Istanbul: Digital Edition
The official digital adaptation of one of the best board games in history – Istanbul.
Istanbul is, without a doubt, one of the best board games to have ever been published.
Collect and trade goods! Plan ahead! Earn rubies and win the race to fortune! Become the best merchant in Istanbul! This faithful adaptation of one of the best board games of all time will turn you into a merchant on a journey from rags to riches. 🕌📦👳
So what is the game about?
Can you be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies?
• 🕌 Run, collect, and trade goods across the bazaar
• 👳 Take control over your assistants
• 📦 Increase your wheelbarrow capacity
• 🧿 Acquire special abilities to increase the advantage over your competitors
• 💎 Buy rubies or trade goods for them
In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and his four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. In each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, however, is that to take action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters. If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything…
What can you expect?
• Official Istanbul game – 100% original rules
• Adaptation of TOP 100 board games of all time by BGG ranking
• Play with AI, with friends, or with both
• Great artwork by Andreas Resch
• Languages: English, German, Dutch, Polish, French, Korean, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Spanish
• Pass and play mode
• Cross-platform online multiplayer with synchronous and asynchronous modes
• Opponents’ last moves replay
• 3 levels of difficulty AIs with individual strategies
• Preset or randomly generated game boards
• Atmospheric music and sounds
• Unique, original board game experience
• Intuitive gameplay
• Colorblind mode
• Over 70 achievements
What are you waiting for? Become the best merchant in Istanbul!
The long list of awards and honors speaks for itself:
🏆 2018 Golden Geek Best Board Game App Nominee
🏆 2015 Nederlandse Spellenprijs Best Expert Game Nominee
🏆 2014 Swiss Gamers Award Winner
🏆 2014 Meeples’ Choice Nominee
🏆 2014 Kennerspiel des Jahres Winner
🏆 2014 International Gamers Award – General Strategy: Multi-player Nominee
🏆 2014 Gra Roku Nominee
🏆 2014 Gouden Ludo Winner
🏆 2014 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year Nominee
🏆 2014 Golden Geek Best Strategy Board Game Nominee
🏆2014 Golden Geek Best Family Board Game Nominee
In Istanbul: Digital Edition, we have kept all of the things that made Istanbul the game beloved by fans, but also expanded upon it with a number of tools and features only available on the digital platform. We maintained the authentic board game feeling with the convenience you can expect from the digital platform.
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Steam User 57
This is really faithful to the board game. I played the table top game first, but this one helped me come up with strategies and understand the mechinices deeper. Because of that experience and the steam game I've decided to buy the tabletop version. Highly recommended to everyone who likes strategy and puzzles.
Note: also runs smoothly on linux without any issues. Graphics and achievements both flawless. Kudos to Mobo for supporting linux. Thank you!
Steam User 31
I don't own the board game, but after playing this I might have to pick it up. You basically travel around the 16 tiles, each having actions associated with them, buying and selling wares trying to be the first player to collect a number of gems. You start with a small wheelbarrow that only holds a few goods, but there's a tile on the board you can visit several times and upgrade your wheelbarrow to carry more goods, which you'll have to do, as some gem awarding tiles require more items than your beginning barrow can carry. When your barrow is fully upgraded you get a gem. You move 1 or 2 spaces on a turn and have to leave one of your assistants behind on the tile when you perform the action associated with that tile. When you've left behind all 4 of your assistants you can no longer perform any actions and either have to backtrack to pick up your assistants, one at a time, with the ability to perform the actions on those tiles again, or make your way back to the fountain tile where you can retrieve all your assistants at once and start a new journey. When its your turn, you have to move to a new tile, so you can't just sit on a tile and perform its action over and over.
The game is very puzzle-like, you have to plan your route very carefully and efficiently. If you move onto a tile already occupied with competing merchants, you have to pay them 2 money before you can do the action on that tile, so sometimes you may have to go elsewhere in order not to come up short on money that you may have set aside to buy a gem or upgrade your wheelbarrow, and visit that tile after they leave. There are several tiles that award gems, and the meat of the game is running around the board collecting the prerequisites for those specific gem awarding tiles.
There are different board layouts, a beginner, an advanced, and random which makes for great replayability.
Overall a very enjoyable game I highly recommend.
Steam User 18
Got the digital version, because I play the board game quite a bit, but not as often as I would like.
