Here’s a link to an interview we recently did with iPad Board Games. It has a few behind-the-scences bits, so maybe it’s of interest. Merry Christmas!

Hi guys,

I thought it might be a good time to finally give out a few more details. Let me highlight the two available expansions and the new features of the update for you.

The River

“The River” adds 12 new tiles, that are played at the start of a game, laying out a river that divides the game board and adds new strategical challenges while the game progresses. We’ve worked together with the publisher to make sure all rules for river tile placements are working as intended by the author.  The River is available for $0.99 in our expansion store.

Inns and Cathedrals

“Inns and Cathedrals” adds 18 new tiles - some of them featuring the eponymous inns or cathedrals. Inns double the value of the road they are next to. In a similar vein, Cathedrals add a point for each tile in their city. Both of these elements make the game riskier, as incomplete roads and cities lose their value when they come into play. The expansion also features a large follower that can be placed on tiles for double the value of a normal figure. It is available for $1.99 in the expansion store.

New Game Modes

Even if you don’t care about the expansions we have good news for you: There are new modes to play the basic Carcassonne (with and without expansions) as well. Both of these are often requested features by the community and we are really happy to support them with this update.

The first mode lets players disable scoring of fields is perfect for beginning and casual players or kids. 

For purists there now also is a mode that disables the assistive features of the digital version, i.e. the tile overview and the display of impossible placement spots on the board. 

When?

So when will this be available? It will be ready for download later today. :)

Hi there.

Just a quick update to let you know that we are still alive and will submit the update containing the expansion store to Apple for review this week. As planned two expansions will be available for purchase: “The River” and “Inns and Cathedrals”.

I will post more details (like an availability date, screenshots and pricing) as soon as possible.

PS: Our blog posts tend to be a bit sporadic, when we are working hard in the code mines - sorry for that. For immediate news and feedback, please also check Carcassonne’s twitter account. :)

After another long period of radio silence, we’re back with news. Yeah, I know, finally. ;)

Here’s the gist: We just sent an update to Apple that - as promised - brings Game Center support. It’s probably going to be available for download within a week. Carcassonne now has achievements, more leaderboards and it has become way easier to just play with your friends and invite them by using Game Center.

We initially released Carcassonne before Game Center was available and had to build our own multi-player experience, so it’s great to now be more tightly integrated with existing games and friends by supporting Game Center as well.

There’s also news about the long awaited expansions: We have made good progress laying the foundations for all expansions and getting the game to a point were it can be played in a more modular fashion to support cherry-picking rules and features of expansions in the future. After the Game Center update, we now will concentrate on polishing the first two of the expansions we’re going to release. Namely “Inns and Cathedrals” and “The River II”. It will still take us a few months to make them as good as we want them to be, however.

Yeah, it sure takes us a lot of time to get these things done. We’re sorry for making you wait. We love the game and think it deserves the time to make it truly great, instead of doing a quick but sloppy port, like it unfortunately happens so often on other platforms and to others of our favorite board games. We want to do better. Thanks for having the patience to let us do so.

Q: So what exactly do all those cute bar graphs in the final scoring mean?

A: The different colors let you know how the player made her points. Green is for farms, grey is for roads, brown is for cities and red for cloisters. The little gap marks the end of the game. Everything left of it happened while playing, everything right of it in the end scoring. 

If you can’t get enough of Carcassonne’s table (Remember: It’s your friend.) here are a bunch of wallpapers for your iOS device. Available in dark and light wood tones for the true Carcassonne connoisseur.

iPhone:

iPad:

(Tap and hold on it, save it to the camera roll, and use settings to assign it as wallpaper.)

Good news everyone!

After being busy working out details, new designs and user interfaces, we are ready to commit to a release of the iPad update in December! So in a short while you’ll be able to enjoy Carcassonne on the big screen¹ and we will start working on expansions and adding GameCenter support.

To celebrate, here are the first screenshots of Carcassonne on the iPad:

¹ Well, at least slightly bigger. ;)

While we are working on bugfixes and the iPad version, here’s an interview we did a while back that looks a bit behind the curtains and tells the story of how we made Carcassonne.

If you can stomach our german accents, here is the download.

(click the image for full resolution!)

We are excited to tell you that Carcassonne 1.1, in addition to to various fixes, will add high-resolution artwork for the iPhone 4 and will (probably) look really sweet on a Retina Display.

Dear players,

It has come to our attention that a small group of users tried to push their ELO points in quick play by exploiting a bug. The bug led to games not timing out properly and being paused indefinitely, avoiding the penalty for losing.

We are glad to announce that we fixed the issue by changing our server code and did update ELO scores retroactively. So everything should work out as it was supposed to be, again.

Thanks to many players bringing this issue to our attention, you’re awesome.

To many more fair and friendly games of Carcassonne,
TheCodingMonkeys