Charterstone: Digital Edition Review (Nintendo Switch)

Review code used, with many thanks to Acram

Recently released Charterstone: Digital Edition on the Nintendo Switch is made by developers Acram Digital and Mobo Studio.

Charterstone is a worker placement legacy-style board game, and its the official digital adaptation of Jamey Stegmaier’s board game, CharterStone. Have you played the board game? I haven’t and I don’t have a clue what the board game is like, so I won’t be comparing it to the physical board game. Let’s have a look and see what the digital version offers.

Charterstone: Digital Edition LadiesGamers — Full charter.

What is a Charter?

Do you know what a legacy-style board game is? I didn’t, until I looked it up and played the game that’s is! Anyway, a legacy game in the physical world is one in which, as the game goes on, you permanently change everything on the board. The rules, the objectives, and the players change in a way which is completely unique for each group of people playing.

Changes you make in your game will look completely different from changes made in someone else’s version of the game. This can be driven by story elements, random chance or player choices and it makes for an entertaining and fascinating unraveling of a board game.

The Kingdom Of Greengully

Charterstone tells the story of the kingdom of Greengully, ruled over for centuries by the mysterious Forever King. Players take on the role of settlers, each with a particular set of skills hand-selected to colonize a remote charter.

When Charterstone starts you begin by picking one of the 6 unique characters to lead your charter. Wondering what a charter is? In Charterstone it is the equivalent of a village.

You pick a leader to build up your charter by adding buildings, such as a lumber mill or a wood market. Each of these buildings provides you with an opportunity to place a worker, of which you have two to start with. You pay the cost of the building and gain the associated action. New buildings are unlocked as you play the game and your strategy when building up your charter will evolve as new information and opportunities present themselves.

Construct Buildings and Open Crates

During the game, you’ll be constructing your buildings in your charter and opening crates as they unlock new buildings and various rules. You also gain new workers which allow you to place more workers in buildings and in turn score more points. And you’ll be using shared central buildings to try and gain victory points and accomplish objectives of the current game. Charterstone is about all about buildings, opening crates, amassing resources, gaining influence points and victory points through a wide variety of objectives and goals.

Each game session has different scoring mechanisms and point bonuses based on choices the players make in between games. Near the end of the game, the player with the most influence points makes a decision for the entire map. Some of these decisions can anger the King or make him happy, and they can completely change the rules of the game to the final scores. There are quite a few more nuances to Charterstone, which I won’t go into here as it would spoil the game for those who want to play it.

Unfortunately, I found the beginning of Charterstone to be a tad confusing, though it does have a tutorial of sorts. It’s the kind of tutorial that throws a load of info at the player and you’re expected to absorb it all in one go! While the game starts quickly explaining the current buildings and overall objectives, Charterstone provides no further information beyond that point and asks you to simply refer back to the rulebook. As I was playing the single-player campaign against the AI, half the time the AI was making their moves and I was watching and wondering what was going on. In the end, I did realise what I was meant to be doing in the game, but it definitely wasn’t helped by the game’s tutorial.

Campaign and Multiplayer Modes

The campaign is divided into a series of separate games, 12 to be exact. The campaign mode starts with a blank map and a simpler rule set. There is a hot-seat local multiplayer for up to six players to take part, but I wasn’t able to try it out. While I enjoyed my play-through against the AI in Charterstone, I do think it would be a far more enjoyable game to play with friends.

In Charterstone: Digital Edition there isn’t enough of the screen showing during the AI moves to keep your eye on everything. You need to do a lot of zooming in and out of the screen during moves to see what the AI is up to as a good amount of things are hidden off screen or behind menus.

There are times when playing Charterstone the game feels interesting and engaging. But there are other times when it feels a little repetitive and I’m more than ready for the current game to end. After 12 games of Charterstone, I don’t think it’s a game I’m ready to go back to just yet.

Visuals and Controls

I like the look of the game as Charterstone has cute, cartoony, and colourful graphics. With quirky animations backed up with appropriate sound effects and music.

The game has crashed a few times while I’ve been playing it, shutting down and showing the error screen. A few days before I started writing this review Charterstone had an update. However, the game still crashes, so maybe it’s something the developers should take another look at.

You can play Charterstone using the joy-cons, though it’s not the most intuitive of controls. The button to confirm actions is a bit weird as it changes from A to the R button constantly. It’s like the game can’t make up its mind what button it wants you to press! You can also play Charterstone using the touchscreen and again, some inputs don’t respond when you touch the screen.

Conclusion

While I have the odd niggle with Charterstone: Digital Edition the core gameplay loop is enjoyable for the most part. As the developers are releasing updates to the game, I hope they sort out the way the tutorial is presented to the player and of course fix the non intuitive controls.

I can see Charterstone: Digital Edition would be an entertaining game to play with a few friends.

Final Verdict: I Like It