The official website for “The Settlers of Catan” allows you to play the game with other people online, directly from your browser. The website recommends using Safari, which makes sense if. The Settlers of Catan digital game. Settlers of Catan is a strategy board game that involves acquiring resources, building roads and settlements, and robbing fellow players in order to score victory points. The hexagon-tiled board represents the land you must conquer in order to win the game, but be wary—to outsmart your opponents, one must.
Like a lot of people, board games helped me get through the first year of the pandemic.
But living alone, 2020 wasn’t exactly a chance to dust off my copy of Risk or Monopoly.
Instead, I found myself playing Colonist.io, a free online version of the massively popular German board game Settlers of Catan. Over the course of weekly games with a small group of childhood friends (and the occasional match with my dad and brothers), I watched the site transform. What was originally a rough-around-the-edges online game plastered with aggressive pop-up added new features and better graphics on what seemed like a weekly basis.
In a blog post published on February 11, the creator of Colonist.io revealed that the site had grown from 53,471 active users in January 2020 to 701,851 users by January 2021. More than 13 million games have been played on the site since March 2020, and at the peak of the pandemic, as many as 9,000 people were playing at any one time.
It’s been a very good year for the creator of Colonist.io, Demi Yilmaz, but the 29-year-old serial entrepreneur, crypto enthusiast, and freestyle hip-hop dancer tells Inverse that all he wanted was a way to easily play Catan with his family.
Yilmaz grew up in Turkey, where he says he and his father and two brothers used to play boardgames frequently. After moving to Singapore, he and his brother found that there wasn’t an easy way to play Catan online, so they decided to create a website where they could keep the habit up.
“The available versions sucked,” Yilmaz says. “So we were like, How hard can it be to create our own version?”
Yilmaz and his brother Goku had some experience making online games. Their previous project, Dawn of Crafting, a mobile roleplaying game set during the Stone Age, became an international hit after it was released in 2016. Still, the first version of Colonist, which launched in December 2017, was far from perfect. It even had a different name, Katan.io, a clear nod to the original game that inspired it.
In Settlers of Catan, 2-4 players compete to build the best civilization, collecting and trading resources to build settlements, cities, roads, and armies. Katan.io had all these features, but there was one thing it was missing: the ability for other people to play. Only the first four people to log on at any time could use the site.
“It was good enough for the four of us to play,” Yilmaz says, referring to himself and his immediate family.
Early updates added the ability for multiple games to happen at once, a virtual lobby people could wait in before joining games, the ability to play against a computer, and other basic features. In September 2018, Yilmaz decided to focus on developing Colonist full time. For two years, he saw slow but steady growth. Then, the pandemic happened.
“At that time [the site] was completely unknown,” Yilmaz tells me over email. “We had no idea how many players could come due to the pandemic. Colonist is played by 40k people per day and 700k per month.”
Settlers Of Catan Free Download
Most of that growth happened in March and April 2020 — the first two months of lockdown. Yilmaz recalls needing to rent more server space each week, and constantly rewriting code and pushing out new updates. It was too much to cope with alone. He hired his first two employees in 2020 and plans to increase the size of the team in 2021.
Most of the money to pay those employees (and himself) came from banner ads on the site, at least at the start. But as the game grew in popularity, Yilmaz expanded the Colonist online store, which offers bonus features for the game like special maps, expansions, and other extras. After working on Colonist for free for years, he tells me he’s currently got “2+ years of runway.”
When asked if he’s worried about getting into legal trouble with the creators of Settlers of Catan, Yilmaz points out that you can’t actually copyright the idea behind a board game. All the code and visuals Yilmaz built are original, even if his game instantly feels familiar to anyone who’s played the board game version of Catan.
Colonist spread entirely by word of mouth with no marketing, but Yilmaz says he owes a lot to Reddit’s Catan community, which discovered Colonist early on. Not only did r/Catan help spread the word, they offered regular feedback, guiding how Yilmaz worked on new updates and features. Next on the list, the team is rolling out leaderboards and rankings, along with their own version of the popular Catan expansion “Cities & Knights.” Even after the pandemic, Colonist isn’t going anywhere.
