Catan Universe Reviews

For the most part this an amazing game. However the reason I’ve given this 1 star is because the game is horrendously glitchy and loaded with bugs. There are some issues that need reprogramming as well. For example, the kicktimer is a whopping 2min. The game does not proceed until these 2 minutes have passed. This needs to be shortened to a maximum of 1min. Also each player is allotted 1min per turn, again this is much too long. I can understand that some turns take that long but there should be a separate “idle” timer for turns. If a player hasn’t clicked the screen or demonstrated some activity then his turn should be skipped after 30s. As far as bugs, sometimes you will load into a game and the screen is black showing only maxed out commodity cards, only way to fix this is to reboot CatanUniverse . Other times after a 7 is rolled (the robber) the turns freeze. This shows only on some players screens but not others. For example, some people will be waiting for player 3 to go but on his screen he thinks it’s still player 2’s turn. Again this can only be fixed by exiting and rebooting CatanUniverse . Overall great app and I still love playing it but it can be tremendously frustrating at times. CatanUniverse need technical maintenance and bug fixes ASAP. Hope this helps.

Funny, when I play this game is real life I hardly ever see the number seven rolled 27 times in a game that had only 80 turns. That’s every three turns for those doing the math…. Anyone who downloads CatanUniverse will surely notice some seriously suspicious patterns when it comes to the dice. The above example is not an outlier. Seven is rolled entirely too often - sometimes several turns consecutively - and usually happens coincidentally when you’re leading a game by several points. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself going a dozen turns in a row without collecting anything and having all of your items taken away from the robber, because obviously they always put the robber on one of your positions. Just as an example, the last game I played I clearly had the strongest positions on the board. I was winning by several points. Out of the last 24 rolls, I counted the number eight was rolled 6 times in 8 turns alone; seven was also rolled 6 times. The numbers I needed in order to win (6, 5, 4, or 10) were never rolled. The developer might argue I’m just being a sore loser but those statistics are virtually impossible and it happens constantly in this game. I could go on and on with examples like these. I should note that there is another setting that allows you to change the probability of the dice but you will find it is just as goofy as the default setting. Not sure what the point is in making the game so obviously skewed in favor of the computer.

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GAME!!! This is an honest question. Will it ever work again? It hasn’t worked for the better part of a week now. If you don’t believe me, check out the Catan Universe Facebook page. People vent there. IF the reason why it won’t work is because they are truly making changes to fix the game they haven’t said one word to us. They just let the game not work and let their customers get so frustrated that they leave 500 word reviews. It is beyond ridiculous and shows how poorly of a company this is exactly. I truly feel embarrassed for the developers of this game. I wish I would have read the comments before purchasing this game. It appears as though these issues have been going on for quite some time and they cannot fix it. When I was playing for free and someone would drop out I figured they just didn’t like the way the game was going or something to that effect. No, it turns out the game is kicking people. I have been trying to play and I keep getting a message saying that I am not connecting to the server. Implying that the issue is on my end. Well that certainly is not the case as I have tried both WiFi and cellular data and I just switched to pc and getting the same message. I really am embarrassed for the developers that can’t seem to fix this issue that has been going on for at least a few years. Don’t believe me..check the comments. Lesson learned, I will check comments before downloading in the future.

Get the game... that’s about as far as my story goes. I play one game (tutorial game) stupid because one person got kicked for inactivity. Then after that I finish the settling into Catan or whatever the overall tutorial is and still can’t play the different versions of the regular mode, which it says you need to complete and I did... then all the sudden I can’t even log in because it keeps saying timing out when I have perfectly good internet connection. Then I finally can get logged in and it “can’t connect to the server”, so irritating and I’ve tried like 20 times and still can’t connect to the server. Then I go on the forum and apparently this problem has been going on for two weeks and not a thing has been fixed. Honestly ridiculous and embarrassing for them. Like you get hired to do this crap and you can’t even fix a problem that makes the game UNPLAYABLE... ridiculous. Not even sure how the heck it has 4 stars I LOVE CATAN, LOVE THE IDEA, CANT EVEN PLAY, so who gives a crap what your trying to do, if you can’t play it it doesn’t matter. That’s like showing people you can give them a million bucks if they roll a 2 with a dice, but there’s only ones... oh and one last thing, AI’s freeze up after playing 7s. Think that should be an easy one to fix, but you also can’t FIX YOUR MAIN SERVER... poor people who actually payed for this game and can’t get a refund. Fix this game in less then a week and this 1 Star turns into a 5 in snap...

