Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 10:38 am
Le Havre (The Harbor) – Board Game Review
Le Havre (The Harbor) is a Board/Strategy/Entertainment game from Codito Development Inc., first launched in 21st June 2012.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 432+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Le Havre (The Harbor) Stand Out
Will you be Le Havre's next Titan of Industry?
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"10/10: This game will undoubtedly go down as a perennial favourite." – iPadBoardGames.org
"4/4: [A] great digital translation of this famous game." – iOS Board Games
"[E]xcellent … as elegant an adaptation as I can imagine. If you like Agricola and/or Caylus, I strongly recommend Le Havre." – The Dish
"5/5: Very compelling and rewarding." – GameZebo
"4.5/5: if you're a fan of board games, you […] owe it to yourself to pick this one up." – TouchArcade
In this universal adaptation of the popular board game (winner of a 2009 International Gamers Award, among others), you can compete with up to 5 people — or against a computer's AI — to construct buildings and ships to support your shipping empire. An in-depth tutorial and hint system help you develop the strategy you will need to dominate the harbor.
Collect resources to build and use new buildings, while paying your workers and saving up for ships. Buildings are a good investment, but ships provide necessary income. Deciding where to put your resources early on may determine your fate later in the game, so choose wisely!
With no setup time required, no pieces to lose, and no arguments about the rules, the future of board games is here and Le Havre gives you exactly what you want — to play!
Features
Universal app
Supports 3 modes of play:
- Solo play; solitaire or against varying degrees of AI difficulty
- “Pass and play” with 2 to 5 local human players with or without AI
- Turn-based multiplayer using Game Center
Full tutorial and in-game hints
Eye catching design and interactive game pieces using art from the original board game
Create your own playlists from your iPod
Note: you must have iOS 5.0+ on your device in order to play online!
About
Uwe Rosenberg is an award-winning German game designer. He is well known for the development of innovative card game mechanisms. He also designed Agricola, a game that dethroned Puerto Rico as the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek.com. Le Havre is a successor to that game, and the second in Rosenberg's series of economic-themed building games.
Sage Board Games is an independent software developer, focusing on bringing award winning and classic board games to mobile devices. With a veritable “who’s who” of Euro games already licensed, Sage Board Games is poised to become the premier source of board games for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
Visit us: sageboardgames.com
Like us: facebook.com/sageboardgames
Follow us: twitter.com/sageboardgames
Please send us your feedback and requests, and rate the game once you’ve bought it.
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Le Havre (The Harbor) is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 24th January 2025
Recent improvements include:
Fixed Game Center in iOS 18.2
Download & Availability
Le Havre (The Harbor) is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Le Havre (The Harbor) on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Countless hours played, zero bug or crashes a month 6 generations of iPhones iPad devices.
Love this game. Lots of fun figuring out all the different ways to win.
Great implementation, only complaint is that the AI pretty much always follows the same strategy (build and buy buildings at all costs, loading up on loans), so its pretty easy to adapt and win almost every game.
This worked great until the recent iOS update. Now it crashes whenever opened.
The game does not fit the iPad Pro 11 inch with M2 processor. It will not go full screen, this should be noted in the description. Its way too difficult to read the fine print! It seems like a good game but we dislike games that wont go full screen and use such tiny fonts you cant read them.
Plays same as board game. Couple quirks – sawmill is supposed to save a lumber. When playing the computer its able to build regardless of the resource its short of. Its a fun game regardless.
Great implementation of a great game.
A flawless app of one of the best board games of a all time.
Love board games and this one really packs a strategic punch! Great replay value.
We had our Stone Age game we paid for deleted off our iPad. Thankfully this was still here. It took us three times playing it to fully develop a good strategy. The tutorial is great and overall just a great game. We are now going to complete the bundle and hope they are as good.
This is excellently done and we think we enjoy playing this more than the actual board game. Hints were v helpful in learning the game and we also love the fact that all the hundreds of resource pieces are electronic no cleanup or sorting. :).
