Comments on: Cult Hit Settlers of Catan Comes to the iPhone

By: Wonni

Wonni — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:17:35 +0000

I love playing Settlers of Catan but I think the game is far to slow and it’s much more fun to sit around a table with friends and play it.

By: godlikesme

godlikesme — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:19:43 +0000

Catan is absolutely nothing like Risk AT ALL. The only characteristic that they even remotely share is that they deal with land/territory -but from completely different angles. Risk is 5% strategy and 95% luck. The strategy part is knowing not to try and defend Asia in the begining of the game and to focus more on the smaller continents with fewer borders. That’s it.

When introducing the game to new people I often hear people saying “Settlers is sort of like Risk”. I believe people draw the comparison because there really is nothing like it in the world! It certainly isn’t similar to Connect Four or Monopoly so the closest thing is Risk -even though it really isn’t anything like it at all. I think it would be better to tell people that it’s like nothing they’ve ever played before then to give them a totally inaccurate preconceived notion of the game. It actually hurts the chances of potential new users from wanting to try it out if they are told that it’s “similar to Risk”. Many people never liked Risk (especially females) because of the whole “testosterone and world domination thing”. If people are given the impression that Settlers is just another 4 hour back and forth game of luck then they may never try it out.

By: ryan

ryan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:01:30 +0000

I downloaded a couple days ago! I now have Catan on my Itouch, My xbox, my homecomputer, and of course the real life version which is actually the best for playing with friends and family. Anyway my comments on the itouch version…
a bit small to see everything, but they do the best the can with automatic zooms.
although it plays faster than real life version, a bit slower to play than the other electronic, such as computer and xbox versions I have. It has 2 speed settings, and the fastest is still too slow for my taste. I like to play a complete game against the bots in 10 minutes, but it takes about 20 with the animations on the itouch on the fast setting. Maybe I play too much, but I found the AI not challenging, even on the expert settings. I don’t know why but I usually win before they have even 5 pts. But its a great to have when Im waiting for my flight to board.

By: Scott Rose

Scott Rose — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:18:10 +0000

Settlers of Catan for iPhone is AMAZING!!! It is a completely faithful reproduction of the real board game!! The way that resource trading works in the game is wonderful! I can’t believe how accurate & perfect this game is, compared to the real thing!

HOWEVER — you’ve got one thing wrong in your article here. You said that your opponents can see your resource distribution when you pass them your iPhone. This is absolutely NOT TRUE — your opponents can NOT see your resource distribution when you pass them the iPhone.

The only thing they can see are the NUMBER of cards, NUMBER of resources, and NUMBER of known points that you have… just like the real board game itself.

By: robinson

robinson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:52:45 +0000

Nice review!

Suggestion for your web site designers, make it so that when we enlarge the font size, the left hand margin is preserved. Now, the text ends up flush against it and is hard to read!

By: sherkaner

sherkaner — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:40:46 +0000

If they would just add network play, with push notification when it’s your turn or if somebody is offering a trade, this would be absolutely epic. As is, I can’t really imagine playing by myself or passing my phone between people (how does card trading even work in that situation?).

By: James

James — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:47:44 +0000

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, which makes the 4 hour wait until I actually get home to a wi-fi network to download the app, even more annoying. :p

By: Chad

Chad — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:14:15 +0000

I love the board game Settlers and it’ll be interesting to see the execution of this ap as the fun and challenge in the game is in the trading of resources.