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While I was walking around Consumer Electronics Show 2026my eyes drifted toward a poster full of fantasy heroes, dastardly monsters, and rolling dice—and I failed a saving throw to look away. If you’re a fan of board games, you may want to keep an eye out for this pair of gadgets scheduled for release later this year.
Board games continue to attract players with their deliberately analog gameplay, using miniatures, maps, dice, and other physical trinkets to maintain the focus on real-world play. The popularity of this field has increased over the decades, and a supporting industry has emerged around it that offers third-party materials and accessories to enhance the experience. Digital tools and software have been added to the mix in recent years, and a new company, arcalinkhas its own supporting products for the avid Dungeons & Dragons player.
The first of Arcalink’s upcoming tabletop improvements is a small but powerful tool. About the size of a film can, the Arcalink One is a rectangular display about 2 to 3 inches tall and covered in fanciful decorations. They can be swapped, with one appearing like a doorway in a stone ruin and the other appearing like a blue wizard’s portal (the third, not present but described to me, would look like a Mimic, the classic D&D monster that appears as a treasure chest to trick adventurers).
The Arcalink One screen displays the player’s avatar, and since it was designed with the D&D fantasy role-playing game in mind, animations for common spells that can be played via voice commands. Tabletop RPGs encourage theater of the mind, with players visualizing their characters through audio descriptions, but Arcalink One seems to be a great way for them to access a digital version of their hero (uploaded in JPG or MP4 file formats) that’s neither essential to play nor large enough to be intrusive — a totemic treat for moving from game to game, swapping character portraits using the associated app.
The basilisk in the room is the price: The Arcalink One is expected to cost between $100 and $150, Arcalink founder Lizheng Liu told me. Although the company hasn’t broken down the final numbers, this first number is the device itself, and the higher end of the range will bring more of those clip-on embellishments with it.
The $100+ price tag for the optional device is steep for most backgammon players, but I imagine this will appeal to deep-pocketed adventurers who want a neat little plug-and-play gadget to add a little more flair to the game table. Also, let’s not pretend that backgammon enthusiasts don’t spend a significant amount of money on accessories, dice, and miniatures (looking at you, adventurers).
The company plans to allow a select group of backers to start backing the Arcalink One in March or April, with a full crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter launching around June.
One use case for Arca Studio is to scan recorded game sessions to present a word cloud of common items in adventures.
The second product, Arca Studio, is entirely digital: AI-powered software to help dungeon masters, the thankless gamemasters who tell the story and give voice to the inhabitants of their world for their characters to experience. No, it doesn’t use generative AI to come up with campaign ideas – this AI software records your game sessions and will make it easier for you to go back and research characters and event storylines as you plan before your next game day.
Yes, this is kind of the gaming version of the AI summaries that productivity apps provide when you finish, say, a video chat, but there are some unique features designed specifically for board games. One creates a word cloud that pulls together recurring names and concepts in your campaign recordings to visualize recurring themes and items — great for dungeon masters to see what plotlines and adventure types they might be overusing to switch up.
Arca Studio will launch around May or June and will be a subscription service, although Arcalink has not yet decided what the expected monthly cost will be. It’s worth noting that anything can change in pricing or product features before these two products hit the market — and just like a good tabletop campaign, there may be some last-minute changes that change everything.