This Maker Built a Digital Version of the Burgle Bros. Board Game

You probably grew up with the same handful of board games that we all did: Monopoly, Life, Clue, Risk, Scrabble, and a few others that have been selling in the millions for several decades. But there has been something of a board game Renaissance in recent years, and enthusiasts now have dozens of unique and innovative games to enjoy. Burgle Bros., released in 2015, is one great example that challenges players to rob safes without getting caught by guards. Maker Dan Sapienza has built an amazing digital version of the game, and recently showed off his work on Twitter.

The standard Burgle Bros. board game is made for one to four players, who work through the game cooperatively. You’re a team of burglars who are on the job, and your mission is to explore a building and successfully crack a safe on each floor while avoiding setting off alarms and running into guards. The building layout is determined by tiles that each represent a room. There are three floors, and each floor is a 4x4 grid of room tiles. Sapienza has completely replaced those simple cardstock tiles with electronic tiles coordinated by a master controller.

Each tile is 3D-printed and contains a PCB. Those PCBs have a Microchip ATtiny84 programmed with the Arduino IDE, four Adafruit NeoPixel RGB LEDs, and a magnetic connector on all of the four sides. Those magnetic connectors make it easy to snap many tiles together to create the entire building’s floorplan. This even supports more rooms than the standard version of the game — a number that is practically only limited by the number of electronic tiles that the players have available.

All of the room tiles connect to a double-sized controller tile via I2C. That main controller tile has a touchscreen and is powered by an Adafruit Feather M0 development board. A series of special edge tiles run along two sides of each floor, and floors are chained together with cables. Those help the controller automatically calculate the layout of the floors, and building as a whole.

With that information, the system can position alarms and guards, which are indicated by the LEDs. It can even move the guards from room to room as the game progresses. While Sapienza's goal seems to be replicating the original experience, this would allow for a number of gameplay tweaks. Sapienza was even able to demonstrate an earlier version of his design back in 2018 at PAX Unplugged, with the permission of Tim Flowers — the creator of the original Burgle Bros. board game.