That’s a good thing, because even after my friends and I are all vaccinated, I have a feeling we might still get together online for the occasional game of Colonist. Just like Yilmaz and his family, we’re not always all together in the same place.
And if you’re looking for some advice to help you win your next match, here’s a tip from the Colonist creator himself:
“Trade. The person who collaborates with more players usually ends up at an advantage.”
Contents
Can you play Catan online with friends for free?
You can play Catan Universe on your browser, download it as an app on Google or Android, or play it via Steam, an online game platform. It’s free to play, but you can buy ” Catan Gold” within it to unlock features like different theme sets and expansions; 100 pieces of Catan Gold are $.
Is there a way to play Catan online with friends?
Catan Anytime allows you to play a modified version of The Settlers of Catan base game asynchronously, meaning that you can take your turn whenever you like and do not have to arrange meetings with your friends and other players to complete a game at a stretch. Just invite them via Facebook or e-mail and get started.
Can you play Catan classic with friends?
Back in 2011 Catan Classic was released (albeit under the name Settlers of Catan ) it was the lone version of the Catan board game on the app store. The game worked smoothly, played fast and the AI were reasonable if not a tad easy; you can play against 3 other friends via pass and play or online and it worked a treat.
How do I add friends on Catan?
How to add firends I know in real life? browsing
- go to the Catan start page.
- click on your avartar.
- choose Find Friends.
- enter the friends name (nickname!) and choose search.
- add him/ her to your friends list.
What board games can I play online with friends?
The best online board games to play with friends
- Tabletop Simulator.
- Codenames.
- Scythe.
- Mysterium.
- Roll for the Galaxy.
- Terraforming Mars.
- Secret Hitler.
- Spyfall.
What online games can I play with friends?
10 free online games to play with your friends
- Psych! The aim of the game is to bamboozle your pals into picking a fake answer to real trivia questions.
- Plato. Think of any classic multiplayer game, and you can probably find it on the Plato chat app.
- Mario Kart Tour.
- Scrabble Go.
- Spyfall.
- Drawful 2.
- This Is Your World.
- Remote Insensitivity.
How many players can play Catan online?
Exactly six players get together to play the game in the Catan Online World. The game board has a ring-shaped structure, and after the players have discovered each other, they may trade with each other in real time if desired.
Can Catan be played with 2 players?
The basic Settlers of Catan game is designed to work for 3-4 players (or more with 5-6 Player Extension). No 2 player variant is suggested by the rules, and for good reasons: Trades (an exciting part of the regular game) rarely make sense.
Can you play Ticket to Ride online with friends?
Ticket to Ride on PC lets you play the board game online with friends – and it makes train noises, which is fun.
How is Catan pronounced?
Settlers Of Catan online, free
Catan is pronounced /Kuh-Tahn/.
What is the difference between Catan universe and Catan Classic?
Multiplayer Options. Catan Universe is an all-encompassing suite for Catan, allowing you to play the classic base game, the numerous expansions, and the two player card game through one app. Classic Catan is a trading, set collection game in which players race to accumulate the required victory points to win the game.
Which Catan app is best?
5 Essential Settlers of Catan Sites and Apps for Tips, Tricks, Strategy, and More
- Play Catan Online at Catan Universe.
- Official Catan Game Assistant App.
- Map Suggestions at Catan Maps [Broken URL Removed] and Better Settlers.
- Spice Things Up With Catan Game Aide.
Why can’t I find my friends on Catan universe?
Why can’t I join Catan Universe games with friends? It is very likely that you are running different version numbers of the game. You will be able to see your friend online in the friends list, but you will not be able to invite them into your games.
Can you play Catan online with 4 players?
An online game which you can play inside a browser, Colonist is considered to be the purest Catan implementation on the web. The base game is free and can be played online with up to 4 players. It also provides the option to be played versus AI.
Can you play 6 player Catan Online?
The 5- 6 player extension is available for online multiplayer and for games against computer opponents.