I really wanted to love this version of the game, but there are way too many issues that make the game very hard to play. The UI is terrible. For instance, if you need to log and you make a mistake typing IN YOUR INFO, backspace doesn't delete the character....IT TAKES YOU TO THE PREVIOUS SCREEN! Who programmed that?

Also, when people pick resources, they appear available to ALL PLAYERS. What?! That makes no sense. Timing is a huge issue. One player can see screens before anyone else. And, on everyone's first turn, everyone has the same description of the buildings...which means playing 6 people are reading the first 20 minutes of the play. There is basically very little explanation or tutorial in the game. It does help if you play with those who have already played, but the UI issues and the implementation makes it a no-go.

I am honestly surprised this launched. The backspace issue should have stopped it from coming out. I'm very disappointed in this and I cannot recommend this game at this time.

I'm going to split this review into two parts - A review of the board game itself, and a review of this digital version of it. Read whichever ones you care about. But please note - I've watched a lot of videos about the physical version but I've never played it myself. Also, I'm not going to give a complete run down on how the game is played. There are already tons of YouTube videos that do that much better than I can.

BOARD GAME:

Charterstone is, at its core, a very simple worker placement game (simple enough that my seven year old beat me the other day). Turns go very quickly. After a few game plays we've decided that while there is a lot of different ways to get points, some are easier than others and can result in one player running away with the game while others struggle to get any sort of engine going.

The end of the game can feel abrupt as anyone can intentionally force the game to speed up (similar to Clank! if you've played that). But end game scoring feels generally straight forward.

DIGITAL VERSION:

You'll immediately notice the game looks great, and the board animations are a nice touch. The music is also well done and soothing. The game responds well enough although we have run into some bugs with placing workers even months after release. I even had it crash my game completely yesterday.

My biggest issue with the digital version is with the display of information. In the board game there are several pieces of information that are readily available at a glance - the Progress track, the reputation track, the Market board, your hand, and the possible achievements. In the digital version all of these are hidden behind clickable items at the top of the screen. I feel like this design decision was a mistake. I wonder if it was done to keep from having to redesign the UI for smaller screens (e.g., mobile, Switch), but it makes the game feel lacking as it's easy to forget you were going for a specific item in the Market or wanted to build a card from your hand or how far away you are on the Progress track from getting a reputation gain.

CONCLUSION:

Our first game was very interesting and we looked forward to game 2. After game 3 though I couldn't get my family to return to it, and I have resorted to playing solo to try to finish the campaign which I'm not even sure I'll bother doing.

Even if you like the Charterstone board game, I can't recommend the digital version due to the lack of information.

2/5

I bought this to play Charterstone asynchronously with friends. Unfortunately, I think it's terrible for asynchronous play. It's pretty, and crossplay (across different kinds of devices) works fine. The problem is that this is a legacy game and all of the story events and rules changes are really hard to track. You do see the contents of boxes that are opened in game, but there is no log of past events. We have a discord on which we discuss the games we play (we play many async) and most of the players on the discord are pretty lost as to what's happening in this game. And it's the fault of the implementation; we don't have this problem in other games we play async. I think if you played this realtime it would probably be fine - it does look good and plays smoothly - but I would discourage this for async.

One other small grumble: Because it's a board game, there are often times when you have no action to take, such as when all you can do is recall workers, or when you just have to confirm an event but there is no decision to be made (only one mandatory option). In async play the game makes you log in to confirm these non-choices before the game moves on to the next player. It would have been better if they included an option to skip turns in which you make no decisions.

Just don't buy it if you want to play with friends online. Six of us tried for three hours to get an online game going and couldn't make it past the first turn. The game would stop updating for some players, then if they left the game they couldn't return (thanks to a save file error?!). This happened with some on PC and some on Switch, as well as with everyone on the PC version.

Maybe Valve getting six refund requests at once sent a message...

For the price, this game really needs a tutorial for multiplayer. I'm glad the full rulebook is accessible, but I cannot in good faith recommend anyone (especially groups) purchase this game at this time.

The first full campaign of Charterstone is the best part of the experience, and is the reason why so many players love the game so much. The experience a new player gets in a private multiplayer lobby currently is frankly terrible, and I don't know how the game could have possibly released in this state after so long in development and after multiple community betas.

I LOVE Charterstone, the legacy board game. That being said, I'm willing to put up with quite a bit while playing this (faithful) digital representation. However, this feels like it shouldn't have left the *alpha* stage yet, it's so buggy. Sure, the great thing about digital media is that you can release a fix, something you can't usually do for regular board games..but that doesn't absolve you from having to do proper QA. In its current form, I would only recommend this if you need your Charterstone fix and you have no one to play it with...say, like if you're locked in due to a quarantine.
I hope to revisit this review at some point in the future when patches will have made this game feel like a legitimate release, and not a pre-early-access mess of bugs.

This implementation is very buggy for multiplayer. Our group had to restart a campaign because the game is stuck and no one can make it proceed. Luckily, that was only on game 2 or so. Now we're much further in and I can't join the game even though it shows up on the lobby list.

I will agree that the game rules appear to be implemented well, but randomly being forced to lose progress in incredibly frustrating.

Edit: Big hours played number is leaving the game running in the background waiting for others turns. Actual time interacting with the game is about 10 games worth.

This game is quite buggy. Tried to start an online game with friends and we get the error "invalid game data" and can't continue. Don't waste money until this game is more stable.

For the love of god, fix the UI and AI. It is so poorly done, the AI hoard all the crates and buildings then stick their thumb up their ass. It pathetic! I am screaming at my screen for them to do anything useful, for themselves even smh. Just like my dad saying he is only getting milk at the store, I am left waiting and disappointed. Fix the AI and I might give this a positive review.

The physical campaign was one of my favorite board game experiences. Unfortunately, the digital game released unfinished, and I can't recommend it. Initially there were rough edges that were being patched in the early days of release, but finally the games became literally unplayable. Mid-campaign several of our players were unable to load the game on their Android devices, and to add insult to injury were auto-kicked from the game because of the default time limit. Thus, even once this is fixed, we'll have to start our campaign over.