Carcassonne bringing board game goodness to Xbox on Windows Phone on October 24

Way back in February, Microsoft announced a handful of Xbox Windows Phone games. Only two of those games have yet to be released: Pinball FX2 and Carcassonne. The Windows Phone version of Pinball FX2 still needs more development time, but the good news is Carcassonne has gone gold at last. It even has an official release date: Wednesday, October 24.
Carcassonne (named after a medieval French town) is a real-life board game in which players take turns placing land tiles, trying to build a city and score the most points. There is a great variety of land tiles, allowing you to construct differently shaped roads, rivers, and more. The Windows Phone game includes an expansion called ‘The River II’ that adds extra tiles which can be used to create a large river. Will other expansions be available as PDLC? We’ll try to find out.
Each player also gets seven human followers (they can be knights, monks, thieves, or farmers) to place. The game ends when the last tile has been placed – whoever’s score adds up the highest wins.
Carcassonne might sound a little complicated – it’s actually tough to describe since I haven’t played in a while – but trust me, it’s a cinch to learn and play, especially with a videogame handling the scoring. An in-game tutorial makes the game even easier to get into.
Board games can be fun on their own (see Zombies!!!) but they’re a lot more fun with other players. Thankfully this version of Carcassonne brings both local and online multiplayer to the table. Multiplayer even has matchmaking, so it shouldn’t be too tough to find a game.
Carcassonne comes to Windows Phone from German developer Exozet, who previously created the Android and Blackberry versions of the game. It’ll be out in two weeks on the 24th, so mark your calendars, board game fans. You can also find more screens at PlayXBLA. If you don’t feel like waiting, there’s always the excellent XBLA version to tide you over till then. Get it at Xbox.com (opens in new tab) for 800 MS Points ($10).
Thanks to Zebrasqual for the tip.
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Paul Acevedo is the Games Editor at Windows Central. A lifelong gamer, he has written about videogames for over 15 years and reviewed over 350 games for our site. Follow him on Twitter @PaulRAcevedo. Don’t hate. Appreciate!
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Thank God
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Good news - especially that this will support online multiplayer. It is an easy game to pick up and fun to play.
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Looks like a pretty cool game IMO!
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I have it on XBox Live Arcade on my 360. It's a blast! There should be a demo if you have XBL at home. Give it a spin.
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Loved that game on Xbox so this is awesome!
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Is this from the same developer that did the iOS version?
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2 different developers. I love the iOS dev's approach of Carcassonne though. The Coding Monkeys seem to be Apple dev's only. But Exozet has made every other port out there.. Android, xbox, Blackberry, Nokia, and now WP.
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Will this be coming to Windows Phone 7.5/7.8 or just to Windows Phone 8? I would love it if they'd also make Catan for Windows Phone, since Catan and Carcassone are 999Games' best board games :)
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If it were WP8 then it would launch in November with the phones. Personally though I'm waiting until I have a new phone before downloading any more games, since I don't want to lose progress in the transition.
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After writing the comment, I realised that :) But I won't buy a new phone till next year, so it's no problem :)
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Love the board game! 2.99 price point probably. including live multiplayer is awesome.
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Awesome, I've been wondering what happened to this game. I haven't been much into games on my phone lately but maybe this one will rekindle some interest.
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Doesn't appear as graphically pleasing as XBLA version but I'm looking forward to it.
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Great Game!!
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Can you play Carcassonne with iPhone peeps?
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No. We've never seen an Xbox game support that feature, and the iOS version also comes from a different developer, so there's no way.
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I honestly never really got into the XBLA version, I much prefer Catan. So I'll probably pass on this one.
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Love the Xbox version, but I don't think this is thw kind of game you can play on the go. Does online multiplayer need to be played all at once. There is a lot of strategy in this game and each game can take quite a bit to complete. Still...i will be getting this!