Though a version of Catan was previously available on the Nintendo Switch, it was incredibly barebones and not well received; its loss is not mourned.

This newer version of the perennially popular board game – from British publisher Dovetail Games, in collaboration with Nomad Games – is certainly a much more complete experience, but is it worth playing? Let’s find out!

First things first, here’s a quick overview if you don’t know Catan.

In Catan, players establish settlements and roll each turn to see which hexes on the board produce resources. If a numbered hex their settlement touches comes up on the dice, they collect the type of resource denoted by the hex type – wood, brick, grain, sheep or ore. Crucially, players collect resources when their number comes up even when it isn’t their turn; this keeps players invested in every turn, rather than just sitting and waiting to roll dice.

Resources are used to upgrade settlements to cities, build roads or even construct new settlements, amongst other things – and there’s often enough scarcity in terms of resources needed that trade between players becomes necessary. Again, this keeps players involved during near enough every turn – as bartering and negotiation is often needed if you want to succeed at Catan.

Settlements are worth one victory point, cities two – and there are bonuses for the longest road or having the largest army (armies being a number of knights, which appear on development cards that confer bonuses or other effects for the player that buys the card with their resources). The first player to reach ten points wins.

There’s also the robber, who comes up frequently seeing as he appears when a 7 is rolled on the two dice – seven being the most common number possible on two dice. He allows you to steal a resource from a player whose hex you’ll also block from producing anything until he’s moved again. Annoying, certainly – but again this forces the trading aspect to the fore in Catan.

A video tutorial series handily covers the basics in an easy to digest form in Catan – Console Edition; this should provide everything that new players need to begin their adventure without too much confusion or fuss.

Catan – Console Edition does a fantastic job of looking the part on the Switch – though it’s markedly slower and, unfortunately, has quite an inconsistent frame rate on Nintendo’s console.

Despite this, the water surrounding the island is visually appealing, as are the animated hexes. The shifty looking robber is an amusing, physical addition to the board – especially when he lazily shuffles over to the hex he’s supposed to cover.

It’s actually a great game to play locally too, with the option to have your hand of resources and development cards on your phone’s screen, so as not to give away your current situation to other players. This is handled quite well using a QR code – and it’s very straightforward to set up.

However, there’s some niggles here that really feel as if they should have been ironed out.

The game’s controls feel much more convoluted than they need to be, for one thing. Despite being familiar with the game from its Xbox Series X version, it still took me a little while to get my head around the controls, which for some reason felt a bit less intuitive on the Switch.

Catan – Console Edition also has a very odd pace; the options to speed things up are incredibly thin on the ground too. As far as I could tell, the only way to get things moving a little quicker is to remove yourself from the trading between players until your own turn.

This isn’t ideal of course, but it stops the trades coming up and slowing everything down – which they do, even when you don’t have the resource that’s being requested. Frustratingly, the AI will continue to try and sweeten the deal with counter offers, even if you don’t have the resource they want.

Even small things like dice rolls seem to take an awfully long time to process; they roll, the dice then move (slowly!) next to the player who rolled them, then resources are handed out – for some reason, this just seems to be incredibly slow and it can get particularly frustrating, especially when you’re low, or completely out of, resources; it’ll still take a minute or so for you to take your turn anyway. That may not seem like a long time, but when all you’re doing is rolling the dice and then ending your turn, the duration soon adds up.

Another issue I found is that there’s no way to tweak the AI, which seems particularly geared to picking on the non-AI players. It gets old fast when they continually choose the lone human player’s hex for the robber, for example, even when said human isn’t even ahead on points!

There’s some problems with the main view when building too, as the visuals can feel a little too busy outside of normal rolling and trading. Not only that, but the visuals in general can feel a bit devoid of detail and clarity, but that is perhaps the price of running the game on Switch – it does seem as if this version of the game is a bit over ambitious for Nintendo’s humbly powered console. That’s especially apparent when the game even slows down on the menu screen, which doesn’t instil a new player with confidence as they begin the game for the first time.

It does also feel like a bit of a missed opportunity that the second screen – whereby you can see your hand of cards on your phone – doesn’t actually enable any more functionality. Jackbox-style interactivity, with trading done via your phone screen, would have been a fantastic addition to the game. However, it must be said that this is a decent and thoughtful, if basic, addition to the game as is.

Despite all of these niggles, Catan – Console Edition does still play a good game of Catan. It helps that the game itself has always been really solid; though it’s incredibly challenging against AI that really seems to have it in for you, when you do finally score yourself a victory, it tastes even sweeter.

Two DLC packs are available for Catan – Console Edition at launch. The Helpers (which I’ve covered in its Xbox form here) and the Championship Maps, which includes 5 board layouts from previous CATAN Championships. The Super Deluxe Edition on the Switch contains both DLC packs as well as the base game.

Currently, cross play online and local multiplayer are definitely the most satisfying ways to play Catan – though the multiplayer lobbies seem a bit sparse at the moment – hopefully, the game is updated with more options to balance out the AI in different ways at some point in the future.

With a few more options – including the ability to speed up die rolls and even AI turns – the Catan – Console Edition would be unmissable. In its current form, it’s still a good game – but does fall a little short of being great.

Catan – Console Edition is out now in Standard and Deluxe editions on Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. The Deluxe version includes 5 previous CATAN World Championship board layouts from the real-life
competition – and the Super Deluxe edition includes both the Championship board and The Helpers DLC too.

Many thanks to Lick PR for providing me with a code for Catan – Console Edition for review purposes.