Gamertell

The nerdier portions of the Internets are gearing up for the imminent release of Carcassonne through Xbox 360 Live Arcade. IGN has a preview plus a gameplay video featuring a chanting-monk soundtrack that makes you want to go questing through the fields of Middle-Earth.

The game, to be released June 7, 2007, will support two to five players and cost 800 points ($10 USD).

If you’re not familiar with Carcassonne, it’s a tabletop game that involves placing tiles to build roads, cities, fields and monasteries. You then place “followers” on the structures in progress - a follower in a city becomes a “knight,” one on a road becomes a “thief” and so on - and if the structures are completed, you get points for them.

It’s simple enough to pick up, but there’s a lot of strategy involved - you’ll find yourself thinking things like, “If I place my follower on this city, will I be able to complete it? Will I be able to find the right tile to connect my farmer’s field to the completed cities, or will my opponent block me in?”

IGN says each game will last less than 20 minutes - less than 10, if five people are playing - but that seems like an underestimation to me; with the time it takes for players to consider their moves, I don’t think I’ve ever played a game of Carcassonne that lasted less than 45 minutes. (A six-player game once took so long that some construction workers showed up and started building Milliways around us.)

As a fan of Carcassonne, I’m excited to see if it can successfully make the leap to the console. I never imagined it as anything other than a tabletop game - certainly not a console game - but if Settlers of Catan can work, then I suppose Carcassonne can, too.

Read [IGN] via [Joystiq]

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Gametrailers has a tasty morsel of video on how this whole “use the Wiimote as your wand” thing is going to work in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix video game. You’ll probably want to watch the video at least twice - once to see what’s happening on the screen, and once to scrutinize the inset video of the player’s hands.

The player demonstrates casting a few spells (“Accio” is jerking the Wiimote toward you, “Depulso” is pushing it away, the famous “Wingardium Leviosa” is, of course, flicking it upwards) and lets Harry wander around the Hogwarts grounds a bit.

It’s probably a bit early in the console’s life cycle to start breaking out the gimmicky peripherals, especially seeing as how the Wiimote itself is kind of a gimmicky peripheral. But what if EA were to bundle this game with a custom Wiimote that actually looks like a wand? How about a wood-grain finish and a glowing tip?

There’s only one word that would describe it, and that word is “boss.”

The Order of the Phoenix game is being developed by EA’s UK Studio and will be available June 2007, coinciding with the film’s release, for the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, PSP, DS, GBA and PC (Win).

Video [Gametrailers]

• Profile: Indie tabletop game company, Creative Mountain Games
• Gamertell Review: Geek Fight! trading card game
• Champions Online coming Spring 2009