Games Similar to Catan: 10 Alternative Playing Activities

Games similar to Catan offer a fulfilling mix of competition or cooperation and share features like resource management, building, and trading. This article lists ten board games comparable to Catan and gives a comparable experience. 

10 Board Games Similar to Catan

10 Board Games Similar to Catan are Ticket To Ride, Viticulture, Terraforming Mars, Monopoly, Istanbul, Dice Legacy, Chinatown, Scythe, Splendor, Spirit Island, etc.

Ticket To Ride

Alan R. Moon is the designer of the Eurogame Ticket To Ride. In the cross-country train game Ticket to Ride, users must gather and play identical train cards on the railroad tracks that link cities across North America.

They receive extra points for longer routes. Bonus points are awarded to players who construct the longest continual railway line and those who can use their Destination Tickets to link two far-off cities.

According to Alan R. Moon, the author of Ticket to Ride, “the rules are easy to understand to write on a ticket for a train – each turn you choose to draw more playing cards, claim a path or get more Destination Tickets.” “The suspense comes from being compelled to balance hunger – introducing additional cards to your hand, with fear – losing an essential path to a competitor.”

Learning Ticket To Ride takes less than fifteen minutes. Players must first gather cards featuring various kinds of train cars to claim railroad routes across North America.

Viticulture

Stonemaier Games released the worker positioning board game Viticulture in 2013. In this game, the players run a vineyard in Tuscany. Every game round symbolizes a year of operations split up into four seasons. A spring turn starts each round when the player selects a spot on the awakening track that offers different advantages. 

Summer follows when players place employees on the shared board’s summer action spaces. During this time, players can plant vines, sell grapes, earn money through tours, and play a summer tourist card, which allows for the planting of grapes, the ageing of vines, and the granting of extra victory points. 

The summer visitor card assists in improving the site, while the winter visitor card allows the player to plant their vineyard. Players draw these cards during their fall round. Once players ripen their grape and wine tokens, gather their workers, and get any earned income, the round is over. 

The person with the most significant number of points at the end of the season wins the game as one player reaches twenty points.  

Terraforming Mars

Jacob Fryxelius created the board game Terraforming Mars for 1-5 players. In the game, players assume the role of companies collaborating to enhance the planet’s temperature, introduce oxygen into the atmosphere, envelop the planet’s surface in water, and cultivate flora and fauna. 

Planning a strategy, engine development, and resource management are all included in the game. Players work to contribute the most to terraforming human settlements and accumulate the most significant number of win points. 

These objectives are met by gathering resources and income, enabling them to play cards that symbolize various projects, such as constructing facilities, generating more resources or income, or directly assisting in terraforming the planet. 

In this game, several generations appear in one play round. Players start a generation by selecting cards and then taking turns playing them out. When all three terraforming requirements are satisfied, the game finishes after any given generation.

Monopoly

Monopoly is an economics-themed board game for two players. At the beginning of the game, each player receives a set amount of money to play with, and they move across the board based on how a pair of dice is thrown. If a player arrives on another player’s property, they must pay rent to that person. However, any player who lands in an unowned area may purchase it.

Players throw two dice to move about the playing board and buy, trade, or develop properties, including houses and hotels. In an attempt to force competitors into bankruptcy, players gather rent from them. 

There are ways to win or lose money with text squares, Community Chest cards, and Chance cards. Players can wind up in jail and remain there until they have fulfilled one of three requirements, but they also get paid every time they pass Go. 

Hundreds of publications, numerous spin-offs, house rules, and related media are all available. Due to its local licenses in over 103 countries and its multilingual printing in over 37 languages, Monopoly has grown into an essential part of global popular culture.

Istanbul

Rudiger Dorn created Istanbul, a racing game in the tradition of pick-up and delivery. You are a seller in one of Istanbul’s busy market areas. You will employ your staff to trade for you as you race to obtain Rubies.

The players navigate an Istanbul bazaar with a seller and his four helpers. You can assign assistants to specific duties at different locations, and you must meet them when they are done.

Thus, it is necessary to determine how to assign your assistants carefully. The merchant purchases and sells things to be the first to obtain five rubies, but more significantly, they drive a wheelbarrow that grows in size and gain unique skills throughout the game.

You could be the first trader to gather a particular quantity of rubies. Run through the bazaar, gather, and exchange products. Assume command over your helpers. Boost the capacity of your wheelbarrow.  Learn specialized skills to benefit yourself over competitors. Purchase rubies and exchange products for them.

Dice Legacy

DESTINYbit is a developer of video games, including Dice Legacy. Players take charge of a community built on recently found land in the game. Dice symbolize the villagers, each of whom is assigned a social group. The villager can only be assigned tasks based on their caste, which is decided by rolling the dice. 

If villagers get injuries from repeated die rolls, players might reroll the dice to accomplish a particular task. Players may produce additional villagers by reproducing the dice, or specific structures gained through the technology ladder may treat these villagers. 

Buildings can increase the benefits dice provide, and combining dice can make villagers more powerful; however, doing so will decrease their happiness. In the winter, players’ ability to gather resources is limited since they have to keep the villages warm. 

