➤ Carcassonne, review 🎮

For those who haven't been lucky enough to play it, Carcassonne it is probably one of the most successful European board games of recent years, award-winning and certainly multiplayer. Published in 2000 by Hans im Glück, it takes its name from a French town famous for the fortifications built by the Romans in 100 BC that still form part of the defensive walls.

The mechanics of the board game are quite simple and easily approached: it basically involves placing tiles taken from a pile on the table in turn, in a sort of domino. The tiles show the representation of roads, fields and parts of fortified cities and must be laid in such a way as to be compatible with those already on the ground to form entire geographies. Each player can then choose to place on the tiles, always in turn, their "followers", ie puppets that will help us accumulate points at the end of the game, "marking" areas that will be worth as much as their construction status. This, in short, is the core of the game which, however, in its various versions has introduced rules that have significantly increased the degree of complexity, while leaving players the freedom to write their own as always.

What is the most beautiful tile in the realm?

The iPhone version of the game appears extremely simple to play, with really elementary rules to master, even simpler than those of the original base game which for example saw the pawn take on different roles than where it was placed, becoming a knight in the city, a farmer in the field. and so on, with reflections on their possibility of reuse. Scoring in the case of items disputed by multiple players also appears simplified. The game thus becomes quite immediate and easily accessible for anyone. The normal mode which is also the central one of the game allows us to choose whether to play against opponents managed by artificial intelligence or against other players, whether they are random or in our contact list, up to a maximum of four participants per game.

We have 71 tiles available, to be placed in turn on the game table and 7 followers per player. The skill obviously lies in being able to put the followers on roads, fields or cities that we can then somehow complete, guaranteeing us more points and the reuse of the servant. Clearly, when possible, it helps to place our tiles in a way that makes it more difficult to completely complete the area that our opponents have marked with their servants and for this purpose the roads are always great allies. The graphics of the game appear clean and very legible on the screen of Apple devices and the soundtrack is pleasant and company. The touch screen does its job very well and does not create any difficulty in positioning the tiles and in their orientation on the game table. In addition to the classic mode, moreover, a single player variant has been added that challenges the player in the construction, with the usual 71 tiles, of a world in which all roads and cities are perfectly connected and completed. It is a puzzle, in fact, which appears anything but simple and adds considerable longevity to the title. At the moment the available version of the game includes the base set although it seems that expansions may be released as DLC in the future. A version for iPad is also expected in the coming months which will be downloadable for free by those who have purchased the version for iPhone / iPod Touch.

The tested version is 1.1
Link Apple Store

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If you haven't been lucky enough to play the board game, the iPhone version of Carcassonne presents itself as an excellent alternative. At the price of 3.99 € your Apple device will lend itself to offer fun and challenge both in multiplayer and through a special single-player "solitaire" mode that enriches the basic game experience with a complex puzzle. The game, with very simplified dynamics compared to the original version, does not suffer from major penalties once transformed into an electronic version if not, perhaps, the lack of rivers and other details that would enrich it a lot if released as future DLCs.