Asmodee Digital bringing five digital board games to Nintendo Switch

From Carcassonne to Catan, it's all coming to Nintendo Switch this year or the next.

Asmodee Digital announced today its plans to bring five of its most popular digital board games to Nintendo Switch. The first of those will arrive during the 2018 holiday season, while the remaining four will trickle out at some point in 2019.

"Bringing our most popular titles to new platforms is a no-brainer, but we're going a step above to make sure they are optimized for Nintendo Switch," said Philippe Dao, CMO of Asmodee Digital. "The new audiences that await us on this platform are clear to us, and we're glad to offer them the best of board games."

The first game to arrive will be Carcassonne (pictured above, with fugly marketing text that I assure you was not my idea), which has made its way to all sorts of platforms over the years. Up to four players build a medieval city (a solo mode is featured) and enjoy award-winning design. It's the one I mentioned that is scheduled for this holiday season.

The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is presumably next. Players form a fellowship of three and face off against Sauron in story-driven quests. The title is "inspired by" a successful card game from Fantasy Flight LCG.

Next up is Pandemic, which tasks players with halting the spread of four diseases. DLC will be offered, based on expansions that are likely to please people familiar with the actual board game.

Catan is also on its way, and today's press release says only that it's "time to discover on Nintendo Switch the most popular island in board game history!" So if you didn't know about Catan before now, well... now you do? I've actually played the board game, which is just the start of things because there are all sorts of expansions available. I can only assume those will be available at some point as DLC, particularly if the base game is a rousing success.

Munchkin rounds up the lot and is based on an "iconic" card game from Steve Jackson. It is a "dungeon crawler," and my limited experience thus far has taught me that dungeon crawler board games sometimes work better as video games. So I guess we'll find out if that's the case here.

Asmodee Digital publishes all sorts of digital board games, working with a variety of partners. It's likely these initial five titles are just a test run that will be followed swiftly with additional options if early results are good. Nintendo Switch seems like an ideal platform for such an exercise, so hopefully the result is a marriage that satisfies both consumers and the developer. That's always best, don't you think?

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Staff article by Jason Venter (September 13, 2018) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.