How it all started
Once upon a time, deep in the forests of Sweden, I sketched some rough game graphics and sent them to my brother, suggesting he should code the game. His response: "Nah, that's a huge project. Honestly, you're just scared — just do it yourself."
I didn't code that much at the time. But I opened the browser, figured out how to put hexagons next to each other, and kept going. The next four months I worked on it every single day. At the end of it, I had a one file/one page playable single player Cities & Knights game vs bots.
There was another reason too. I'd been playing C&K against bots on some very very big app, and the bots were awful — not hard-bad, but annoying-bad. They played weird, robbed the wrong player, and felt like they didn't understand the game. I just wanted to play a few decent games against bots. Apparently I had to build a platform myself to do it.
Some random feedback 😍
1 / 9Cities & Knights first — always
The plan was always to build C&K first. It's the version I love, the version I still play regularly.
Base Catan was added later, mostly by stripping out the C&K elements. Which means everything underneath — all the progress cards, the UI, the barbarian track — was designed around C&K first. When you play here, you're on a platform built for it, not adapted for it.
What you'll find here
Built by a player, for players. The features are designed with the core game in mind.
Bots with game sense
Play C&K solo any time. The bots might break your road with a knight, plow you, bounce the robber on you, roll a 7 with alchemist if they're far behind and you're holding a lot of nice cards. — they usually place the robber on a good tile and steal from the player with most potential to win.
Combined build & trade
One menu for building and trading. Bank trades are smooth and fast.
Open map builder
Design your own board — tiles, numbers, harbours — and play on it solo or in multiplayer.
Tournaments
Invite through link, start games with correct config from the tournament page. Automatic results. Also: There is possibility to see map before starting the game.
Barbarians in real time
Who loses a city, who gets a progress card — all resolved and shown as it happens.
Smart leaderboard
Win rates & rankings across base and C&K — updated automatically. No manual submissions.
Combined build & trade menu
Open map builder
I enjoy building random things, gotland.gg is one of them
The platform is built by me. I enjoy building things in general — not just software. Once I built a car tent for camping. Another time I built a home gym for climbing.
The logic behind the gym was this: I had the knowledge to plan and build it, I had the time, and I had the money for the project. Also: a house with a home gym is more fun than a house without one. So I built it. Why not?
Camping
Climbing
A hidden gem 💎
The vision for gotland.gg is to be a hidden gem — the kind of thing that isn't necessarily the easiest to find, but once you do, and once you sit down for a few games, hopefully you get that feeling. The "oh, I actually really like this". The kind where you want to come back with your friends.
"I built this because I love the game and wanted more people to find it, learn it, and enjoy it. Everything else followed from that."
