Colonize a new land with this classic board game finally making it to the iPhone. How does it fare? Let’s find out!

CATAN: The First Island ($3.99)

Originally a board game, Catan provides a port of a classic board game in a fantastic, clean way that suits the iPhone’s controls very nicely For all you fans and anyone who loves a good strategy game, THIS IS FOR YOU!

Presentation

While I never actually played the board game itself, I did manage to look up some pictures of it on the inter-web. The developer took the look and feel of the entire hexagonal board and just put it on the device with water surrounding it.

Given this, I feel that they did an excellent job. Also, they added nice cut scenes to go with the storyline of the original game.

Controls

Like I said before I have never actually played the board game so I was not very familiar with the game play before I started to play the game. I was however able to learn pretty quickly.

The general concept is that you are trying to build roads and take over a majority of the island in order to win. To build roads you simply tap where you would like for the road to be built. The same goes for settlements. As the game progresses, you gain more options as to what you can do each turn. These new options are handled through a nice menu system.

Game Play

The aim of the game is, in a round about way, similar to Risk in the sense that you want to conquer the majority of the game board. The major difference though is that in this game, you achieve domination by possessing 10 victory points at the begging of one of your turns.

While there are other ways to obtain them, the main way to get these victory points is through possession of settlements, which you recieve one point for. After you use your first settlement and first two roads which you recieved at the begeging of the game, you have to use the resources that your settlements produce and those which you trade for in order to buy new roads and settlements.

Another nice inclusion in the app is the ability to play against other humans. While the multiplayer is only for playing on the same device, it is still a nice touch.

Conclusion

While I had never before played the game, Catan was surprisingly easy to pick up on and very enjoyable to play. Because the game saves where your at when you quit, it is an excellent app to play for a few seconds here or there, or for hours at a time.

If you are at all interested in strategy games or played the board game and enjoyed it I would recommend that you take a look.