Catan: The Seafarers

If you’re a boardgame fan you’ve probably heard of Klaus Teuber’s award-winning Settlers of Catan.

With over 15 million copies sold, the game is widely regarded as the best ‘gateway’ game for players looking to move away from the traditional selection of Monopoly or Trivial Pursuits.

Catan: The Seafarers is the mobile version of the original Catan game, plus the first expansion pack, Seafarers, added on, with some rules and variants taken from the third expansion pack, Traders & Barbarians, for good measure.

It’s also packed with mobile-specific modes and features that help to make it not just one of the best versions of Catan, but also one of the best boardgames on mobiles.

The aim of the game is fairly simple. Up to four players compete to gain victory points on the small island of Catan – founding settlements, building roads, and establishing cities.

Each hexagon has a number from 2-12, representing the dice roll needed to produce the resource (brick, wool, wheat, or ore) stored on that tile.

The Seafarers part of the title introduces separate islands lying off the coast of Catan that can be explored and harvested, as well as the option of building shipping lanes to connect them to the main island.

Catan: The Seafarers introduces all these concepts in one of the most comprehensive tutorials for a mobile game I’ve seen for a long time, covering every aspect of the game with a hands-on step-by-step guide and a fully-fledged almanac of terms/rules.

Once the basics are sorted, the new Campaign mode picks up on teaching more complicated tactics. Consisting of 16 preset board layouts, each ‘mission’ introduces a new setup or problem that needs to be overcome, like having one resource with terrible numbers (2 & 12), or increasing the reward for exploration.

The Campaign is wrapped up with a simple story that gives context to the forthcoming board layout, even if the dialogue between the characters sounds extremely twee.

While there's both the option of playing with other humans using Bluetooth and pass-the-handset, the majority of the time in Catan will most likely be spent in the company of the eight AI players.

They play with a good understanding of the game – clamming up on trades when a player is clearly in the lead and freely trading if they’re not.

Unfortunately, the trading options offered are basic, with no way of informing the other players than your solitary brick, for instance, is out of bounds.

It sounds minor, but having to skip past eight or nine attempts to wrestle the vital card from you during a round can be a little tiresome.

Other than the occasionally annoying round where you want to slap the AI around the face, Seafarers plays an attractive and addictive game of Catan.

For newcomers, the excellent tutorial and well-paced Campaign mode makes learning the game a breeze, while those more experienced will find the range of boards, increased tactical considerations from the islands, and the option for random layouts well worth a look.