I wanted to learn how to play this game before buying the real board game. For that purpose it did it’s job. However, there are some flaws in this game that make it not fun to play at all. There is definitely a problem with AI trading. I had games where I was middle of the pack and I kept only getting 1 or 2 resources ( because of odd dice rolling but I’ll get to that late) AI will not trade with you even if they have excess resources and even if you offer ridiculous abundance of every resources. You have to rely solely on the 4:1 trade ratio unless of course you get robbed which happens to me almost every single time I have 8 resources. Which brings me to my next point. The dice rolling is so odd in this game. Over the course of my last 4 games I payed closer attention and noticed that 2-3 numbers which have statically low chances of getting rolled get rolled significantly more by 3-4x the amount of other rolls ? Some times that happens in real life too but not every game? During the game I’m thinking okay it’s not a big deal I’ll just have to use the 4:1 trade. Nope, think again, most times I try to do that I just get robbed. So now I have no resources and I’m just in a perpetual state of AI not trading me and getting robbed. Now that I know how to play I will just play with friends, the way this AI is designed make it not fun to play.

Update: the dice rolls aren't too bad now but my cities are only paying out 1 resource instead of 2 so it stills feels impossible to get ahead. There's nowhere in CatanUniverse to submit issues with the programming.

I tried the free version for a few days and it was fun so I bought it. I haven't even come close to winning one game since I bought it. It seems insane that the dice rolls are hitting 5s 3 out of 6 rolls in the AI's favor. Every 2 turns it benefits me but the rest of the rolls alternate between my opponents getting resources or them getting the robber and placing it on my hexes and stealing from me. One turn 3 of the 4 opponents rolled a 7 and moved the robber around all of my hexes stealing from me. Also, none of the AI will trade with me even if I offer up to 5 cards in a number of combos to get one card. So I'm stuck trying to save up to trade but magically when I finally get enough to do what I need a 7 is rolled making me throw out 1/2 my cards. They had an outage to upgrade the system at the time I bought it so I'm not sure if this is the paid version or the new "upgrade" but it makes playing the game feel pointless and annoying since the dice rolls and all the opponents team up against you.

I love Catan but this game is frustrating. I played free for as long as I could stand it and finally made the switch to get the random board and a couple of the add ons (cities and knights/ harbor master). You can have great board placement with all the right resources and lots of good numbers and no matter how many roles you are getting nothing. When you finally get a couple roles and just get over 8 cards a 7 roles. Meanwhile other players with terrible placement get the same number rolled 4 out of 5 rolls. I’m competitive by nature but this really needs to be fixed. Dice are random but certain numbers should show up more. I just played half a game and while the other players had two or three settlements, I had one road and bought a development card to stay below 8. I just needed two roads from the beginning of the game to move past another player. He is going the complete other way one his other settlement, I then finally get the wood I need for the road and he blocks me. I start the road to go around and on his next turn he places 3 or 4 roads to block me again, without a road building card. Please fix this and make the game about the board placement like it is in real life. Also when is the tournament play supposed to be added?

When playing the AI (especially of “Master” difficulty) it just happens to be that the robber is insanely lucky to be on your best resource for the whole game. Try to buy 1,2,3 development cards to get a knight to move it? They will all just happen to be road buildings, monopolies, victory points. When you finally get a knight, within 2 more turns a 7 is guaranteed to be rolled so that the AI can put the robber right back on your resource. Then a 7 will not be rolled for probably 25 turns as long as you dont play another knight. But once you play a knight to move the robber off, its guaranteed to be back on in only a couple turns. Also if you have 8 resources there are very high odds of AI rolling 7. Im pretty sure catan just cant come up with an AI that is actually good enough to beat a skilled human so in order to make it “hard” they need to adjust the luck of the game.

