Settlers and Carcassone: Free online games on Asobrain.com (Web Review)

 The website asobrain.com would be an amazing site if the hosts were more forgiving. The site allows you to play the amzing games Settlers and Carcassonne but they are called Xplorers and Toulouse. Oh…They also let you play two other games that are clearly not as awesome: Match and Roadblock.

Settlers/ Xplorers

In this game players try to collect victory points by collecting resources to build towns and cities. Players roll the dice to see what resources are produced but each player can finagle their way into trades to benefit themselves. You can only keep 7 cards in your hand without fear of losing half from the Robber if a 7 is rolled. This is an exciting and in-depth game that calls for a begging plan, trading skills, and a bit of luck from the dice.

Carcassone/ Toulouse

This is a tile based game in which player chose a random tile to add on to the board. Then they get to claim a part on that tile and build it to completion to earn points. There is no dice and it is all up to the tiles you draw and the placements that you choose. Players play until all the tiles are used and then count to see who has the most points. This game calls for spatial thinking, patients, and the luck of the draw.

Match/ Sets

In this game you match three cards that have everything the same on them or everything different just like the game sets. It is not that fun and you can tell because no one ever is seen playing on it and it is always at 0/50 players.

Roadblock

This game is worse than match and you try to move your cars from one side of the board to the other against someone else. It has about the same equivalence as Sorry! and is worse because you don’t even play with real people.

Online Board Game Glory

There are usually at least 500 people on at all times playing the first two games with about 400 playing Xplorers and 100 playing Toulouse. At any time of the day you can go on this site and play board games with people from around the world. There is a chat set up in the game rooms and Xplorers allows for trading in the game and so there is often discussions going on. But if you don’t feel like waiting for real people to take the normal amount of time (usually people are good about this and there are limits anyways), you can always go on and play against computer players and the games go by faster. The games that you play with real people are ranked and you get a score. With this score you can play against people who are at your skill range and you can always get better and play against harder opponents. The game play is fast and the site is well made. The rules of the game are exactly the same as the real games and I don’t know why the site doesn’t get shut down by the creators of the game, but it is nice that they don’t.

The Kicker

This site does not allow for new users to join. I am sorry if you have been reading this whole time and were thinking about going and getting an account but you can’t. The hosts of this website got mad at some of the conduct of those using the site, and in order to stop this from happening they kicked them out and stopped giving out new memberships also if you didn’t play in 6 months they just deleted your account and would not give it back. I think that these were very harsh actions to take and nothing is being done about it and no end is in sight for now. Hopefully they will get this site allowing new users as it is really great. The site is sustained by donations to keep it running, and you get a special heartbeat symbol by your user name if you contribute so they really aren’t in it for the money. They have been bribed to open accounts but this has now worked for people. So good luck and E-mail them if you would like to try to get this site open for new users, if you like these games then it would be worth your time to send an email. Good Luck.