Review: Carcassonne (Steam)

Rating: 7.8
Author: Jim Smale

by Jim Smale · December 4, 2017

The official adaptation of the famous board game Carcassonne! A modern classic tile-placement game based on the award-winning game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The player can then decide to place one of his followers, so-called Meeples.

Pros:

Nice big chunky graphics.
90MB Download size.
How to play section.
Optional tutorial.
Has its own achievements.
Connect Asmodee account to play online but also get the Abbot DLC for FREE.
Stats screen.
Karma rating on a 1-5 scale.
Text chat channel.
Offline- 1-6 against AI or 1-6 local multiplayer. You can set settings like dead tiles, Play with fields amd remaining tiles list.
Three difficulties- Easy, Fierce and risk taker.
Online leaderboard.
Online multiplayer- Private and public.
Public multiplayer- Set options- Min karma, Min rank, Online autoplay and duration 15 minutes to 15 days. You can save the game in between so fear not.
Players online counter.
3D play pieces and you can zoom in and zoom out and move around.
Easy to get into.
Simple controls.
Cross-platform multiplayer.
A good way to learn the game.
Carcassone is a game where you take turns in placing tiles, Create towns and place your Meeples on roads and Chapels to score points. Highest wins.

Cons:

Graphics options are limited. Quality slider, Resolution and windowed.
No Steam achievements.
No trading cards.
UI is fine and all but kind of looks a bit mobile phone basic, Big fonts and bad scaling.
Few random hard crashes.
Quitters ruin the experience.
No way to customise the whole experience at all.

The Numbers:

8/10

Graphics - 8/10
7/10

Sound - 7/10
8/10

Accessability - 8/10
8/10

Length - 8/10
8/10

Fun Factor - 8/10

7.8/10

Summary

Carcassonne is one of my favorite board games and the perfect game to introduce new players to the hobby. It is clear from the off that Asmodee has nailed the atmosphere and ease of access here in the digital version. It has the simple controls, Big bright graphics and a streamlined experience in setting up a game. A bit annoying that you have to set up an Asmodee account to use much of the game and it doesn’t really utilize all the benefits of being on Steam like achievements and trading cards but whatever. The take away here is its a perfectly fine game with a whiff of a mobile port about it but still works as intended. A great bit of fun.