Packing for a summer holiday and want a round of Catan without lugging the full box of hexes, roads and little wooden houses? Catan Zip! is built for exactly that. It is a properly portable take on the late Klaus Teuber's island classic, designed to be set up on a caravan table, a beach towel or a pub corner in minutes.
Run game nights? Backseat Gamer handles RSVPs, waitlists, date polling, and game voting so you can focus on playing.
Start organising for freeThe clever bit is how it handles the board. Instead of a modular tile puzzle, the island of Catan is printed on a paper pad in the centre of the table, and you draw your roads, settlements and cities straight onto the sheet as the island fills up. It is roll-and-write thinking applied to a game most of us know as a box of fiddly bits. The pad packs 50 different island layouts, so you are not staring at the same map every time.
Trading still drives everything, but resources are now physical tokens you swap rather than a deck of cards. The box keeps the footprint small with punchboard token sheets, tile holders, themed pens, storage boxes, a dice shaker and a reusable travel bag to bundle it all into. It plays 3 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, in around an hour, so it is the same Catan brain-burn rather than a watered-down version.
Looking for board gamers near you? Browse local communities and find your next game night.
Find events near youCatan Zip! landed in the US on 1 May 2026 and is heading to UK shelves through Asmodee UK at an RRP of £24.99, neatly timed for the summer holidays. If you have a group that gets twitchy without a game on the table, this is the one to slip into a rucksack.
Fancy a game on the go? Round up your group and find a session near you on Backseat Gamer.
Sources: CATAN | ICv2 | Asmodee UK
