Jiroft Lets You Make, Play Your Own Board Games on iPad

We've seen the iPad used as a versatile game board before—and why not? It's large enough, and with support for multi-touch, playing games is remarkably feasible. There's no need to haul around multiple physical boxes, no chance of losing game pieces, and you get to play with your shiny iPad to boot.

Jiroft, however, aims to put its own spin on things by focusing on creating your own games as well as providing you the canvas upon which to play them. The game provides a lot of basic game pieces: a chess set, a deck of cards, and pieces for backgammon or checkers. There are also pieces such as "sliders" and "snappers," which let you store pieces off to the side during play or keep them centered.

As for how to play the games, Jiroft leaves that to the player. Like a physical game set, Jiroft's game board won't police your moves or give you guidance, so house rules are fair game. The hope is that you'll create your own games, unfettered by the limits some apps impose. On the other hand, if chess, checkers, backgammon and cards sound limited to you, try dropping the developers a line—they claim that they're looking for customer feedback when it comes to which pieces to add next.

Jiroft is available in the App Store now, for a piddling $0.99.