Really enjoy this board game adaptation for the iPad. We gave it 4 out of 5 because Im able to set the options and close the modal on the iPad mini. The close button is missing. The only way to close the options modal is to tap the reset button which defeats the purpose of saving the changes. So stuck with help dialogs constantly popping up during the course of the game.
Im not sure we have any complaints. We think the app mirrors the board game… Nice to play when we dont want to pull out board game.
This app is worth the money, but mostly because Le Havre is such an amazing game, not because it is an excellent implementation. Mind you, this is a good implementation, just not a superb one a la the original agricola app. Its also a bit disappointing that despite this app having been on the market for such a long time, the following bugs persist. Thus, Ive finally decided to write a review in the hopes that the developer will take note. In dozens of offline and online games, Ive noticed the following bugs occur repeatedly: 1-Game center games FREQUENTLY fail to start. We generally need to send at least three game invitations before all players in multiplayer game are able to join. Most players, after joining, just see a Waiting for game start message on the game screen, even after all players have supposedly joined and the first player has taken his turn. This could very well be Game Centers fault, and not this apps, however. Game Center is, in general, a mockery of online gaming, and so it wouldnt surprise us if this issue is on their end. 2-in online games, the player who created the game always goes first. Not necessarily a big problem, but its annoying, bc player order has a major impact on strategy in Le Havre, and it would be nice to have a truly random player order 3-the chat function is completely useless. Most of the time the chat button is unresponsive, but every blue moon or two the chat screen will appear and you can send a message. Of course, the other person will have to wait til the next blue moon to see it. 4-the sound effects setting is broken. Despite having set the music and game effects volume to zero, every time we open the app and take our turn, the sound effects still play, which is extremely disruptive, and makes it impossible to enjoy this app in a place where you cant have LOUD noises playing, e.g. A library, uppity Internet cafe, etc. 5-occasionally when you set up a multiplayer full game, it will instead launch the basic game. (This hasnt happened as frequently as the other issues, only once so far) So, you need to start a whole new game, send new invitations, etc. Frustrating. 6-occasionally, when returning to the app after leaving it open in the background, we are unable to close out of the Last Moves screen, which automatically displays when you enter a game. This is a minor annoyance, as you then need to close the app completely and relaunch. 7-If you lose your internet connection in an online game, it will still let you take your turn and confirm. The game screen will update. However, if you leave and return to the game screen, youll find that nothing it has returned to the state it was before you took your turn, and there is no notification to tell you that youve lost your internet connection or anything. This has caused us to occasionally wait days for the other player to take his turn, when in fact our turn was never actually sent, despite having displayed on our device. To work around this, we often need to check our online games list after taking our turn just to be sure our turn actually went through. To give this review some balance, here are the things we love about this app: 1-The Le Grand Hameau is implemented beautifully as an IAP. 2-You can choose which special buildings will appear in the game. Awesome for trying out those buildings that you havent gotten to play with yet, or for drafting special buildings before play. 3-You can adjust the animation speed to make the game go extremely quickly. So much better than the crawling Brass app. We can play a full 3p game against AI in about 20 minutes, 30 tops if we dont get all AP. 4-The AI difficulty is challenging enough to be interesting, however, perhaps not challenging enough for experienced players (50+ games or so). But its good enough to make the app worth buying, even without the online play feature. 5-it has an excellent rules and building reference, and the tutorial is sufficient to learn the game (and conveniently not broken… Are you taking notes, Steam app?). 6-you can have multiple online and local games going on at once. This is something that Sage games does very well (e.g. In Tigris and Euphrates and their other apps) and more board game app developers should make this feature a priority. 7-for a game with this much information to parse, the UI is surprisingly clean and easy to read. No wasted space on game screen, you can tap on buildings and ships for more info. All in all, well done. All in all, Sage has done a good job making a clean implementation of Le Havre, albeit with some unfortunate, persistent bugs. We thank Sage games for their hard work on this app, and on the others like it, for bringing some of these oldies-but-goodies designs to the modern board game market. Please consider fixing the issues above so we can up the rating.
