Board game Terra Mystica rolls onto PC

I'm not a big board game lover, but friends who are keep telling me there's two in particular I must try. There's The Resistance: Avalon, a game about figuring out other players' identities, and Terra Mystica, a strategy game. As it happens, the latter has dropped on PC this week. So now I have no excuse.

In Terra Mystica [official site] you control one of 14 factions, each with their own unique ability, and the idea is to transform the landscape of the board so that you can build the type of structure that's specific to your faction. Rab actually wrote about the cardboard version on this site back in 2014, calling it "superb".

Here's Rab's summary of the game:

"Each player is one of a whole bunch of races with special abilities. The objective is to terraform and settle land across the board. You build little houses, then upgrade those houses into temples and strongholds and such. Houses spit out workers and temples spit out priests. Trading houses spit out money. As you change your dwellings and buildings, your race’s economy shifts. You need to balance your expansion to ensure you can pay for everything you want to do."

It's won a heap of awards, including placing first at the prestigious Deutscher Spielepreis, the German Game Awards, and it's currently ranked number four on BoardGameGeek's list of best games.

The PC release of Terra Mystica is made by Digidiced, who previously brought it to pocket telephones. It will include the Fire & Ice add-on free when it launches later this year, introducing Yetis and Ice Maidens, which sounds pretty damned cool to me.

If you fancy it, it's £7.69/10,49€/$10.49 on Steam, which includes a 30% launch discount ending on Thursday. The physical board game is £56 on Amazon.