The Kids of Catan is Klaus Teuber's simplified Catan game, for kids in the 4+ age range.
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 15-30 minutes
Difficulty: 1 (of 10)
Age: 4+
This game was simultaneously printed in Germany by Kosmos as die Kinder von Catan.
The Components
The Kids of Catan comes with high quality, evocative components, just perfect for its age group:
- 1 Game Board & Turntable
- 1 Die
- 5 Pawns
- 15 Resource Pieces
- 13 Buildings
- 1 Rulebook
Game Board & Turntable The game board actually sits on the box tray, right inside the box--which is a very clever design. The board has along its edges 15 different spaces, into which the 15 resource pieces are placed, as well as 1 space for the bully. In the middle of the board is a turn table, which is connected into the tray by a wooden "bolt". The turn table turns amazingly smoothly. The edges of the turn table contain the 4 players' carts, each of which has a space for the player pawn, then three spaces for carted resources. Finally, in the middle of the turntable, lies the town of Catan, with 13 spaces for the 12 red buildings plus the city hall.
Overall, the design of this is very nice, with little slots for all the pieces to go into, and lots of color coding to identify where resources are placed and which cart belongs to which player. It's easy to use.
Die: An oversized wooden die, marked 1 to 3, twice.
Pawns: There are 4 player pawns, colored blue, white, yellow, and red, as well as one bully pawn, colored black (a color which my wife considers unfortunate due to racial overturns). These are all very large and simply shaped. The black pawn, unfortunately is pretty easy to knock over due to its shape.
Resource Pieces: There are 5 pieces each of the 3 resources: green woods, yellow grain, and red bricks. Like the rest of the pieces, they're large and attractive. However, I didn't find these very iconic of what they represent. (In our playtest game they became brocolli, pineapples, and ziggurats.)
Buildings: There are a total of thirteen buildings, all beautifully rendered as wood structures. 12 of them are player buildings, marked with red roofs. These include 6 houses, a church, a gate, a baker, a butcher, a school, and a tower. There's also a special green-roofed building, which is the city hall.
Most of these buildings are made out of two pieces of wood joined together, one for the body of the building and one for the colored roof, but in a couple of cases they are actually three blocks of wod. Every building is also printed with windows and doors. They look very evocative.
Rulebook: A full-color, glossy 8 page rulebook. Half of this is actually a story, while the other half explains the rules with lots of pictures. Given the age group, it'll presumably need to be read by a parent or guardian.
All together, the pieces in The Kids of Catan are entirely beautiful. They're large enough to be easily accessible to young hands and evocative enough that they'll generate play beyond just the game. Style is thus a full "5" out of "5".
The Game Play
The object of The Kids of Catan is to collect resources, build buildings, and eventually build the town hall.
Each player starts off the game with a cart with three empty spaces in it and a number of the buildings in town to call his own (either 3, 4, or 6 depending on the number of players in the game), which he sets to the side in preparation for building.
The carts are on a turn table, and each cart has an arrow pointing outward. Along the outside of that turn table are 16 spaces, 15 of which contain resources, somewhat arbitrarily organized based on the color of the spaces, and 1 of which contains a bully. The cart arrows will point to these 16 spaces during play.
The players take turns rolling the dice. After a number is rolled, the turn table is advanced by that many spaces, counting the colored spaces on the edge of the turn table.
Every player is affected by every turn of the turn table. If their arrow ends pointing toward a resource, and they don't already have that resource in their cart, they take it. If their arrow ends pointing toward a empty slot or a resource they already have, they get nothing. If, on the other hand, the arrow ends pointing toward the bully, they lose the resource furthest back in their cart (and get to place it in any appropriately colored empty slot on the board).
When a player collects one of each resource his cart, he gets to build a building. He takes one building from his personal supply and places it in an appropriate slot in the middle of the board. He then returns his three resources to appropriately colored spaces around the edge of the board.
After a player has built all of his supply of buildings, he can now start work on the city hall. He once more collects the three resources, and when he has then, takes the special city hall space and places it in the middle of the board.
He wins.
Relationships to Other Games
The Kids of Catan is genuinely a kid's version of Klaus Teuber's popular The Settlers of Catan. It centers around the same idea of using resources to build structures, but pitches it at a much younger age group.
The Game Design
The Kids of Catan teaches and/or requires the following skills:
- Understanding of Turns & Ordering: Gameplay is segmented into turns, where a player roles a die, the turn table moves, resources are collected, and buildings are constructed.
- Randomization: A die is rolled to move the turn table variable amounts.
- Understanding of Simple Trade: Players exchange three resources for one building.
- Simple Pattern Matching: Differently shaped buildings fit in different places on the board. There is also some simple pattern matching implicit in collecting only one of each resource and turning in a complete set of three.
- Simple Strategy: Players can learn strategy through putting used resouces in empty spaces nearer themselves than their opponents.
Overall, The Kids of Catan works quite well. It's quick and the construction of buildings is a fun task. Every player gets to participate every turn, so there's no downtime to upset players with short attention spans. Finally, the randomization is sufficient to allow upsets, so that players don't feel totally out of the game, while on the other hand not so high as to cause frustration (within a few die rolls you should get some resource).
In addition, The Kids of Catan does quite well as a lead-in to other games in The Settlers of Catan series, by demonstrating the basic ideas of resource collection and use. Because this is for such a young age group, there's probably a bit of a gap between this and Settlers, but still it's a very effective choice for parents who want to eventually graduate their kids on to other Teuber games.
Overall, this game seems age-appropriate, evocative, and a great gaming stepping stone. I thus give it an above average "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
If you're looking for a fun game for your 4+ year olds, and are interested in starting them on a lifetime of gaming, this is a much better start than the Candylands and Shoots & Ladders of the world. It actually has a tiny bit of strategic complexity, and it's quite beautiful.
Review Summary