What is worse than this though is when your resources magically “disappear” from your hand. Several times when I get robbed by the AI i have seen the resource that the AI took from my hand disappear and then about 1 second later another resource just disappears from your hand too (no 7 rolled or knight played). No explanation for that. You could at least do a better job at hiding the fact that the game is rigged. 👎

Also when playing multiplayer 90% of the time a 7 is rolled in the first 2 turns and then not rolled again for a long time. Not saying its rigged but just very annoying.

I have never experienced a game with so much glitches/ bugs ever! It’s sad because it’s such a great game! My family and I used to always play the board game in person. Since we live I different cities we were all so excited when we discovered we could play this online on our phones! That excitement quickly became anger/frustration when we realized it’s almost impossible to set up the game to play with your family/friends online. Always get an error message when trying to invite a friend from your friend list. It was just a nightmare. In about 6 months we were probably able to make it work just a few times. Every time an “update” would come up, we were positive and thought maybe they had fixed that issue, but NOPE, same problem as ALWAYS.
If you want to play with family/friends online, do yourself a favor and try Colonist io. I discovered it about 2 weeks ago-download it- asked my family to download it-created and account- added each other as friends- and guess what? It actually works. No glitches/ bugs/ error messages/ lost communication with server/ nothing like that. Just fun playing with my family. You can become a member which unlocks more maps, modes, etc but it is a bit pricy (monthly payment) but I personally think it is worth it as it connects me with my family and allows us to have some fun. We play it all the time now. Sad these developers have never been able to fix that issue.

It’s decently fun to play online but if you play against AI it feels rigged. The game actually includes a dice roll feature but, say you have a settlement on two 6’s. Those two 6’s will rarely get rolled then a robber will get put on it and like 5 in a row will be a 6. So, the bell curve is somewhat realistic by the end but the actual turns those numbers are rolled on is stacked against you. Clever way to cover for AI that can’t compete against a human naturally I guess.

All that aside, its still pretty fun but its actually unplayable at this point. For about a week now, CatanUniverse just won’t load. Originally, I would try to play and it would reach the main screens but after I clicked the play button it would just say I was out of suns every time (even though I wasn’t and I tried on 3 different days w/ no success). Online mode would just say “this feature is unavailable while offline” but my internet has been fine and all my other games function normally. I deleted and reinstalled but now it just perpetually loads on the sign in screen. I’ve tried logging in, registering a new account, and playing without an account but nothing will load. I’ve tried on wifi and LTE. I’ve tried using a VPN to mask my IP address. Nothing works.

What’s the point of an app you can’t use?

So I’m new to Catan and I saw this free version of the game and they gave me one game I got to go through the tutorial and I got one game and said that I didn’t get another game for 24 hours no I understand if you guys want to sell maps or skins or any like cosmetic things but to only get one game every 24 hours is ridiculous and then on top of that you have another game which is the classic version it’s only five dollars so I could buy the classic version for five bucks or I could pay two dollars for 200 games now the price if you were to sell it like that is reasonable I suppose because I wouldn’t see myself needing more than 200 games if I’m still getting one game every day but as a new player I can’t believe that you would give me at least 10 or 20 games for free to get me into the game but only one game you give me one game to start out with and then you start asking for money like how much supposed to learn the game how much supposed to get into the game I’m very flabbergasted by this and if you expect people to actually play your game and possibly pay to play which I think is ridiculous against AI nonetheless I would really highly suggest you give a new player more than one game more than five games more than 10 games give somebody 1520 games so that they can actually practice and then learn how to play

EDIT 1: some of the main concerns were addressed and - to some extent - corrected. Game breaking bugs in matches were reduced substantially, from about 90% of matches to a healthy 15% (yep, I kept an excel). The in-game interface is still the same, and in my humble opinion, not very intuitive. Regardless, CatanUniverse is moving in the right direction. Adjusting stars from 1 to 3. REALLY looking forward to the update that was supposed to happen a few hours ago(?).