Its good when its working but glitches a lot. We have several games playing against the AI where it shows the opponents piece permanantly in our Marketplace building. They continue to do actions but their piece never leaves the marketplace so we cant use it the whole game. PLEASE FIX.
Le Havre is one of our favorite games. The app is useless because the AI is complete garbage. Please dont buy it. Its a total waste of money.
The UI for the screenshots is misleading. Does not form to the XS phone size.
Best $.99 game Ive ever played.
We originally played this on an iPad mini 2 before passing that device on to our kids. We recently bought an iPad Pro, and this game was one of the first apps we installed. Just a great implementation of Le Havre.
Terrific game. Its pretty intricate, but totally worth the time it takes to learn. The layout of the board is different from other worker placement games Ive played like Agricola and Tzolkin, and at first that threw us off, but it works well.
Challenging and addictive, even though Im still playing on the lower levels. Ive never played the actual board game, so we cant say how well it translates. But Im enjoying this version.
Amazing app, with great features. caution online features often dont work. Otherwise nice way to play by yourself.
Decent implementation of a great board game. The UI is far better in the iPad than phones and the online play is wonky lots of frustrating times getting games with friends to connect and start properly. All that said when it works its great. Newer devices beware the screen is shrunk down to to previous generation sizes (pre iPhone 10) for both phone and pad so if you have either explicit rhat compromise.
Best IOS board game. Outstanding.
The screen doesnt scale to the proper resolution so everything is shrunk. Sometimes touchscreen commands dont register so we have to force close the app. This is a prime example of why so many people are hesitant to buy mobile games.
We started playing the app first, then the actual board game and its seamless. Recommend you follow the same order. App for solo play and understanding the game strategy, then the real board game for groups. The app does have a online group play with random players, pick and pass, or through the iOS Game Center. All in all, best board game our wife and we love to play.
Classic Uwe Rosenberg thematic/euro worker placement game. AI offers up a good challenge. Cards and tiles are a bit hard to see on a phone (plays much better on a tablet) but still a great implementation of a classic game.
Excellent board game, excellent digital adaptation. If you are a big fan of Euro board games you should get this now.
Great strategy game and the app is good value for the price.
Much less bookkeeping than the cardboard version, which has notorious tiny and obnoxious components. Makes for a much streamlined and more satisfying version of the same game.
This is pretty much what Id like from every iOS version of a classic board game. Le Havre is an amazing game whether you play it on your phone on at a table with some friends.
Your implementation of Le Havre is almost perfect. Can you just add pinch zoom into the phone app. Also a chat system that works and appears better. A repeat nudge button to online players that alerts their opponent that it is their turn cause they might not have heard it the first time. Also, maybe new different notifications sounds like a seagull or ship horn. Otherwise it is a perfect game. Thanks.
Really like this game and we are impressed that he team can put so many info on a tiny phone screen, good job. However, our understanding of the rules is the you can purchase/sale building at any time during your term; however, when you are using the construction building (8) in the app to build 2 proposals, it seems you are not allowed to build one first, buy the 2nd underneath, and then build the 3rd card. The app doesnt show the function and indicates that you cant take those actions while entering a building. Please clarify and fix. Thanks.
