Review of Unsettling Catan

J. Rey Lee, Unsettling Catan. University of Michigan Press. 2025. ISBN: 978-0-472-03998-2. $24.95.

Settlers of Catan, the classic boardgame by Klaus Teuber, has sold more than 40 million copies over various editions and expansions. Combining easy-to-learn rules, variable setup, and meaningful choices throughout the game, Catan was a breakthrough hit that put eurogames on the map outside of Europe.

As Professor J. Rey Lee notes in Unsettling Catan: Detached Design in Eurogames, Catan abstracts away elements of the game’s scenario relating to the territory and economic engines the players develop. Lee refers to this construction in both subtitle and text as detached design, which he sets in contrast to the overt conflict of wargames and many other boardgames.

Eurogame design philosophy centers on player choice in place of random success or failure of a selected action. In Catan and similar games the players are presented with options generated by card or tile draws, from which they chose an option. This input randomness happens near the start of the player’s turn, as opposed to output randomness where a player chooses an action and faces a die roll to determine success or failure near the end of their turn. Any gamer can tell you there’s nothing more nerve-wracking than rolling a twenty-sided die when you know you need an eighteen or higher to succeed. Moving the luck to the start of the turn and demanding a choice from options with known outcomes results in significant emotional detachment—the suspense is gone even though future turns and choices will ultimately decide the effect of your move.

The author argues that this detachment extends to the ideological framework of the game. Lee points out that Catan embodies colonialism, a claim readily supported by the word “settlers” in the game’s title and the lack of indigenous peoples explicitly benefitting from the players’ economic development. The game omits discussion of that framework, which isn’t surprising for a work created to entertain, but the themes are clear when exposed and have different meanings for western and non-western audiences.

Unsettling Catan is an excellent study that builds a substantive cultural critique from a touchstone in the boardgame world that extends to other eurogames and beyond. I benefitted from reading Professor Lee’s work and recommend Unsettling Catan without reservation.