It's a blurry line. When you replace the deck of "bad stuff happens" cards in a solo game with an app that reads them out to you, but the app
could have been a deck of cards, which side of the line does that land? What about if the app starts tracking game state for you as well? Game state that
could have been tracked with moving tokens around the board, or using dice as counters, but is simpler in the app. Does that cross the line into video-game territory? What if the app tracks
hidden game state, doing the job a human GM would need to do. Does
that cross the line?
It's very, very fuzzy. Which may be part of why some board game designers chose not to create companion apps. For example, Arydia (designed by Cody Miller and Ira Fay) tracks game state with three large boxes of playing cards, some of which have "B" and "C" versions; the game will routinely tell you that after you defeat such-and-such an enemy, switch NPC-32 into the "B" state. So you take the NPC-32A card out of the active section of the box and put it in the inactive section, and take the NPC-32B card out of the inactive section and put it in the active section. That could have been done with an app, but every time the question of a companion app gets raised on the Arydia forums at BoardGameGeek, the game designers say "We thought about doing an app, but decided it didn't fit with our vision for the game; we wanted it to be purely a board game with physical components." (I'm paraphrasing rather than quoting).
By the way, I highly recommend Arydia if you're into board games with an exploration, adventuring experience. It's the game that has come closest of all the ones I've played to "RPG campaign in board game form". It's got a steep price because of all the physical components included in the game. But my word, is it worth the price if that kind of gameplay is up your alley (and it is very much up mine). You'll get hours and hours of gameplay out of it, and when you're done, you can reset the campaign and play again. You might think "Oh, I'll remember everything from my first playthrough" but the game is long enough that you probably won't remember most of it.
Anyway, enough rambling about one of only 3-4 games I ever rated 10/10 on BGG. We were discussing board game "companion apps", and there are definitely some that I would say "Yeah, that's a video game in board game shape". But I don't buy those, they don't appeal to me, so I really don't remember their names. They definitely exist, though.
It's very, very fuzzy. Which may be part of why some board game designers chose not to create companion apps. For example, Arydia (designed by Cody Miller and Ira Fay) tracks game state with three large boxes of playing cards, some of which have "B" and "C" versions; the game will routinely tell you that after you defeat such-and-such an enemy, switch NPC-32 into the "B" state. So you take the NPC-32A card out of the active section of the box and put it in the inactive section, and take the NPC-32B card out of the inactive section and put it in the active section. That could have been done with an app, but every time the question of a companion app gets raised on the Arydia forums at BoardGameGeek, the game designers say "We thought about doing an app, but decided it didn't fit with our vision for the game; we wanted it to be purely a board game with physical components." (I'm paraphrasing rather than quoting).
By the way, I highly recommend Arydia if you're into board games with an exploration, adventuring experience. It's the game that has come closest of all the ones I've played to "RPG campaign in board game form". It's got a steep price because of all the physical components included in the game. But my word, is it worth the price if that kind of gameplay is up your alley (and it is very much up mine). You'll get hours and hours of gameplay out of it, and when you're done, you can reset the campaign and play again. You might think "Oh, I'll remember everything from my first playthrough" but the game is long enough that you probably won't remember most of it.
Anyway, enough rambling about one of only 3-4 games I ever rated 10/10 on BGG. We were discussing board game "companion apps", and there are definitely some that I would say "Yeah, that's a video game in board game shape". But I don't buy those, they don't appeal to me, so I really don't remember their names. They definitely exist, though.