Game Reviews

Catan Stories - A gamebook set in the famous board game's universe

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| Catan Stories
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Catan Stories - A gamebook set in the famous board game's universe
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| Catan Stories

Catan Stories: The Legend of the Sea Robbers is an interesting change of pace for Asmodee. Rather than being another adaptation of a board game, it's almost a companion piece to Catan.

It's an interactive novel set in the Catan universe, that sees you making choices and deciding the direction that the story goes. And it does everything it sets out to do pretty darn well.

Bird-brained

The game starts off with you playing as a bird. Not just any bird though, this bird is a guardian of Catan.

After some preamble, and a stark vision of the future, you set off to find some heroes who can save Catan from a terrible fate. Obviously I'm not going to say what that fate is, because that's sort of the point of the game.

What I will say is that the game is incredibly well written. The dialogue is sharp, the choices you need to make are obviously different from one another, and the characters you meet are all well rounded.

If you've played any other gamebooks then you're going to know what to expect here. There are chunks of text to read through, choices to make, and a world to explore.

There are some interesting twists that the game has taken from other ends of the genre as well. Like Lifeline, sometimes you need to put the game down before the action kicks in again.

Then there are the 360 images that let you explore certain scenes. While a lot of games tell you you should play with headphones, this is definitely one you should take on its word. If you play with the sound muted, you're going to miss out on quite a lot.

Catan-line

If you're a fan of Catan, or you're a fan of gamebooks, then you're definitely going to enjoy everything Catan Stories has to offer. And it's nice to play around in a world that's a little different than what you usually find in interactive novels.

It's not the most original game out there, but it's really well written, and you're going to want to see it through to the end just to find out what happens.

Catan Stories - A gamebook set in the famous board game's universe

An interesting story and some gameplay twists make this gamebook one to check out
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.