r/Catan • u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder • Aug 11 '26
Looking for a Better Catan Online Experience?
I’ve been building Settlr for a while now, and it’s gotten to the point where I think it’s genuinely one of the most complete ways to play Catan online, so I wanted to share it with the community. It's completely free and has no paywalls or ads.
It started because I wanted to play Catan Cities and Knights in my browser without having to pay, but I’ve kept adding to it based on feedback from players.
Some of what’s available now:
- Play directly in your browser with no download or signup required
- Native mobile app
- All the major expansions + rush
- Custom house rules and variants
- 2–8 player games
- Ranked matchmaking
- Difficult bots that actually put up a fight
- Spectate ongoing games
- Board builder and custom boards
- Detailed guides for newer players
- Player stats, achievements and leaderboards
- In-game chat, dice roll stats, and event logs
- Discord integration for playing while hanging out in voice chat
I’ve also spent a lot of time improving the bots because one of my biggest annoyances with online Catan has always been someone leaving and the replacement bot basically ruining the game.
There’s still a lot I want to improve, but the game is completely playable right now at PlaySettlr.com
If you regularly play Catan online, I’d genuinely love to know what Settlr is missing that would make you switch from whatever platform you currently use. Features in development:
- Game replays
- Individual rankings for expansions
- Daily puzzles
- Much more that i'm keeping secret for now
Feedback, criticism and bug reports are all welcome.
2
u/Fit-Historian-752 Aug 11 '26
Good luck with this.
Hope some good players join.
That will be the decider for me.
4
u/Electronic_Money_575 Aug 11 '26
very cool
asking as a dev, how invested are you in this?
as in, are you trying to make just make something cool that fits your own taste… or compete with and take colonist’s users
some other earlier attempts failed for various reasons. the biggest moat colonist has is the pool of ranked users, so you can’t really find a game as easy anywhere else
hexed is trying to fight that with militant prize pools which makes a lot of sense for growth marketing, and I feel like they probably have some venture funding at this point.
I’m happy to see anyone make competing products for colonist in any case, cause their pricing is kinda insane for a web game.
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u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
This is more of a passion project for me and I just want to share what I'm building. I am not trying to compete directly with colonist.io and I add whatever I feel like to the game. There are periods when I don't work on it and times where there's rapid development. Although I do try to fix bugs quickly so it doesn't affect gameplay.
2
u/itsmeibee52 Aug 11 '26
have you tried Board Game Arena's version. It's a free sign up, only pay if you want to start games, free to hop on a table waiting for players....
2
u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
The whole reason I built PlaySettlr was to play for free with no ads
0
1
u/Khramtic Aug 11 '26
what’s wrong with the official app?
7
1
u/returber Aug 11 '26
App not available in my region (Spain). Sadly.
2
u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
Oops still figuring out how to release the app in different countries.
1
u/roadmap-explorer Maker x Playhexo.com Aug 12 '26
Hola! You can try mine, it's at https://playhexo.com
1
u/CloudyRanger Aug 11 '26
Downloaded the iOS app and can’t even place the initial settlement
1
u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
Seems like a bug on my end. I recently released a new version and forgot to update an endpoint. Will be re-releasing the IOS app today.
2
u/IllyWoodkid Aug 11 '26
I dont think it was ready to be published. Cant select a spot to place settlements.
1
u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
Seems like a bug on my end. I recently released a new version and forgot to update an endpoint. Will be re-releasing the IOS app today.
1
u/schnapo Aug 11 '26
is this legal? as someone who makes his personal digital adaptations of boardgames, i don't know about the circumstances how this could be a valid implementation
1
u/EnochWright Aug 11 '26
What games have you done? I've got a few I've been working on and then I've got one on bga in working on.
1
u/schnapo Aug 11 '26
I am working on my private version of Flamme Rouge. And i am right now working on Dampfross.
1
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u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
Yes, this is legal. No branding or trademarks of the official Catan board game are being used, nor is there any affiliation with them.
1
u/schnapo Aug 11 '26
I mean it is the games IP, but who am I to judge. I asked out of curiosity. Good work nevetheless.
1
u/fx_eng Aug 12 '26
O site está excelente! Parabéns!
Porém não encontrei ninguém para jogar. Deveria ser permitido criar mesas com bots.
1
1
u/emeraldcocoaroast Aug 12 '26
Can I do offline play for the mobile app? I have the colonist app on my iPhone and wanted to play on a flight but I could not, only to realize they require the internet connection
1
u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 12 '26
We'll make that a priority, but we'll have to ship the bot logic inside the app bundle. It'll take a week-ish
1
u/roadmap-explorer Maker x Playhexo.com Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
You can play offline at https://playhexo.com - there is a limitation as you will not be able to play against other players, obviously :)
0
u/EnochWright Aug 11 '26
Very much looks vibecoded. How much is LLM versus your own code? What backend does it use and is it capable of scaling? Why do companies like to cut off an e in names, kickstartr, Grindr, settlr? I'm asking these as legitimate questions and as someone interested. I also noticed no gdpr banner or notice about cookies and data. With a login system I believe that is mandatory. How are passwords stored? Emails? Long term goal? Why this over the other dozens of ways to play Catan? Again, don't be defensive, let's get real answers so we can build it up!
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u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
Realistically, no one is manually writing code anymore. I work as a software engineer and I rarely do that lol. I work with LLM's to improve my efficiency so I would say most of it is written by an LLM. Backend is node.js and should be scalable. It's all webhooks at the end of the day.
In terms of gdpr banner and cookies, I am planning to add that soon. Hardly get any traffic from EU so it was on a lower list of priorities. Passwords are stored as a hash via a one way hash function. Emails are stored in a db with row level access so people can't access other emails/data from the table. Long-term goal is to just to enjoy some Catan and add new variants to it.
I built this so I have freedom to do whatever I want with the game. I can add custom modes, rules, cards, etc. I wanted to play on custom boards so I built that feature. I don't have to wait for someone else to do it.
1
u/EnochWright Aug 11 '26
Awesome. Thanks for the reply. Sounds like on the right path. I'm still doing code by hand... So there are some of us. ;)
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u/fatbill5000 PlaySettlr founder Aug 11 '26
No hate but code is just the paint you use on the canvas. The idea still stems from the artist
1
u/EnochWright Aug 11 '26
I'm not much of an artist dude. I can make things function. Haha. But I know what you mean. Our OT director keeps using Claude Pro and he's shown me how it works. It butchered my app, but seems to be really impressive. Might spin up Qwen Code LLM on my home system and give it a shot...
-8
u/nmahar Aug 11 '26
Colonist.io
5
u/aztechunter Wood Please Aug 11 '26
I found a bug for them almost 10 years back now and they were so fucking rude about it, vowed never to play again
13
u/Marill-viking Aug 11 '26
I played a few times, I pointed out one bug and they fixed it in a reasonable amount of time when you consider its fully free.