# Tessera: Settle & Build — Offline hex board strategy

> Offline hex board strategy (iPhone/iPad app by Ashray Chowdhry.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tessera-settle-and-build/id6783182895 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Ashray Chowdhry](https://appshunter.io/developer/1888805012)
- Category: Games, Board, Strategy
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.0 · 20 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-06-30
- Data updated: 2026-08-27
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tessera-settle-and-build/id6783182895/reviews.md

## What is Tessera?

Tessera is a fast, friendly game of building a frontier one hexagon at a time. Gather resources, trade shrewdly, build roads and settlements, and race your friends to victory — all on a beautifully rendered, freshly shuffled hex board every game.

PLAY ANYWHERE — NO INTERNET
Tessera connects players phone-to-phone over local Wi-Fi, a personal hotspot, or direct nearby connections. No accounts, no servers, no signal required — perfect for road trips, flights, and the kitchen table.

EASY TO LEARN, RICH TO MASTER
• Roll the dice each turn and harvest the resources your settlements touch
• Trade with rivals — or the bank — to get exactly what you need
• Build roads, settlements, and cities; buy development cards
• Claim the Longest Road and Largest Army for bonus points
• Move the robber to slow down a runaway leader
• First to 10 points wins

NEW: CITIES & KNIGHTS MODE
A full expansion-style variant for veterans, selectable when you create any game:
• Cities produce commodities — cloth, coin, and paper
• Develop trade, politics, and science; claim metropolises for big points
• Recruit, activate, and promote knights to defend the island
• Barbarians raid the coast — the least-defended players lose a city
• 54 progress cards, city walls, the merchant, and a race to 13 points

SMART BOTS, ANY TIME
Play solo or fill empty seats with bots at three difficulty levels. If a friend drops out mid-game, a difficulty-matched bot takes over instantly — and hands the seat right back the moment they reconnect.

BUILT FOR REAL TABLES
• Intelligently balanced random boards — no runaway number clusters
• Adjustable turn, roll, robber, discard, and opening-placement timers
• Friendly-robber option to protect newer players
• End-of-game stats with a dice-roll histogram
• Smooth card animations and always-clear turn prompts

Tessera is a love letter to classic hex-and-resource tabletop strategy, reimagined for your pocket. Gather your friends and start building.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.1.2 — 2026-08-17

Rock-solid Nearby multiplayer: games no longer drop when a phone locks or the host briefly switches apps - everyone reconnects automatically and play continues where it left off.

### 1.1.1 — 2026-08-11

Cities & Knights, polished:
• Smarter rivals: each bot difficulty now plays the expansion its own way — easy is friendly, hard fights for every Defender point and metropolis
• The city calendar: the Command sheet now shows each improvement level with its cost and the red-die rolls that earn progress cards
• Watch the barbarian fleet sail toward Catan — and raid the island with flames when the defense fails
• Three-die roll display, hand-painted commodity icons, crenellated city walls, and clearer player tiles showing everyone's resources, commodities, and knights
• Rules fine-tuning to match the classic tabletop edition exactly

### 1.1.0 — 2026-08-09

NEW: Cities & Knights mode! Choose it when creating any game (or in Solo vs Bots):
• Commodities (cloth, coin, paper) and city improvements across trade, politics and science
• Knights to recruit, activate and promote — defend Catan-style barbarian raids or lose a city
• Progress cards, metropolises, city walls, the merchant, and a 13-point race

FIXED: Nearby (phone-to-phone) games now connect quickly and reliably, even with no WiFi network around — the connection engine was rebuilt from the ground up. Keep WiFi switched on (you don't need to join a network).

### 1.0.1 — 2026-07-10

Thanks for playing! This update includes minor polish and behind-the-scenes improvements.

### 1.0 — 2026-06-30

No release notes.

## More apps by Ashray Chowdhry

- [TroveAI: Save Anything & Ask](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/troveai-save-anything-and-ask/id6761312741)

All apps by Ashray Chowdhry: https://appshunter.io/developer/1888805012

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-27.*