The Alphaville Herald

Game Review: “Settlers of Second Life: Catan it colonize SL gaming?”

by Alphaville Herald on 17/03/05 at 2:03 am

Pirate Cotton reviews the new Second Life strategy board-game ‘Settlers of Second Life’. Pirate is an opinionated SL blogger (http://www.tinypirate.com) with an interest in gaming and Second Life culture. He brings his considerable experience as co-builder of Dark Life – Second Life’s first MMORPG (recently featured front-page at secondlife.com) – and creator of the ‘Game Slave’ Wiki at http://wiki.tinypirate.com. Will ‘Settlers’ enslave Pirate’s bitter heart or will he rape and pillage the crew and sink her to the bottom of the ocean?

Board-game lovers the world over will need no introduction to Settlers of Catan – aka Die Siedler Von Catan – an award-winning classic first published in Germany in 1995. Fortunately for us game fans, Settlers has erschienen in Second Life, thanks to the Jovian Synthesis design team created by Lex Neva and Sprite Quartermass.

I was unceremoniously invited to match wits with these diabolical fiends and try savage them at their own game.

And also have a nice chat over tea.

Settlers of Second Life sees three or four players battle to build the most houses across a hex-based island map. Each player starts with two houses and two roads and every time the dice is rolled they have a chance of getting one of four resources: land, lindens, scripts and textures. Using these resources they can buy more roads, houses, event cards and upgrades. Along the way the players can trade with each other, do deals, and pick on the leader!

I take my seat and soon the game begins. Playing; myself, Lex, Sprite and Crash Prefect. Everyone places their set-up pieces and I do a miserable job right from the start, unfortunately dooming myself for most of the match. Regardless, I soldier on, remembering I’m here to review and discuss the game – not crush my opponents (“I’ll save that for later,” I promise myself).

In essence, Settlers of Second Life is very close to the original game. The rules are the same but with a few changes to maintain a Second Life theme. For example, the ‘robber’ becomes the ‘land baron’, ‘soldiers’ become ‘dwell points’ and so on. Regardless, it’s a lot of fun and a beautifully-made game thanks to Sprite’s considerable artistic skills and Lex’s elaborate code-monkeying.

Settlers of Second Life: The intellectual man’s ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’? Residents get down and dirty in this hot and heavy hex scene. [No groaning!]

I eventually manage to build a couple of roads. At this point Sprite has already started pulling ahead with a new house and road and Lex isn’t far behind her. Crash, in his first game, muddles along in his corner. A quick miss-click and I’ve built my roads in the wrong place. Damn! Fortunately, I have a monopoly on the prims resource, so trading is going my way.

Lex and Sprite tell me that the idea first originated during a conversation about hex-based games. They decided that what Second Life needed was some decent boardgames and immediately set out to make a conversion of the original Settlers of Catan. The project took six weeks to complete and involved a lot of hard work but the positive response from the community already indicates that it was well-worth the effort.

I save up my resources for an event card. Crash has played one already, to build two extra roads, and I’m hoping for an equally good break. I get the ‘traffic’ event card, giving me bonus victory points if I collect three but, better yet, a chance to move the land baron and steal someone’s resource! Oh well, things aren’t all bad, I figure, and promptly plunder Lex who has now pulled into the lead.

The game launches this week. Residents can also expect to see a home-version for sale. Keep an eye on the events calendar as there will be Settlers events, with prizes, from Thursday to Sunday. I hope we’ll see many more, as this great game should be played by everyone!

Sprite Quartermass and Lex Neva will colonize your heart with this delightful drama-comedy! Settlers is the feel-good game of the year! 4.5 stars!

Review

Learning Curve: About 15 minutes – thanks to the excellent visual tutorial. New players will want to keep the resource guide image open at all times. Matching up land, scripts, lindens and textures to their four colors can be hard for us old-timers.

Gameplay: 8/10 – It’s the old Settlers you loved beautifully (and perfectly) converted to Second Life. The re-theming is very well done and feels quite appropriate – considering where the game is played! The original was a great game, and so is this.

Graphics and Sound: 8/10 – Even though this is a board game the board and pieces are simply beautiful and the sound effects occur often enough to be fun, but not so often to be annoying.

Keep factor: 9/10 – I would happily play this game a few times a week if I could.

Overall: 9/10 – You couldn’t ask for anything more from a conversion of Settlers, and you would be happy with a lot less. Lex and Sprite have done great work.