Play with friends, in ten seconds
Create a room, share a four-letter code, and everyone is at the table. Free, no signup, no download.
New Shores is built for the evening where four people are on a call and want a board game now. There is nothing to install and nobody has to register: the host presses Play now, the room gets a code like K7PX, and anyone who opens the link is in. The game runs in the browser on a laptop or a phone.
How it works
- One person opens newshores.io, types a display name and presses Play now. That makes them the host.
- The lobby shows a four-letter room code and a copy button. Send the link or the code to your friends.
- Each friend opens the link, types a name, and takes a seat. The host sees them arrive.
- The host picks a map and the seat count, adds bots for any empty seats, and presses Start game.
Why it suits a group
- No lobby queue. The room is yours. Nobody random joins, and you choose every rule in it.
- Bots fill the gaps. Three friends can still play a four-seat map by adding one bot — at easy, medium or hard.
- Trading in one place. You compose what you give and what you want; the bank offer lights up on its own when a port rate applies, and player offers float over the board for whoever can take them.
- A game survives a restart. Tables are snapshotted, so a server deploy or a crash does not lose the evening — the first player back restores it for everyone.
- Fifteen maps. From a 20-minute pocket board to a six-player seafaring crossing. See all of them →
Playing with people who have never played
The how-to-play page is a ten-minute read, and inside the game the turn pill says what to do next — place, roll, build, or wait. Legal spots glow; anything you cannot afford is simply not offered. A first-timer at the table is fine.
Common questions
- Do my friends need an account?
- No. Everyone types a display name and joins by the room code or link. Signing in with Google is optional and only keeps match history and a leaderboard place.
- Can we play on phones?
- Yes. The phone layout is its own design — the board fills the screen, your cards and actions sit in a strip at the bottom, and everything the board can answer is a tap on the board.
- What if someone drops out?
- Their seat is kept. If they come back under the same name they are reattached; if they are gone for three turns the seat plays itself until they return. A dropped connection never ends the game.
- Can we play the expansions together?
- Yes. The host picks any of the fifteen maps in the lobby, seafaring and Cities & Knights included, at no cost.
- Is there a time limit?
- Only if the host sets a turn timer. With one set, the clock runs on the server so it is the same on every screen, and it ends a turn that runs out.
New Shores is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to Catan GmbH, Catan Studio, Colonist or any other game publisher. Other games are named only to describe what kind of game this is and to compare it honestly.