Juliana Kaplan/Business Insider
The Catan crew assembles.
- To practice safe social distancing, my friends and I are staying far apart from each other.
- That means we won't be able to play Settlers of Catan, the popular board game, together anytime soon.
- So we, like many millennials, turned to the Internet for answers, and played an online version called Catan Universe.
- We used a Zoom chat to see each other while playing, and while our first game was a little rocky, it eventually turned into a delightful Catan game.
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In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, options for entertainment can seem a little limited. As an extrovert who loves playing games with friends, I've been on FaceTime every night with friends, but it's not the same as the semi-regular board game cafe excursions we enjoy (we miss you Hex & Company!).
In particular, we wanted to play our beloved Settlers of Catan - a board game where you strategically build roads and settlements to acquire resources, rob other players, and acquire victory points. The first settler to reach 10 victory points wins. I am very bad at Catan, but I love my friends and being competitive, so I was excited to coordinate an online game.
Enter: Settlers of Catan-tine. I had heard about some friends getting creative and texting photos of boards back and forth, but we decided to use app/video game Catan Universe. You can play Catan Universe on your browser, download it as an app on Google or Android, or play it via Steam, an online game platform.
It's free to play, but you can buy "Catan Gold" within it to unlock features like different theme sets and expansions; 100 pieces of Catan Gold are $.99.
We started with four players: me from my childhood home in Boston; my friend Adam, who is currently quarantined after being evacuated from Spain; my roommate Rose, who remains in New York; and my friend Asya, who is also self-isolating in New York.
All of us except for Rose played on browser; she played via Steam. One drawback of the game is that there's no video or audio option for players to communicate through (although there is a chatbox) so we set up a separate Zoom call and pinned it. Here's how it worked.
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