46 GAMES WORLD^ OF PUZZLES^ | june 2019
•ELECTRONIC GAME REVIEWS• BY THOMAS L. MCDONALD
STRATEGY
THE CASTLES OF BURGUNDY
DIGIDICED
PC/MAC/LINUX: $15; ANDROID/IOS: $9
AGE RANGE: 10+
PLAY TIME: 20–30 MINUTES
PLAYERS: 1–4
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I
n our review of The Castles of Bur-
gundy: The Dice Game (February
2019), we noted that it would make a
great app. Now that the original Castles
of Burgundy has finally appeared on
computers and mobile devices, it looks
a bit like The Dice Game version. For
some fans, that’s a problem, with the
new layout making too great a shift from
the original board game. But as a way of
rethinking a familiar game for a new me-
dium, it is absolutely the right way to go.
In Castles of Burgundy, players are
landowners in the Loire Valley trying to
build and trade their way to prosperity in
the period between the Hundred Years’
War and the Renaissance. Each player
has a board representing an area of land
featuring different types of terrain for
placing castles, buildings, boats, mines,
pastures, and research facilities. Thesespaces are marked with dice faces, so
they all have a particular value. Each land
improvement is represented by a unique
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full of chickens, a bank, a ship trading
goods, or any number of other features.
In the app, these tiles are dealt in six
piles across the top, numbered 1 to 6.
The board also depicts a black market
with extra tiles available for two silver, a
supply of trade goods, and various bonus
trackers. During each turn, players roll
two dice and use them to perform two
actions. If, for example, you roll a 3 and
a 6, you can choose tiles from either the
third or the sixth pile, or place a tile on a
board space marked with either a 3 or
a 6. You can also use an action to trade
goods or buy workers. Workers allow you
to change the outcome of a roll, such as
spending two workers to turn a 4 into a
2 or a 6.
Castles of Burgundy is dense with bo-
nus opportunities and tactical choices,
but it’s never fussy or overly complex.
A tutorial explains the concepts fairly
well, but the printed instructions aremerely a scan of the board game man-
ual, and thus don’t match the software
version. Like all Digidiced conversions,
it’s very slick and full-featured, with
robust AI and multiplayer support. It’s
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for a new medium. QGOOD CHOICE FOR FANS OF: STONE AGE RATINGA
CARD
KNIGHTS OF THE CARD TABLE
PONYWOLF/IRON HORSE
PC/MAC; ANDROID/IOS: $5
AGE RANGE: 9+
PLAY TIME: VARIABLE
PLAYERS: 1
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K
nights of the Card Table is one
of those games that I was sure I
wouldn’t like until I couldn’t stop
playing it. Sometimes, you keep playing
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it, and along the way it kind of grows
on you.
Knights of the Card Table is like that.
With the card-dungeon market already
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Card Quest, and others, a game needs
a hook to make it stand out. Knights
has two: a quirky sense of humor and
a novel mechanic.
Essentially, there’s only one thing to
do: change the order of a row of cards.
Each colorful dungeon features a hero
on the left and a row of cards to the
right. You don’t always see the entire
row, and some cards are facedown.
The card nearest the hero is the active
one and will either provide a bonus or
an enemy.The mechanic thus becomes a kind of
planned pacing: Hold back the health
restorer or a potion for later, or move it
up if you need a boost; take on a row
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attack bonus for a stronger enemy; or
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until there’s a row of enemies to hit all
at once. As each card moves next to
your hero, it activates, and you either
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Fighting is done with die rolls, which
are added to any positive or negative
modifiers already attached to your
hero. As you go along you can buy more
powerful weapons, shields, and heroes,
and these come with various bonuses
as well. Weapons use different kinds
of dice (4-, 6-, or 8-sided) for a chance
at higher-value hits, and shields add or
subtract different bonuses. Weapons
can be cycled in-game, allowing you to
change between every card.
There’s a bit of a tactical element to
weapon choice, but the heart of the
game is sensibly re-ordering the right
mix of spells, potions, and enemies
so that by the time the big guys move
into view you’ve stacked up somedecent force multipliers. That may or
may not be what you’re looking for in
a card-crawler, but in spite of my initial
resistance I found myself sticking with
it through level after level. It moves
fast, provides plentiful rewards, has
an appealing visual style and sense of
humor, and works well enough to keep
you coming back. QGOOD CHOICE FOR FANS OF: CARD CRAWL RATINGB