ORIGINAL:

The board game is amazing and CatanUniverse has so much potential. However, it is ridiculously common for a game to get bugged. The problem with that is that it affects all other players, not just whoever got bugged. So the game hangs up thinking no one is having issues, meanwhile this one player is stalling for upwards of 20 mins (and the game cant figure out that something is wrong and just kick him). Kicktimers trigger for no reason when you’re in-game and everything else seems to be doing fine. Not much incentive to level up. Not much to buy in the shop (honestly if there were more items available, with better perks than a viking hat, I’d be throwing money at you guys). Elo visibility is really nice tho, kinda only thing that keeps me and my friends around. Just a tip, elo games tend to not show opponents’ elo in the pre-game screen so that it won’t affect in-game tactics (i.e. 3v1, etc). Really looking forward to an update and hopefully adjusting this rating. Thanks for your hard work!

This game is so close to being one of the best apps on CatanUniverse Store but it has way too many bugs and issues. A few games in a row now I’ve been foiled by a bug where if you have two ports, a 3 -for-any-resource port and a 2 for something specific port, trading with the bank forces me to pay 3 even if I’m buying the good I should be able to get for 2. Also if I tap the face in the right (which I think might be Arrival on Catan) it asks me to register, even though I’m currently already logged in. And if I log in again it still asks me, forever.

Also there’s some really weird UX. Besides the board being a bit unintuitive at first, the game mode buttons at the bottom are also completely unlabeled. They keep telling you to play Arrival on Catan but give you no indication of what this is or how to do it. And you can buy the full version of the game at the shop but it’s very vague what exactly you get from purchasing it.

I don’t know if this is a bug or a penalty for paying free but I also get the same map with the same resource and number placements every time. If that is an incentive for upgrading, it’s not doing its job because they don’t make that fact clear.

I love Catan, and the ability to play so many game modes and expansions in CatanUniverse is fantastic. But the game bugs out a lot of the time.

I tried to purchase the premium version, but it was too bugged to play, so i asked for a return.

Sometimes the game keeps me from building some things, or spending certain resources. The 12hour token regen to be able to play a game makes sense for the free version, but when I have a token to use, i usually have to close CatanUniverse a few times before it will actually let me start a game with it. Often times it just resets the timer when i open CatanUniverse , which is frustrating. The Barbarian function in cities and knights imposes inconsistent city destruction rules - taking out defended cities and leaving undefended ones. Unlike the boardgame, CatanUniverse allows NPCs to build settlements at owned intersections. And even the “balanced” dice mode leads to drastic uneven roll distributions. It would be nice to have a more accessible list of special rules for the special game modes. The cities and knights additional cards from dice rolls is also inconsistent. The additional rules are tough to find, and seem to be missing some observed mechanics.

Some players are really aggressive and question you and harass you every time you put a robber on their spot; use cards to steal their resources, etc. That is what you are supposed to do! It’s the game! It’s worse in the basic game than in Cities and Knights. People use really insulting and offensive language. It’s really upsetting. It just means that I play on single mode most of the time. It ruined trying to play with others for me. Please make it possible to just block group chat. It’s so unnecessary anyway. Also, most of the trade offers I accept from AI characters simply disappear or go to other AI players so fast. That’s really frustrating. Also, the robber just comes up too often. That’s annoying, but it shouldn’t come up during the first round when you’re trying to build knights. Lately the first round has also been going by way too fast and most players lose their cities. The last issue is that a robber will land on your spot and many times that number will roll 4 or 5 times in a row while the robber is on that exact number! All these things combined take the fun out of playing. Thanks!

