'Beasts of Balance' gives Jenga the modern update you've been waiting for

Everybody loves Jenga, but the wooden brick stacking game is so 20th century.

Fortunately for anybody who's been craving an update, Sensible Object is putting a modern twist on the classic tabletop game with Beasts of Balance, a digitally-enhanced, menagerie-filled world-building co-op game played with stackable, animal-shaped blocks.

The game launched last year, and now Sensible Object's raising the stakes in Beasts of Balance with a new Battles mode that launched this week on Kickstarter.

With the core game, players are challenged to stack 24 slightly rubberized plastic creatures on top of an NFC-enabled base that is fitted with a weight sensor that knows when an object is stacked on it. The base platform and bricks also connect to the Beasts of Balance app (iOS and Android). Every action you take on the game platform is then reflected digitally in the app. The goal is to stack all of the animals and help build the world of Beasts of Balance.

To play, you hold a game piece near the NFC reader on the platform and then place the animal or game-piece on top of it. Like Jenga, the animals and objects stack up and the game ends when the stack tumbles over (and in Beasts of Balance, a volcano erupts on-screen.)

Unlike Jenga, there's a whole world that you're cooperatively building in the app, with animals and cross-breeds, which are enabled with special pieces (there are 150 beast combos to discover). Part of the goal of the game is to care for the virtual beasts you added and created within the game.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The new Battles mode adds a competitive element to an otherwise competitive game. Battles splits the world in two so that animals you add appear only in your world, including cross-breeds. But the animals that you add can be stolen by competing players. There are also new NFC-enabled cards (16 in all) that let you apply actions like "Smite" (which does kill off one of your beasts).

In this competitive mode, it becomes even more crucial to take care of the digital beasts you add to the game. This is all done via the app while you're still stacking new animals on the real-world platform.

In this game, whoever topples the stack takes all the damage. Collect enough damage and you can lose the game.

In addition to Battles mode, Sensible Object is also updating the original game and introducing a collection of more whimsical animals, like Magma the Grump Dragon Angla Fish.

We played both the original game and the updated Battles mode. Unlike Jenga, Beasts of Balance is all about building, not carefully tearing down and reconstructing a stack. Even so, the act of carefully placing oddly-shaped animal figures and other play pieces did produce the same kind of stress one feels when trying to keep a Jenga tower from toppling. The digital aspect, which we viewed through the app running on an iPad, adds a key engagement element, especially in the new Battles mode, where you become attached to your digital animal creations and feel a little pang of regret when your opponent turns them into a pile of bones.

The original game costs $99 and you can support the Kickstarter update, which Sensible Objects expects to ship next year, for $79.