Physical games

Tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment game. Some Board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout.

Each tile has a back (undifferentiated) side and a face side. Tiles are usually rectangular, twice as long as they are wide and at least twice as wide as they are thick, though games exist with square tiles, triangular tiles and even hexagonal tiles.

Tile-based physical games include:

• Dominoes
• Mahjong (may be played with special playing cards instead)
• Chinese dominoes games
• Scrabble

Tile based games that use non-rectangular tiles:

• Triominos
• Tantrix

Tile-based Board games:

• Alhambra
• Carcassonne
• Diceland
• Zombies!!!

Video and computer games

A tile-based game is a specific type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular or, more often, square graphic images, referred to as 'tiles.' Tiles may be laid out adjacent to one another and usually some are allowed to overlap, for example the tile representing the player's character. These types of games usually try to simulate a top-down view on the playing area and are almost always two dimensional.

Some games, like side-scrollers are, technically, also tile based (that is, the playing area is made up of graphic tiles), but are normally not referred to as such.

Tile-based computer games include:

• Centipede
• Civilization series
• Dig Dug
• Heroes of Might and Magic series
• Pac-Man
• Rogue
• SimCity
• Ultima series (through Ultima IV)

Tile-based games are not a genre unto themselves, but rather refer to the technology a game uses for its visual representation. For example, Ultima III is a role-playing game, but visually it is tile-based.

Early tile-based games shipped with pre-constructed levels or generated levels at game startup (for example, with SimCity and Civilization) or on the fly (as with Roguelike games). Recently, however, most games come with an editor that allow players to construct their own levels. While completed levels for a game may hide all traces of tile-based technology, use of an editor for such a game strips away all polish and reveals a game's tile-based framework.