Leave a Review Catan Universe
An Interface Mess
First, I want to say that I have been playing for a while and do enjoy the game when it works. Once you figure it out, it’s pretty good.
The problem is the interface. There are some extremely weird design decisions in this app. For example, there is a chat, but it’s inside of the game settings. Another is that the countdown for when your round is up is really hard to see. The icons for game stats are just a complete nightmare. This is a bad interface for an awesome game.
Also, the game randomly decides you ‘aren’t connected’ and boots you even though the rest of the players see you and see your moves. When you start in Knights and Cities, you are about 50% likely to lose your city in the first round because the game rules don’t appear to be fully intact. Whereas in the physical game the tiles are in an order, this appears to completely randomize tile placement. There’s a lot to work on.Show lessexploringfox
Great game, if only it worked properly
As others have commented, online games are a disaster. Often delays in updating while playing online, and often crashed or will crash for one player. At the moment the server is completely down and inaccessible. Interface good and well laid out, although there are several interface bugs especially when trading resources. Hope they fix it promptly!Show lessAlexm5
Extremely disappointed
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...Show lessShadowmarsh
Good game... when it works
It is a great game, very good ui, very good mechanics but there are so many bugs that it is hard to finish a game. In this moment it is almost impossible to start more than one game a day. The server is always down. If you register to play single mode, it resets your points/achievements and... voila... it doesnt work either. Has potential to be a success, but it must work at first placeShow lesshaspotential_
Buggy lies
First: this game is bug filled , often I loose a game because it won’t let me build anything with my icons, instead dragging the screen, second, it will automatically accept or decline a trade randomly sometimes even tho you choose the opposite. Minor bug: sometimes icons are blank too..like the dice square just goes grey permanently.
Second; the lies..or lie: well, single player states it will be unlocked after finishing arrival on Catan, which I have done, or by unlocking from the store: it is still locked, despite having done the thing to unlock it. Also, we start with hardly any gold, and the game costs a few hundred to buy...how do you get gold? Oh simple..you pay for it...it’s the EA scandal all over again. Downloaded a game that you still have to buy half off. Also there are scrolls to temporarily unlock single player, which shows the developers know about the problem..and instead of fixing it, they try and divert around it, oh also! Scrolls cost gold too!! Funny that, it’s as tho the game simply wants your money.
Overall this could be an amazing game, it’s a fun concept, the developers just need to be ....a little less greedy with the wheat.
Tldr: game glitches a lot and half of it is pay to play.Show lessflaminghomosapien
Was really hoping for 5 human player support
Got the original app hoping to play it as a family, nope. We all have ticket to ride which supports up to 5 live players locally or online, replaces with an Ai in the event of disconnect and uses a karma system to curb game quitters etc.
I was excited to see this game released in an updated app, hoping for an experience like that of ticket to ride, or even exploding cats, this isn’t even close yet. With 3 local people playing in the online setting we can’t even get through 1 quarter of a 10 point basic first island game. It glitches or crashes like everyone comments on, not only for special moves like the robber, just at random, taking away the ability to end a turn, forcing all of us to leave the game because the end turn button disappears.
We are keeping the app and sincerely hoping they get some good programmers to put this in order because sooo many of us would be ecstatic and support it. 3 stars for the potential and hope to have it in the future although, sadly, it isn’t playable right now.Show lessKatily =^•^=
Horrible UI/UX
I’ve played the regular Catan app for years now and never really had any complaints about it. The online gameplay didn’t work well but I didn’t use it so it never bugged me.
Catan Universe is a dramatic departure from the look and feel of the original app (called Classic now, I believe). I’m sure it took a lot of time to make these nice 3D objects, but the gameplay has taken a serious step backwards with regards to usability. What once took 1 or 2 taps now takes 6 or 8, and information that I care about is not easily viewable. It feels like a designer went nuts and made things way too complicated.
The UI for trading is horrible.
It seems I can’t offer multiple of one card to somebody, and the buttons clog up the screen unnecessarily.
The overall game board screen is cluttered with icons and buttons and it doesn’t help me.
The menu for building has been removed in favour of hovering game pieces that appear when you can afford them. Dragging them to their new location on the board is an awkward experience, and it just doesn’t feel like I’m purchasing these things.
Buying development cards has been hidden away until you can afford it too. It appears as a transparent icon over the game board when you can purchase, adding to an already cluttered screen.
This is just to name a few bizarre UI/UX decisions, but I’m thankful I have the original Catan Classic app to play — Catan Universe is an app/game I would never decide to play.Show lesscjs_eng
How do you mess this up?
The game is buggy and crashes practically every game. To top it off, the game just isn’t that good. Here’s some things that should have obviously come up in testing:
- Don’t tell me my dice rolls or that the robber has come up before I’ve even seen my dice rolled on the screen. You might as well not show an animation.
- Be clearer about who’s getting what resources. Show a resource card going to a player just like in the real game. It’s important to know and it’s public knowledge for a reason. The little +1s and minor animation doesn’t cut it.
- Slow down the turn order. Especially when playing with the AI things happen and break neck speed so you have no chance of working out what’s happening. To reiterate in my previous point; it’s important.
- The less said about the trading screen the better
- The game thinks you care more about the aftermath scores and rating than you do about what happened to end the game. If I lose, let me see why. I don’t care about what has happened to my ELO.
- Switch to look at another app on your phone at your peril. This is a game on a phone, be a bit more liberal about your players doing something else when it’s not their turn.
What baffles me is that this game is not hot off the press, some Early Access game to be beta tested by the masses. It’s been around for months on PC.
Catan is a beloved classic and it feels like you don’t care about it when you don’t get it right.
Sort it out.Show lessChristonaBike
Better than you think
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 the app. 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 the app up to date and I would hate to see this one die. I was very impressed and will update as I experience the app further.Show lessGoaldefender19
