Digital Carcassonne

There is an iPhone Carcassonne out. It is very good. I highly recommend it.

Check out carcassonneapp.com for a neat video.

Ok, so maybe some explanations are due. Carcassonne is actually a board game. It is specifically a “German-style Board Game”. Next to Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne is actually THE German-style Board Game. It is basically about scoring points by building cute roads and castles out of randomly drawn cardboard tiles. It may sound trivial but it can get very addictive.

There is already a solid Xbox Live version out. Compared to the new iPhone version, both have their strengths. The iPhone version has an incredibly polished UI. Obviously, a game like this benefits from a touchscreen interface. But the iPhone version’s UI goes beyond that. There are lots of smart details. For example, when a match draws to a close and there are not many tiles left, the game actually tells you if you will be able to fill a certain place on the board with the remaining tiles (X on the screen above). This allows even novice players to play much more strategically. There is also some quite insightful information design at the scoring board telling you exactly what each player got points for. The Xbox version pales in comparison with a typical console interface where commands are distributed among a confusing number of buttons and bare minimum information graphics. The Xbox version also insists on playing synchronously while the iPhone version allows asynchronous play.

But the new iPhone version is not perfect. For example, the developers chose to use the original tile illustrations from the board game. I know they are popular among the fans. However, they look quite dull, especially considering that the rest of the interface comes in vivid, digital graphics. The developers of the Xbox version redid the tile graphics and I think it was a good choice. The Xbox version went even beyond that. Every time you complete a road or a castle it pops up as a 3D object from the tiles. It doesn’t only look nice, it provides a ton of positive feedback and actually some useful information too. And if you like the old graphics, I think you can still switch the “skin” somewhere. At least you could do that on the Xbox Catan. In this regard, the iPhone version could use more work.

The Xbox Carcassonne has a clunky interface but the board graphics look more attractive.

Finally, the friend system seems a bit odd to me. There is no dedicated friends list menu. Instead you immediately invite new friends to a game. The recognition works through the E-Mail address. There seems to be no function to simply scan your address book for registered users. E-Mail seems generally a bit quaint to me, I think the game would benefit from additional Twitter and Facebook connectivity – not for annoying achievements, just get your friends in the game without jumping through a bunch of hoops. And while there is the possibility of asynchronous play, in order to exit a game you need to use the function “Pause Game”. Doesn’t sound right.

But the board game itself isn’t perfect either. Carcassonne is often criticized for being too chance-driven and having too little strategic gamplay. That’s why there are actually a ton of expansions out there. Each comes with a new set of tiles and mechanics designed to add some more strategy. The Xbox Carcassonne features two of those expansions, I think. The iPhone doesn’t have any yet, but I’m sure there are planning some. Let’s see what happens. Meanwhile, I actually enjoy the vanilla version.

Speaking of playing with friends, I’m always looking for people to play both versions with. My Xbox tag is Krystman DE and for the iPhone version, my E-Mail address is [my last name]@[my first name].de . I’m looking forward to it!