Pro - helped me spot a couple of rules we had misinterpreted from the board game.
Pro - can play when I want.
Pro - Don't have to wait to set a board up.
Con - Board on a laptop screen is a lot smaller than the physical board game on the table, made it difficult sometimes to track which section was what in a random game.
Pro - the only con disappeared when I played it on my huge telly on the wall :)
Steam User 31
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Istanbul: Digital Edition is the official digital version of the popular board game.
This game can be played with 2-5 players total, these can be human players or you can play against AI. The AI have 3 difficult settings: easy, medium, and hard.
This game does offer a tutorial to start, but I think the game is best played through trial and error, learning from your own experience. If you have never played the actual board game, it might be a bit confusing at first. But it has very few rules and is fairly easy to learn. You should get the hang of it within 2-3 full rounds of play.
When you start, there are four different layouts that you can choose from.
You play as a merchant who is in charge of some assistants who will make trades all around the city. You can move up to 2 spaces vertically or horizontally. At each location, you need to leave an assistant to perform an action. Different landing spaces will lead to different benefits.
There are four different good that are up for trade, these are Silk, Jewlery, Herbs, and Fruit. In the beginning you can only collect 2 of each, and as you progress, you can land on a tile that let you upgrade your wheels for coins. As a result, you will be able to hold more of each type of goods.
You will come across tiles where you can earn money, sometimes you can get cards to help you as well. Other times you can a mosque tile that can give you various benefits. There are four that you can get, and I would really recommend that you try to get some of these.
The goal of the game is to get to 5 total rubies. The first player to that many rubies will win a game. If you are only playing a 2-player game or 1-on-1 versus AI, you will need to get 6 rubies instead of 5. There are different ways to earn rubies, and you will need to learn how to get the rubies not only the fastest, but also to interrupt your opponents from getting them as well.
Controls
The game can be play with a mouse only.
Graphics and Music
The graphics are very nice with nice 2D graphics. Everything is very colorful. The text is easy to read.
The music is very fitting for the game. I did notice that the music malfunctioned if you play for an extended period of time.
Pricing
Pretty well priced compared to most other board games.
Conclusion
Istanbul: Digital Edition is definitely a board game that should be in your collection, especially if you enjoy board games and digital versions of them. It is easy to learn through trial and error and once you get into it, it can offer you many hours of pure fun. Each game usually lasts anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour. It is a good game to play even if you do not have too much time, you don't have to worry about super long and drawn-out games. Plus the price is very good. I would definitely recommend this game.
Over all score: 8.5/10.
Here's a video that shows some gameplay:
I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.
Steam User 6
Istanbul is a new addition to my list of favourite games. I do not own the physical game but cannot imagine how it could be different from this digital version.
Gameplay is turn-based on a 4X4 grid. You move your game piece around the board, selecting your own route and performing a different action on each of the 16 tiles. The object of the game is to be the first to collect 5 rubies through the collection and sale/trade of goods. You can initially carry only a limited number of goods and travel only a short distance, but your abilities are augmented throughout the game by purchasing wagon upgrades and mosques. There are many paths to victory and the ability for some mild interference amongst players. I find the game a good mix of strategy with plenty of tactical decisions, and I like that you have control of your own fate and play style.
The tutorials are helpful enough but it will still take a couple of games to be confident that you are making a sound choice and not just idly wandering through the board. The interface is beautiful and there are helpful mouse-over tips for everything. One gripe is that some of your available moves are not immediately evident, tucked away in a side or bottom bar, but it's probably the right choice to keep the UI clean and it would be annoying to those who already know how to play the game.
Once you have memorized what each tile can do for you, the game will 'click' and you will know what you want to do, but how you do it is ever-evolving and different on each playthrough. The game has very high replay value because you can randomize the tiles, play with friends or varying levels of AI, and there is an element of chance.
Steam User 11
A faithful recreation of the Istanbul board game with a pleasant soundtrack. Especially liked how documentation/help was always available without clutter and that you could dive deeper into the rules by clicking further. Only tricky bit was how to apply mosque powers -- make sure to look at the bottom of the screen for when they're available. Really pleased that it cleanly handled widescreen resolutions.
Steam User 5
Very great adaption of a board game! Slick controls and interface, online/hotseat multiplayer...what more could you want other then expansions?
That said, very good stuff!