Developer: United Soft Media
Publisher: United Soft Media
Rrp: £11.99
Released: 14th August 2013
Available on: Steam
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Catan is the digital version of the popular board game Settlers of Catan (or Catan as the name changed).
Rather than spend a lot of time trying to explain the rules of this game (which without a visual of the board its hard to understand), I’m going to do as I did in my Smallworld 2 and Ticket to Ride reviews and allow the video below to explain it all.
You can’t play the basic version of Catan in the campaign mode the game forces you to play with one of the expansions. In order to play the original Catan you have to choose ‘Scenario’ and then deselect Seafarers and C&K (that’s literally how the Cities and Knights expansion is referred to). When in Scenario mode you can choose to change the AI player into another human play for hotseat multiplayer.
There are no tooltips to give you hints on what a buttons function is, also while playing if a player wants to trade with another a prompt will appear on screen. This would be fine but the prompt is written in such a vague way it takes a few moments to realise which of is the giver or taker.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact there isn’t a tutorial, or rather there is but you have to go into the ‘Help’ section and read through several walls of text, which isn’t a great way to teach people how to play.
Having played both the board game, IOS game and now this I feel that this is the weakest of the versions. Yes, it does come with a few expansions and even a editor but the way the UI works and the lack of aid toward the player lessens the experience greatly. Honestly I think that if you find the idea of this game interesting that you should either download the IOS version or find a games club to have a go, as this one is not worth the price it asks for.
Update: Since the time of writing it seems that this version of Catan isn’t on Steam any more. In fact I can’t really find it for the PC anywhere.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Ticket to Ride
Smallworld 2
Talisman
