand and contract areas based on the moment of the game while still having the relevant information handy for making strategic decisions.

What do you look for in a board game when deciding to adapt it for mobile?
Is this going to be something that has staying power—is it replayable? And will the components make sense in a digital format? There are a limited number of games that can handle those abstractions and still feel intuitive. But it’s also the values demonstrated by a game’s content and the team creating it. As the CEO, I have an opportunity to sign deals in accordance with my values.

You got to meet Donald X. Vaccarino, the designer of Dominion. That’s one of your favorite board games. What was that like?
Without time to prepare, I pitched him on the spot to make an app version of Dominion. He politely listened, but I didn’t read too much interest. The party went on, and I was kicking myself for flubbing my dream opportunity. At the end of the night, in desperation, I tried again. The response: skeptical questions. But the next morning, a message from him pinged my inbox, and here we are!

Temple Gates Games is a part of the App Store Small Business Program. If you are a developer and would like to learn more about the program, follow the link below.