Carcassonne spin-offs are always a bit of a wildcard with some much more exciting and thematic than others. However, one of the first in the long chain of endless stand-alone Carcassonne games was The Discovery, released only four years after the original game. It adopted the basic Carcassonne mechanics but altered almost every aspect of the game. That may not have been such a good idea...
Floating Adrift Keep the Art Submerged - The first thing anybody who buys this game notices is the relatively horrendous, child-like artwork that permeates this game. From the cartoony castles to the coloured-pencil mountains, grasslands, and oceans, everything seems both too neat and too fake to enjoy. If you feel art does not make or break a game, then you have not played The Discovery. The artwork is so simplistic, that it really makes the game feel longer than it actually plays. The only good aspect of it is that the features are all well-defined.
Take Two - Once a game is begun, however, it quickly becomes clear that the rules are really the thing that will throw you for a loop. All three of the scoreable features score like a hybrid of cities and farms from the original Carcassonne game. More annoyingly, features score different points depending on whether they are 'complete' or 'incomplete.' To help players with this, a language-independent scoring card is included for each player, which does help but also underlines the needless complexity of this game.
Backed Into Corners - For a game that really rewards players who create large features, there is a remarkably high number of tiles that create small, often pointless features. While this may create strategic situations for experienced and skilful players, new and casual players just get frustrated that their features are constantly small and insubstantial.
A Creative Twist Voluntary Abandonment - The most unique feature in this game is that scoring is always voluntary. Players only use four followers and must choose each turn whether they place a follower or score for a feature. It creates an interesting balance that requires strategies unknown elsewhere in Carcassonne. Sometimes the hardest decision to make is whether you claim a valuable feature you just expanded (or created) or score for something before it's too late. Near the end of the game, this becomes even more pronounced since any completed feature with a follower on it receives points as if it were incomplete during final scoring. Thus, balancing placement and scoring is a constant struggle that greatly enhances the strategy in the game.
The Art of Expansion - Continuing on from the facts above, the complicated rules of this game do provide numerous opportunities for strategy unknown in other Carcassonne games. Each feature has a similar but slightly different niche. Grasslands score only for grasslands, mountains score only for adjacent fortresses, and oceans score for ocean and fortresses. Thus, there is a continuity between them. While the technicalities of these rules are difficult to remember, they do provide many very interesting opportunities for competition. And since players can choose when to score for features, there is no guarantee that two players who happen to sit upon the same feature will receive the same amount of points. One may leave before that feature is completed and receive partial points, while another may wait and score a far greater amount.
Branching Out - It must be said that this was the only Carcassonne until 2013's
South Seas that had a nautical theme. The real-life city of Carcassonne sits on a river but the Mediterranean is not far and this game does fit more or less with that theme, despite its non-thematic name. A reprint of this game with superior artwork and perhaps a more streamlined scoring mechanic could prove popular, and it could even be possible to create in this an expansion to the base game rather than a spin-off. The idea, if not the implementation, of a coastal Carcassonne expansion continues to elude Hans im Glück and concepts could certainly be gleaned from this stand-alone game.
InconclusionCarcassonne: The Discovery is undeniably a flawed game. Lacking in visual appeal and needlessly complex, it sits near the bottom of Carcassonne spin-offs and will certainly not appeal to everybody. This is probably one of the reasons why it has been discontinued by Hans im Glück and why Z-Man Games has not released their own version of it. It feels outdated – like a 1990s Eurogame before the craze hit America. While some of the mechanics are certainly interesting and this is arguably the most strategic of all the Carcassonne spin-offs, it simply is not that appealing. Stick to the original game or
Hunters & Gatherers.
SCORESPlayability: B
Affordability (Obtainability): B (second-hand)
Aethetics: F
Learning Curve: C
FINAL GRADE: CLinkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=3660.0