TheCodingMonkeys, the Munich-based studio behind the critically acclaimed iOS version of the German board game Carcassonne, have returned with another reason for you to never look up from your iPhone. This time it’s porting Lost Cities, a popular card game that long-time board game maker Reiner Knizia designed, to Apple’s mobile platform.
For those unfamiliar with the actual card-based version (which won the International Game Award in 2000), Lost Cities is a game in which two players compete to have the most successful expedition to one of five ancient civilizations by collecting and arranging a series of numbered and color-coded cards. Thankfully, for anyone who has been forced to endure an impatient friend or family member teaching him how to play a card game, the new iOS version includes a fully voiced tutorial in which a character named Ms. Lindebrock — whom TheCodingMonkeys describe as a “jaunty, young archeology professor” — shows players the ropes.
Lost Cities features Game Center achievements and online multiplayer, but if you can’t convince your real friends to play a nerdy card game with you, it also has four different young and/or jaunty computer-controlled opponents of varying difficulty for you to test your card-based archaeology skills on.
Lost Cities is available now on iOS for $3.99, and you can download it here.