Widelands is a free, open source real-time strategy and economy-building game for Linux, Windows and macOS. A spiritual successor to the classic The Settlers II, it keeps the rewarding loop of founding a settlement and growing it into a thriving economy — but adds far more variety and depth, with more tribes, longer production chains and a much bigger world to explore.

You start with little more than a headquarters (or a port, on island maps) and expand outward: felling timber, mining ore, farming, refining goods and hauling them along roads and flags with carriers. Scouts reveal the map, geologists survey resources, and soldiers claim and defend territory — so a strong economy and a strong military have to grow together.

Key Features

• Multiple distinct tribes — each with their own buildings, units and economy.
• Deep economic simulation — multi-step production chains, road-and-flag transport networks and worker logistics that reward careful planning.
• Singleplayer campaigns — story-driven campaigns and standalone scenarios with scripted objectives.
• Multiplayer — play cooperatively or competitively over the internet or on a LAN, with in-game chat and dedicated server support.
• Built-in map editor — create and share your own maps, scenarios and campaigns.
• Add-ons — install community add-ons that bring extra maps, tribes and gameplay tweaks.
• Data-driven and moddable — tribes, buildings and units are defined in plain-text data files, so the game is easy to extend.
• Heavily localised — interface and campaigns translated into dozens of languages.

Why Use Widelands?

It is a mature, actively developed project — the stable 1.3.1 release landed in 2026 — that runs on modest hardware and ships under the GPL, with no store, no account and no telemetry. If you enjoyed The Settlers or Anno and want a game you are free to study, modify and share, Widelands scratches that itch without strings attached.

Use Cases

• Play a long, relaxing build-and-trade campaign.
• Set up a LAN or online match across Linux, Windows and macOS.
• Design your own maps and scenarios with the built-in editor.
• Read and tweak the game’s data files to build a custom tribe or rebalance the economy.

Platforms

Windows (64-bit and 32-bit, Intel and Arm) · macOS (Intel and Apple silicon) · Linux (Flatpak, AppImage, Ubuntu PPA and distribution packages) · source code

Licence

GPL-2.0-or-later for the code; some game assets are released under Creative Commons licences (see the licence files in the project’s data folders).

Website

widelands.org

Similar in the directory

• OpenClonk — open source real-time strategy with an emphasis on settlement building and multiplayer.