About
The Settlers II (1996), developed and published by Blue Byte Software, is a city-building game with real-time strategy elements, released for MS-DOS, Mac OS, and later Nintendo DS, and re-released multiple times including a 2006 remake and a 2018 History Edition. Widelands is a free, open-source real-time strategy game with single-player campaigns and multiplayer, inspired by The Settlers II but built with significantly more variety and depth. It's licensed under GPL v2+ (with some assets under Creative Commons licenses), supports Linux, Windows, and macOS, and scenarios can be scripted in Lua.
How it differs from the original
Unlike a straight clone, Widelands significantly expands on The Settlers II's gameplay, adding variety and depth rather than reproducing it exactly.
Getting started
Widelands can be compiled from source on Linux, Windows (via MSYS2 or MSVC), and macOS using the project's compile script or CMake; download links for pre-built versions are listed on the project's wiki.
Media
Additional notes
- Policy
- The project does not accept code contributions generated by AI/LLMs, citing copyright and quality concerns.