Settlers of Catan

Catan is great! Played the 'Learn as you play' game this morning. Actually played it twice, because you got to 7 victory points and it wouldn't let you continue unless you unlocked it, and the unlocking mechanism wasn't in place! So I waited half an hour, and then played again, and could finally unlock the thing to finish the game. I was so pleased I won. Even though they're all set to easy AI. I managed to haggle another player into throwing a lot of grain cards at me, and then I used the Port Trading to swap them out for the rock card I needed to bag the city and 2 victory points to 10 to win! I'd read the rules a while back from the board game I have, but never actually played them. However, the Learn as you play option is excellent and gives you the gist of the game in a few minutes really, although getting a handle on the strategy needed is going to take a while I think. Primarily a capture and trading game, it seems ideal for XBLA. Its going to have the snug play that Uno has but with a bit more strategy meat on the bones.

The screen fonts are a bit small, they are readable if you are close-ish to the TV. This is common, because nearly all the card/board games etc have really small fonts.. (hearts, spades, outpost kazloki, Wik?) not to mention that zombie game. Having said that the game is all about icons and the main body of play doesn't require much in the way of text. So once you're through the tutorial game, you're about done with the squinting.

Looking forward to taking part in some Catanning..