Catan Map Generator

My group plays physical Catan almost every week, and setting up the board by hand gets old fast, shuffling tiles, laying number tokens, arguing about whether the last map was “fair.” The existing generator apps never quite matched how we like to play, so I built my own.

What it does

It generates a full Catan board in a tap: resource tiles, number tokens, and harbours, with optional constraints like “no same resources touching” and “no same numbers touching” for a more balanced game. You can also mark a scarce resource when you want a deliberately lopsided, trade-heavy round.

The part I’m proudest of is Surprise Mode, a variant my group actually invented. Every tile is placed face down, so you settle before you know what you’re settling on. It flips the whole game toward reading your opponents and trading, with a genuinely fun reveal once the first roads go down.

How you can use it

• Open it at your next game night and hit Generate Map, no setup, no login.
• Turn on the balance constraints if your table likes fair starts, or a scarce resource if you want chaos.
• Try Surprise Mode for a completely different, strategy-first way to play the same board and pieces you already own.

It’s a small PWA, so it works on a phone right at the table. Try it here.

A note on how it was built

I wrote the map-generation algorithm by hand, it’s the kind of constraint logic early AI assistants couldn’t get right for my taste. Once the engine worked (on a deliberately ugly UI), I handed the entire UI/UX redesign to AI with a full spec, since interface work is where those models are strongest. The visible result is the polished, cross-device version linked above, a nice example of delegating the right layer while keeping the core logic mine.