A Catan alternative
The game you love, with every rule yours to change
If you play Catan with friends and want to play it online, Islanders is the same kind of game — a hex board, five resources, dice, the robber, trading. It runs in your browser, it is free, and nobody needs an account.
The difference is that nothing is fixed. The house rules your table has argued about for years are settings here, and you can play them online.
Is this Catan?
Catan is a board game by Klaus Teuber, and CATAN is a trademark of Catan GmbH. Islanders is not made by them, not licensed by them, and not endorsed by them. It is a separate game that shares the genre Catan made popular: settling a hex island, trading resources, and racing to ten points.
If you want the official game online, look for the official app. If you want the kind of game you already know, but with rules you can bend, that is what this is for.
What will feel familiar
- A hex board
- Tiles that produce resources when their number is rolled.
- Five resources
- Brick, lumber, wool, grain and ore, spent on roads, settlements and cities.
- Dice and the robber
- Two dice, and a 7 that makes big hands discard and moves the robber.
- Trading
- With the bank, at ports, and with the other players at the table.
- Roads and awards
- The longest road and the biggest army are worth bonus points.
- Ten points to win
- The first to ten points wins — unless you change it.
What you can change
Every number is a setting
Points to win, what a road costs, the cards you may hold before a 7 hurts, how many dice and how many sides. Put 7 ore tiles and 2 grain on the board, or 10 grain in the bank instead of 19.
Write your own house rules
A rule builder with WHEN / IF / THEN cards: when a road is built, if it runs alongside an opponent's, the builder loses a point. 33 ready-made rules to start from.
Draw your own board
A map editor for any shape — a tall thin strip, two islands, a ring with a sea in the middle. Place every tile, number and port by hand.
Invent your own awards
Not just longest road and biggest army. An award for the unluckiest roller, so a bad start is not a lost game. 10 to choose from, or make one.
Loosen the placement rules
Let players build closer to opponents than to themselves, or run a second road along the same edge as someone else's.
Play your house rules online, finally
Most tables have a house rule or two — a friendlier robber, a catch-up rule for whoever started badly, a bank that runs dry. At a real table you can just agree on it. Online, you usually cannot.
Here you can. Start from one of the 33 ready-made rules — Robin Hood, Sheep Plague, Tax Season, Seventh Heaven — or write your own, and every player sees exactly which house rules are in play. See every house rule.
How to play with your friends
- 1
Type a name
No account, no download, no email.
- 2
Share the code
Your game gets a four-letter code. Two to six players join with it.
- 3
Set the rules, press start
Play the standard game, or change anything first.
What it costs
The standard game is free to play with friends for as long as you like. To start a game with rules changed, the host subscribes — $5.99 a month or $47.99 a year — and everyone at that table plays the custom rules. Your friends never pay. See pricing.
Try it with your group tonight
It takes about thirty seconds to start a game and send the code.