The villagers eventually come across an enemy village that attacks them. To stop the operations, players must defeat it, and the gameplay increasingly turns towards real-time strategies. More situations and more characters become available as you win the game.

Chinatown

The 1960s are shown in New York within Chinatown’s buildings, plans, and negotiation games. The game aims to construct businesses inside the board’s 85 squares by compromising with other players to expand these firms to their full potential. 

Each player is issued six real estate cards, and they must keep three cards to begin their business in round one. A business’s potential value increases with a more significant number on the business token, which is displayed to the player after completing an activity. The business cards have numbers 3, 4, 5, or 6. 

You can establish your business location by sticking identical business tokens to nearby real estate tiles. You can use the factory tickets you already have to benefit you and add additional tokens later, even if you don’t have all six. This way, you can keep using them until your firm is finished. 

However, exercise caution. Once you have disclosed your plans for the game, the other players will be more motivated than ever to obtain the squares and tokens you require in subsequent rounds.

Scythe 

Jamey Stegmaier created the board game Scythe, which can be played by one to five players. Gamers take on the roles of several groups trying to make their way in the shifting landscape. In each turn, they choose one of the four primary acts to construct an economic engine. 

Players are not allowed to take the same action twice in a row; all actions are posted at the top of each player board. They can also take a matching second action indicated on their respective player boards. Actions allow players to enhance their military for battle, launch mechs, enroll soldiers for ongoing benefits, trade for or create products, move units on the map, and develop structures. 

Additionally, the actions can be improved to make them stronger or less expensive. Six stars are awarded to each player; they are displayed on the board upon reaching particular objectives, such as using all four of their mechs. 

Once a player places six stars, the game is over instantly. Next, depending on their level of in-game popularity, players add up the money they have earned from completed missions, captured land, and collected resources. The player with the most cash at the end of the game wins.

Splendor 

Marc Andre created the multi-player card-based board game Splender, while Pascal Quidault provided the illustrations. In this competitive game of resource handling and engine building, two or four players fight to get the most prestige points. 

This game has forty gem tokens: seven emeralds, seven rubies, seven sapphires, seven diamonds, five gold, and seven onyx tokens. Poker chips symbolize these. Ten noble titles and ninety development cards are also included.

Every development card contains a gem bonus that can be used for additional development card purchases and is categorized into one of three levels. 

Reserve one development card and take one gold gem token. Select two identically colored gem tokens from the collection. Select a maximum of three gem tokens from the pool, each of a different coloration. Spend the necessary gem tokens to acquire a development card, or use the gem bonus from a previously bought card by the player. Used gems are added back to the collection. 

The players carry on with this particular round until every player has taken an equal number of turns or until one player earns 15 prestige points. The game is over when this happens.

Spirit Island

Developed by R. Eric Reuss and released by Greater Than Games in 2017, Spirit Island is a cooperative strategic board game with a European style. In this game, players assume the role of island Spirits. During the game, the Invaders establish cities and towns on the island and must be driven off. 

Up to six players can play the Jagged Earth development, which supports the basic game, which can be played by four to six players. As they progress through the game, players unlock new spirit powers and additional power cards, becoming more powerful and better equipped to repel the Invaders. 

The set of cards that controls the Invaders’ actions determines the locations of the playing field that they must Explore, Build, and Ravage. A Ruins token is added to any tile that the players cannot defend against the Ravage action. 

Players must eliminate the Invaders and their colonies using their Spirit’s abilities to win the game. They must also create Fear to reduce the winning conditions.

About Catan Game 

Klaus Teuber created the multiplayer board game Catan. Franckh-Kosmos Verlag released it initially in Germany in 1995. Players try to expand and improve their lands while engaging in trade and resource acquisition. When a colony grows, players get victory points. 

The first player to accumulate a certain amount of points—usually 10—wins. Additionally, 999 Games, Filosofia, GP, Inc., Devir, Kάισσα (Káissa), and Catan Studio publish the game and all of its expansions.

Catan Gameplay

In the game, players act as settlers, building communities on the invented island of Catan. As they populate the island, players construct towns, cities, and pathways that connect them. At the start of every game, a random arrangement of hexagonal tiles (hexes) representing various land kinds makes up the playing surface, representing the island. 

The resources that the asset cards represent include wool, grain, timber, brick, and ore, which are spent by the players during construction.  The areas that yield materials are determined by rolling two six-sided dice during each player’s turn. 

One card of the matching resource is distributed to players with a settlement next to a hex containing the number that was just rolled; cities generate two cards of the same resource. Another item in the game is a robber token, which was initially placed in the desert. 

If a player rolls a 7, the robber needs to be moved to a different hex, after which it will stop producing resources until it is moved again. The game’s objective is to accumulate ten victory points. Players receive one point for every city they control and two for each colony they possess.

Conclusion

It would help if you weren’t afraid to explore and pick a game that suits your tastes or playing style because games similar to Catan give a unique experience. This platform is the most excellent option if you’re looking for delightful board games because it offers you ten games similar to Catan that may suit your hobbies and meet your needs.