Update: – Bug: MP still a little janky. We are able to connect to friends game but it does odd things, such as removing all AI despite starting a 5p game with 2 human players. – bug: Resetting round from help screen during sell building sub-action when repaying loan causes game crash/dead end loop: screen empties and prompts user to finish main action or choose a building to sell. – bug: odd issue with player names where if you change your name on keyboard overlay popup and hit return game boots you to iOS main screen and you must re-enter game, we think we worked around it by tapping outside keyboard area and somehow changed our default single player name this way. – AI is pretty good but understandably this game has so many choices that it cannot expect to match AlphaGo on its budget lol. It often makes poor choices, or status hints, particularly when a sacrifice move is more obvious, such as taking 2 iron to snag an ironship when shipping line is out next, or an important building even if it means getting hit with 1-2 loans. Instead its round 10 & telling you to buy a wood ship because you have wood, etc. Original: we are kind of a hobby-boardgame app pariah and routinely go on rants about some of the problems Ive noticed in the push for applifying brick and mortar catslogs. A lot of great boardgames have messy apps with dropped support and lost development, sitting around the online stores as abandonware. Some bg apps are crippled with stupid bugs, we even dropped this one a long time ago because we couldnt get multiplayer to work, but have gotten over it. Another personal grievance is the practice of porting iOs apps to Steam barely altered in any noticeable way (terra mystica, small world, ticket to ride, most bg adaptations on steam actually). Anyway, we think this is a highly enjoyable and addicting way to learn and play Le Havre, and definitely worth the cash even if its only played solo and the MP is glitched. A small but very helpful feature improvement would be a way to see on bonus cards what the buildings rolling or final bonuses are or at least on a log page in its own screen , as we cannot see if our score is being counted correctly or really review where we (or the game) made mistakes. We dont know if our storage card was counted and the total isnt visible anywhere at game end. If this exists already we dont know where to find it! Thanks for the fun.
Very fun strategy game – as challenging as Caylus and the lower levels of AI opponent skills makes it excellent and totally worth the price. That said, at the higher levels, youll find that your AI opponents will have FAR more buildings than would seem normal. At first we suspected it, and now, 5 games in a row, we can confirm: AI opponents will purchase buildings WITHOUT the proper resources. Examples of AI purchases, 5 player game… Game 1: Round one, TURN ONE: Shipping Line! 3 Brick and 1 Wood. After, AI still has 5 wood and 2 clay in inventory! Game 2: Round one, TURN ONE: Hardware Store! 3 Wood and 1 Clay. Where did Wood #3 come from? Game 3: Round five: AI has 72 points of buildings already!!!! Seriously? Game 4: Round one: AI has 2 turns. Purchases both Abattoir and Wharf. Thats 3 Wood + 3 Clay + 3 Iron. Fuzzy math?…lol Enjoy the game against lesser AI opponents – they dont cheat. Upper levels appear to have god-like powers to buy things with invisible resources. Btw…this may be an internal database problem…If you uninstall then re-install, the problem goes away for several games before rearing its ugly head once again. ;^}.
So glad it got a 64-bit update.
We play this game all the time now. So much depth. AI could be harder. We're beating the CPU 90% of the time now, but it's still fun and interesting.
We LOVE this game! We never played the board game before so it took us a bit to get the hang of the gameplay but now we can't stop! PLEASE UPDATE THE APP FOR IOS 11.
One of our favorite Rosenberg games and an implementation we really like.
Fantastic implementation of the board game. We agree with others that it could be even better with moremhints for beginners.
Great version of a good board game. We like the app better than the cardboard. The AI is good.
They took a great Euro boardgame and created a great port to iOS. The AI is a bit weak though, but still fun to puzzle out a victory.
Le Havre please very well in regards to the cardboard version of the game. Game makes setup a breeze. But the only issue is cramped space and not being able to see all the opponents cards in buildings. Otherwise the electronic version of Le Havre does very well at simulating the original version of the game The best part of what the program does well is it allows back out of turns when a mistake is made.
Made even better with the nice tutorial and animations.
This is a fun, challenging game and is implemented well. Great asynchronous online. Faithfully created from one of the greatest board games.
Excellent go-to board game app rendition, play it all the time! Would be awesome to see the expansion.
Worth the money! Especially if you are playing on a screen bigger than the 4s. Great game.
Yes, it is a very complex game. This results in numerous paths to winning and makes each game different (within limits). Takes time to master. If one seeks quick and easy, look elsewhere. Great game.
Please add more special buildings and the promos. Love this game.
Excellent representation of the boardgame.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.5
- Size: 189.73 MB
- iOS: 15.6 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Codito Development Inc.]()
Last updated: 24th January 2025 | Genre: Board, Strategy | Developer: Codito Development Inc.