Catan’s digital rebirth: Catan Universe

One of the most popular board games published in the last few decades is Catan.

Well, it used to be called Settlers of Catan – but within the last few years, Mayfair officially shortened the name to just Catan.

Looking back at our game reviews, you’ll find our video review of it under Settlers of Catan back in 2010. It’s one of only a few of our video reviews where we had 2 people on camera. In this case it was Jaden and I.

Catan is also credited with helping usher in the modern resurgence of board games.

It brought to light a whole new way to play games. Rather than rolling dice to move around a track on a board, the dice are rolled to generate resources which are randomly distributed on a hex map. Players then convert their collected resources to build settlements, cities, and roads for points.

Because it’s such a great game for families, Catan made our original 10 Must-Have Family Board Games list back in 2010.

Fast-forward to 2018 and you’ll find tons of Catan expansions that still keep the game thriving in the onslaught of thousands of newly published games every year.

A number of years ago, Catan also made it’s way to digital devices where it continued to find its way into new players’ hands. And now it’s been updated with a new look and feel with multiple modes of play across all digital platforms (browser, Steam, iOS, GooglePlay, and Amazon Appstore) as Catan Universe!

Players can play the basic board game in multiplayer mode, as well as the introductory game for “Catan – The Duel,” for free. Players can unlock the Single-Player and Custom-Match modes for the basic “Arrival on Catan” scenario permanently to play against the AI or friends.

Players can also activate the complete Catan base game as well as the add-ons “Cities & Knights” and “Seafarers” as in-app purchases.

We’ve taken our spin at Catan Universe and it’s time to share our thoughts.

 

You’d think the first thing I’d do when diving into a new digital game would be going through the tutorial. Normally that might be the case. But this time, the first thing I did when diving into Catan Universe was customize my avatar!

Unfortunately, until I unlock more stuff I was limited to only a few options.

But seeing all those locks also motivated me to dive into the games to find ways to unlock things to add to my avatar.

I also thought it was cool that you can rotate your avatar while customizing it so you can better see the cool things slung over its back and such. Sure it doesn’t have any affect on the game play itself, but it’s a nice touch that adds to getting pulled into the Catan world (or should I say, Universe).

(Since the game play of Catan Universe is exactly the same as the board game, we won’t cover “how to play” the game. For that, just head over to our original game review.)

 

Then I dove into the game tutorial.

As an experienced Catan player, I didn’t need the tutorial to introduce me to the game play. I was more interested to be taught the touch-screen controls for my phone. The good news is that the tutorial covers both aspects nicely.

If you haven’t played Catan before, learning to play through the digital game is slick as can be.

For the most part, the touch-screen controls are intuitive.

However, I have run into issues when trying to move things around a bit. Perhaps it’s because I’m playing on my little phone instead of a PC/Mac or tablet.

 

The game visuals are terrific!

The 3D viewpoint makes you feel like you’ve got the game set up on a table. And you can tilt the vantage point to whatever angle you like best – even directly above.

You can also easily see your opponents’ status at the top of the screen. The expanded view shows the number of cards they have in hand, number of victory points, number of Knights, and number of continuous Road segments so you can use that info to adjust your plans.

 

When playing against AI characters, the game lets you pick the difficulty level of your opponents – which I like in a game.

And I found that the advanced characters definitely increase the difficulty.

Another aspect I really like about Catan Universe are all the stats you can see at the conclusion of a game. The one I’m always most interested in seeing is the dice results.

With digital dice, people often wonder how fair the dice rolls are. Well, with the distribution results displayed at the end of the game, hopefully that’s no longer a question with the dice rolling in Catan Universe.

 

It’s great that Catan Universe makes it easy to play multiplayer games online.

However, as a family gamer, I’m really most interested in playing against those in my family. And for that, a multiplayer pass and play mode is ideal. Unfortunately, Catan Universe doesn’t offer that option.

Which means that we either login to our own devices or I play solo against AI or strangers somewhere in the world.

And I’m not a fan of playing a digital game solo for that long.

If I’m going to play a digital game by myself, I’m doing so to just take a quick downtime break. I’m looking for something I can play in under 10 minutes. Unfortunately, Catan Universe isn’t that quick.

That being said, there is an option in the settings to essentially auto-deny any trades. My guess is that with that mode enabled, the game will play more quickly. Because during a game I’ve found myself declining a lot of trade requests. But I don’t want to turn that option off because I know there’ll be times I want to trade because of the dice rolls not going my way or the Robber making me discard half my cards.

The good news is that if I can only play for a few minutes, I know I can come back to the game later and continue where I left off.

 

Overall, Catan Universe is a fantastic digital implementation of Catan and I’d recommend it for Catan fans around the world. And for those who haven’t played Catan before, it’s a great way to be introduced to this modern board game staple.