Catan
Authority: Catan Studio Official Game Manual
Catan is played to 10 Victory Points. The base game includes 19 hex tiles, 95 resource cards, 25 development cards, 16 cities, 20 settlements, and 60 roads.
| Parameter / Specification | Standard Value | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Victory Point Goal | 10 | VP |
| Island Hex Tile Count | 19 | tiles |
| Total Resource Cards | 95 | cards |
History & Origin
Catan was created by Klaus Teuber, a German dental technician who designed games as a hobby through the 1980s. His first three releases -- Barbarossa (1988), Adel Verplichtet (1990), and Drunter und Drüber (1991) -- each won Germany's Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award. Teuber began developing what became Catan in 1991, drawing on his fascination with Viking sagas and the Age of Discovery; the fictional island's layout of forest, hills, and plains was inspired by the terrain of Norway and Iceland.
The game was first published in Germany in 1995 as Die Siedler von Catan, earning Teuber his fourth Spiel des Jahres win. It has since sold more than 15 million copies and been translated from its original German into roughly 30 languages, spawning a wide family of expansions and standalone editions.
Legacy
Catan's trading-focused, low-conflict design became one of the most recognized examples of the modern "Eurogame" style to reach English-speaking audiences, helping introduce American players to a genre of board games built around resource management and negotiation rather than direct combat or elimination.
Klaus Teuber died in April 2023 at age 70. By then Catan had grown from a single boxed game into a broad franchise spanning expansions, spin-off titles, and digital adaptations, with the Teuber family continuing to oversee its development.