Niantic, the creator of Pokemon GO, Ingress, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, is now creating Catan: World Explorers where players will be allowed trade, build, and settle with others in this new online multiplayer experience.
In a blog post, Niantic wrote, “Powered by the Niantic Real World Platform in partnership with the CATAN team, this new game transforms neighborhoods, towns and cities across the globe into a giant game of CATAN, a classic board game loved by tens of millions of people around the world.”
The board game revolves around five main resources that requires the player to expand their empire: wool, ore, lumber, grain, and brick. In order to build a structure the player will need a certain amount of these resources. However, some are easy to farm in one’s immediate surroundings while others will require trading with your fellow players. Exchanging these resources is at the heart of the experience and is required to build your tiny settlement into a bustling city.
Ports are a major aspect of the board game, as they allow players to exchange one type of resource for another, more valuable one. Depending on where the player is located in the world, some resources will be more abundant than others. This is where trading with others will come in handy.
Niantic hasn’t specified if ports will be part of the mobile game, however prospective players will probably have some way to trade in their unwanted resources.
Invite friends or play along with strangers to earn Victory Points that will improve one’s Faction’s Global Score along with a local score. These scores determine who will be rewarded with prizes that will progress into the next season.
Fans of the board game have already begun to criticize the game by stating it will be a re-skin of Niantic’s other titles such as Pokemon: GO and Ingress. The common thread among all of Niantic’s games is that they require the player to explore their surroundings in order to interact with virtual landmarks. It works well for Pokémon GO, but re-skinning that framework for yet another game might finally be striking a chord with mobile gamers.
There is no set release date for Catan: World Explorers, but people are encouraged to pre-register now to play at launch.
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