Super fun app, but a few things I’ve noticed:
1. The AI can make actions (buy settlements, play dev cards, etc.) at the start of a turn (before they roll) even though I cannot, so they have an advantage where they can drop to under 7 cards BEFORE a 7 is rolled.
2. Sometimes the AI will offer me a trade, and I will accept it, but instead of trading, they will offer me another, better, trade. So I accept that, but instead of it going through, they offer me yet another better trade. It seems like the game gets hung up where my accept button is actually denying the trade, so the AI is offering me better and better deals, but I’m never able to make the trade go through. They eventually trade 4-1 with the bank, and it is frustrating.
3. The UI is not intuitive at all. After I finished the first few games, I had to quit the entire app because I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the home screen without shutting down the entire game. After a while I found where you can click through several screens to get back to the main menu, but it is unnecessarily complicated.
4. Also, as others have said, the dice are clearly not random.

The game is a great adaptation of the classic strategy board game. However, the tutorial introduces you to many different expansion themed game modes. While these are great when explained (Seafarers for example), the rest have minimal to no tutorial. The gamemode involving upgrading your cities in terms of politics and science offers no explanation as to how to get the resources required to do that or what happens if you can’t defeat the pirates. Even worse, the Rivals of Catan tutorial prompt says “Let me show you the two person card game, Rivals of Catan.” Then, with no explanation, it just throws you into the middle of the game and offers no information as to how this (only slightly similar to the board game) version is even played. It just keeps expecting you to know what to do with no prompt like the prior tutorials had.

As for everything else game related, CatanUniverse is incredible. No bugs. No glitches. Very well integrated and very well explained. Easy to play with friends. All that is necessary is some explanation for the new game modes introduced before just throwing them into the players’ faces.

Love that i can now have Catan on my phone so I can play wherever I go, overall a great app! Only minor critique here as a long term Catan player, the trade options are limited, like you can’t counter offer and that’s a pretty big oversight, you also can’t offer trades to players when it is not your turn, also would be nice if there were pre set dialogues that you can use like Catan online used to have, and the messaging option is only accessible by going into a screen separate from the view of the board, maybe that’s not a big deal to some but it would be helpful to see the chat on the board screen, and last, my only big gripe with CatanUniverse is the obnoxious angles, I often get stuck at a really awkward viewing angle and I still sometimes can’t get it to show a top view of the board, I mean it’s kind of cool the board view is interactive but it really is more of an annoying feature, if they could add some controls to the view that would be great or just eliminate it altogether, anyways it’s cheap so can’t really say it’s a bad app just needs a few renovations and it will be supreme!

Love the game! Very well done! To any developer reading this, I would like to make a few requests: please add another expansion (I would pay another $5 for easily) that adds another ring of resource tiles around the basic game board. Just like the expansion for the board game in real life. That way the play can edit the basic game to have more players, victory points needed to win, more trading ports, and development cards into the pool. Also please add support for Co-Op for two players using the same device in a game. Possibly even up to 4 players on one device? I would also like the ability to play with only 1 other CP in singleplayer mode instead of requiring 3-4 players. There is also a bug that has happened quite often where the check mark does not work in trades with CP’s and forgoes the trade no matter if you click on the red X or the green check mark. The bug also does not allow you to properly re-negotiation the trade with CP’s. Last but not least I would like more edit features when generating the world map instead of only having a few preset “scenarios” to pick from with their own hidden list of possible resource hexes. Thank you for reading and I would love your feedback!

After seeing this game with only a two star rating I was worried about trying it but I did anyways. After downloading it I set up an account because why not...it was free. Even though I already knew how to play the base game Catan it put me through an tutorial which was helpful in the sense to figure out the controls of CatanUniverse . After the quick tutorial I played a game against the AI and I had a lot of fun. I mean who doesn’t after they win. The game didn’t go easy nor did I feel like I was being teamed up on. It felt authentic and fair throughout.

One of my favorite things about this version is that it keeps track of your wins and loses. It’s pretty sweet. You level up as you play and unlock different looks for your avatar and different virtual tables to play on. You can join up with friends and play that way, random matchmaking, or against the AI.

Another thing to note is I had no issue logging in or setting up an account as others stated. It seems like the developer is working hard to keep CatanUniverse up to date and I would hate to see this one die. I was very impressed and will update as I experience CatanUniverse further.