Kolonists: Like 'Settlers of Catan' for iPhone
Kolonists looks and plays a lot like the boardgame classic 'Settlers of Catan.'
Good news for fans of the board game Settlers of Catan: There's an app for that. Specifically, the new iPhone game Kolonists offers decidedly Settlers-like gameplay.
In other words, it's a strategy game of empire-building for 3 to 4 players. (If you've never heard of Settlers, check out the Wired story, Monopoly Killer: Perfect German board game redefines genre.)
Like Settlers, Kolonists unfolds on an island, which here fills in for Roman Empire-era Rome. Your goal is to rise to power by developing and capturing territories, which involves resource-gathering, trading, bribery, and some inevitable plundering.
Unlike Settlers, Kolonists plays without dice. That reduces the "chance" aspects of the gameplay while increasing the strategic elements--and makes the game go quite a bit faster.
Settlers die-hards may object to that change, but it's a safe bet that if you like the board game, you'll like Kolonists. And if you're new to both, you'll find the latter thoroughly engaging. After the initial learning curve, it's easy to play and endlessly entertaining. Love the grandiose soundtrack, too.
Unfortunately, version 1.0 has a few significant issues, most notably the lack of a save-game feature: If you exit for any reason, you can't resume.
Making matters worse, Kolonists is fairly crash-prone. Imagine the aggravation of investing, say, 20 minutes in a game when poof, it unceremoniously quits on you--and you can't even return to where you left off.
According to the developer, Kolonists 1.1 is already under review in the App Store, bringing with it an auto-save feature, crash fixes, faster AI, and various new gameplay options.
It can't get here soon enough. With those tweaks and fixes, Kolonists will undoubtedly rank as one of the best strategy games ever to appear on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Grab it now, while it's still at the "introductory" price of $1.99.
Rick Broida, a technology writer for nearly 20 years, is the author of more than a dozen books. In addition to writing CNET's The Cheapskate blog, he oversees BNET's Business Hacks. Rick is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive. Disclosure. Deals found on The Cheapskate are subject to availability, expiration, and other terms determined by sellers. Follow Rick on Twitter at cheapskateblog. 
Also, Klaus Teuber's probably not hurting financially, if you know what I mean. ;)
in depth instructions on how to play catan. enjoy.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=320505352&mt=8
It has it's issues too, including a pretty bad user interface for town/city and road placement. It also lacks a save game feature, but it may save if you press the home button during play. I haven't tried that.
Overall, there really isn't a "definitive" settlers game for the iPhone yet. I would say that Settledown is close, but it needs some major work in the UI department in order for it to be a decent Settlers game.
I think it's funny that generally people take the side of these unlicensed game developers on these issues. Like, just because they are designing games in their basement and broke they have a right to rip stuff off. Leading others to believe that a man who makes table top board games has no claim to his creation in the electronic realm solely because he's not an ELECTRONIC game designer. That's a heaping pile of baloney. Those developers have no right to knock games like Catan off. There's a process, it's called licensing.
Unfortunately, especially with games, you are right, generally there isn't much that can be done unless it is called by name. However, in this case this guy doesn't stand a chance. it's too blatant...too obvious.
What if I just started posting all over the net, writing articles, as Rick Broida? You wouldn't like me muddling up your brand name. Foolish people like these should just come up with their own original games instead of knocking of a guy who got lucky with something that came from years of trial, error, and hard work.
Its not up to you, Rick or myself to do anything about the "rip-off" of Settlers, other than to possibly let the creaters of Settlers know that there are some iPhone apps that are copies of Settlers.
- by xenoclone August 11, 2009 2:06 PM PDT
- A lot of Catan fans like Carcassonne. There's an app for that called Starcassonne. :)
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