Digital board game ports are a wonderful thing, but they can be at times confusing. As an inherently license’-based activity (with one or two exceptions), it can create weird situations like what happened with the digital adaptation of Carcassonne.
There in fact two different versions of Carcassonne you can buy on the market right now, one developed by The Coding Monkeys that’s only available on iOS, and then a slightly shinier version that came later developed by Asmodee Digital, which is only available on Steam and Android. That’s about to change come March 1st, 2020.
The Coding Monkeys announced over the weekend that their deal with the Carcassonne license holder, Hans im Glück, is coming to an end and won’t be renewed. Their version of the game will be removed from the App store come March, and you won’t be able to buy it again. Here’s what you need to bear in mind:
- If you already own the game and it’s installed on your device, you’ll be able to play it beyond March 1st, 2020.
- If you already own the game but it’s not installed, in theory you should still be able to download it regardless but this can be an inconsistent principle at times – best to put it on a device for safe keeping.
- TCM have said they will keep their servers running for at least a year, so multiplayer will still work for a time. What happens after that will depend on whether the studio can afford to keep them running.
- Even if they turn off the servers, as far as we know the game didn’t need to connect to an online server to play so solo/pass-and-play should still work.
iOS users need not fear that they’ll lose access to Carcassonne forever – Asmodee Digital’s own port will finally be coming to the Apple App Store come March. I imagine this is something they’ve been wanting ever since they made their own version of the game a couple of years ago.
The Coding Monkey’s version of the game is held in pretty high esteem and is a poster-child example of board game ports on mobile. Asmodee’s version is fine and is in 3D, giving it more appealing visuals, but i’d be hard-pressed to say it was the ‘better’ version. Still, it’s probably better to have a single, unified app for things like this.
As a final farewell, The Coding Monkeys are running a sale on their version of the game plus everything else they’ve made to date, so be sure to check it out.
What are your thoughts on this and the two versions of Carcassonne? Let us know in the comments!
https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2020/01/...rcassonne/