Carcassonne Game Review - On the Road to Victory

I have to admit, I simply stumbled upon this game but I am glad I did! I really enjoy Catan and was doing some online research into when Catan was going to hit the Android Market. During my searching, I saw numerous people mentioning the game, Carcassonne. Curious, I did decided to find out about it.

Title: Carcassonne | Developer: exozet games| Genre: Brain & Puzzle | Players: 1-4 | Version: 2| Size: 9.3MB | Price: $5.76 |

Carcassonne is a tile-based German-style board game (originally published back in 2000) for two to five players. It has become very, very popular in the board game world and currently has numerous expansions.

Overall they have done a great job porting this game over to Android.

• The interface clean and simple
• The screen easily rotates from portrait and landscape and is playable in either orientation
• During game play, you can easily can zoom in or out on the board

The only negative (for me) was that it took me a while to figure out how to play! For those familiar with the game, this will not be a problem. I actually downloaded a copy of the rules from the board game to see what I had to do. The game does come with a tutorial but I needed some extra help.

So what is the game about? As I was writing this, I decided to simply repeat the summary that comes with the board game:

"The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it abuts: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities."

Is sounds simple but it takes some strategy to win. Placing your tiles to get the maximum points and trying not to help your opponent out, is the key to victory. Also where you place your followers is important. You only get 7 of them, so you need to use them wisely.

Overall this is "fast" game. Yes you can save your progress and come back to it but in general one game should not take hours. I love that. The computer will show you where you can place your tiles so that helps speed it up and the computer players are quick.

With Carcassonne for Android, you have 12 computer characters to choose from-each with their own comments and playing style. You can have up to 4 computer or human players in a game. There is no online multiplayer option which a lot of people desire. For me that is not a game breaker. Normally I will be playing against the computer but I could see playing against one or more of my kids while taking a long trip in the car. (No I won't be driving and playing!)

You can also set who goes first or have the game choose. You can save your progress but only one game at a time. Two other components of the game that I like is that you get two versions of the game, Carcassonne and Carcassonne River II. In River II, a number of cards with a river section are placed first and then the remaining cards are played, adding some variety to the game. Finally they have setup an achievement section, so you can work on some additional goals while playing. I have been playing for a while now and still have not met many of the achievements. I am still winning only about 50% of the games so far, but that is fine, gives me something to shoot for. The AI is a good opponent.

So if you are love the board game, you will definitely like the Android version of Carcassonne. If you looking for a enjoyable, easy to play, well built, inexpensive strategy game, I recommend you download Carcassonne for Android in the Market.  After playing this game for a while, I have been thinking about purchasing the physical board game; anyone want to come over and play?