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Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game
- uberman 6mo agoI love this game. It is also fairly easy to tinker with the units if you are like me, that is a big win.
- bedroom_jabroni 6mo agoAn absolute gem I came across randomly many years ago. Picked up Mewgenics and it left me wishing it had some mechanics from Wesnoth like faster animations (Mewgenics caps at 4x), undo action (at least if the action doesn't trigger any rng/damage behavior), skip enemy turns. I only wish they added more campaigns into the official lore.
- rpmisms 6mo agoGrew up playing Wesnoth, still adore the game. There is a TON of third party content and a serious extended universe, too!
- hyperionultra 6mo agoCould you name a few places to find 3rd party content?
- tmtvl 6mo agoLast time I checked there was an option on the main menu to download user-made campaigns.
- IsTom 6mo agoThere's a "addons" browser in the game.
- rpmisms 6mo agoIt's under the "add-ons" menu in game. I would recommend playing the top-ranked campaigns. Some amazing stuff in there. I adore Legend of the Invincibles. Fun story, tons of new gameplay mechanics.
- bandrami 6mo agoThere was (still is?) a Middle East themed campaign with just absolutely gorgeous artwork.
- ramses0 6mo agoA+! They even had an iOS version a while back: `https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-battle-for-wesnoth/id1450738104 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-battle-for-wesnoth/id14507...` (this may be the "Mac" version, see: `https://www.reddit.com/r/wesnoth/comments/1pjkwbw/i_had_wesnoth_on_ios_how_can_i_play_it_now_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wesnoth/comments/1pjkwbw/i_had_wesn...`). If that's your jam then there's also a (non-open-source) "Hero's Hour" which tickles the old Heroes of Might and Magic stylings, works reasonably well on Xbox, where I've been doing most of my gaming lately. As far as Open Source gaming success stories, I'd put this up there in the Top 5 for "Original IP and Concept" (if that makes sense). Just a stellar labor of love, worth giving it a shot to play!
- haunter 6mo agoAlso on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/599390/Battle_for_Wesnoth/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/599390/Battle_for_Wesnoth...
- WickyNilliams 6mo agoDon't suppose you've played in the steamdeck? Curious how well it works there
- busfahrer 6mo agoIt's a pity that it's no longer available on iOS. I do wonder how realistic it would be to maybe crowdfund the dev team with 3 weeks of Claude Code in order to achieve a working WASM port?
- everdrive 6mo agoI played the heck out of this about a decade ago. It's an amazing game, and I'd love to return to it and see what has changed.
- thatoneengineer 6mo agoSame!
- drob518 6mo agoSame! Just downloaded the latest version for nostalgia’s sake.
- MarsIronPI 6mo agoI'm still nostalgic for the pre-1.12 Heir to the Throne portraits. Bring back anime Konrad and Li'sar! (There's an add-on for that too btw)
- myky22 6mo agoSame, i think It was on my first Linux OS. The good old days hehe
- anilkuscu 6mo agoonly missing point about this game is some of the real word parameters like moral,flanking etc. Maybe a real history mod would be amazing like ancient era or medieval ages.
- Terr_ 6mo agoModern strategy games for leisure can be traced back to actual militaries or hardcore history buffs—systems that would try to model morale etc., often to a degree which, er, doesn't have mass-market appeal. :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game)
- MarsIronPI 6mo ago> flanking The Zone of Control mechanic kind of simulates this. If you're not careful about unit placement, you may find your units ganged up on by more enemies then they can handle. On the other hand, if you keep a good formation, you can pretty much hold a solid line with a fairly modest number of troops. Unless of course the enemy soldiers have "skirmisher", in which case they'll waltz right past your ZoC. Actually, Wesnoth's ZoC is the reason I never could get into Fire Emblem. I couldn't get used to not being able to protect my injured units without completely surrounding them.
- rhdunn 6mo agoMy only gripe with the game is that healing doesn't give XP to the healing units. This means you need to place them in combat to level up instead of placing them behind the fighters like they are intended to be, and with them initially having low health they are very squishy. I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.
- marknutter 6mo agoIt's OSS, no?
- tmtvl 6mo agoIt is, but making a change that doesn't mess up the balance of the game can be tricky.
- jjmarr 6mo agoI've enjoyed this, honestly. There's a whole short-term pain/long-term gain tradeoff to risking healers that adds more strategy to the campaign. > I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP In practice, I've found it difficult to get monsters to 1-2 HP since it often means not using your most powerful attacks. On harder difficulties I usually can't afford the opportunity cost.
- gwerbin 6mo agoYeah I personally found this to be a big part of the tactical and strategic challenge. It reminded me a lot of Pokemon where you have a similar challenge, of slotting "exposure to fighting" into a limited action and HP budget. Edit: Now that I think about it, most turn-based games have this mechanic. It's almost an idiomatic balance/design decision in gaming. Compare to Dota where support heroes have acquired more and more opportunities for assist gold/XP, it does in some sense make the game "easier" for the support players, but then the game is harder in other ways because now the supports are all way more farmed and dangerous than in older versions. It's the difference between controlling an army of many units and having to manage them all, versus controlling one unit and needing to work together within a team.
- jcmontx 6mo agoNever heard of this game. Is it similar to Warcraft III?
- orangesilk 6mo agoNo. Warcraft 3 ist real time strategy, Wesnoth is turn based strategy.
- aetherson 6mo agoNot really. It's turn-based and hex-based.
- shellwizard 6mo agoSimilar to panzer general then?
- MarsIronPI 6mo agoYeah, except that troops in Wesnoth don't require fuel or ammo. And you have to explicitly recall veterans. And leveling up makes units grow into different, stronger units.
- the_af 6mo agoNo. This is turn based, it doesn't play like any RTS game.
- markatto 6mo agoIt's turn based, the most similar game I've played is probably Fantasy General. Closer to Advance Wars or Fire Emblem than Warcraft.
- jjmarr 6mo agoHighly suggest connecting with one of the lead developers, Charles Dang/Vultraz, if you have any C++ jobs in the USA. He's been a developer on Wesnoth since 2012 but only graduated university in 2024. Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates. Even if you're a maintainer on one of the most popular OSS C++ projects on GitHub. I can't recommend him enough. edit: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-dang-10994b1b4 https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-dang-10994b1b4
- wwilson 6mo agoThanks,our company is in the DC area so I just reached out with an offer to chat. Wesnoth is an incredible project, I can't believe he doesn't have a programming job.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- CookieTonsure 6mo ago[dead]
- szmarczak 6mo ago> Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates. Furthermore, more and more companies are looking for "professional" devs using AI tools such as Claude Code. By "professional" I mean proficient in using those AI tools, not actual knowledge. And they don't even specify this in the job offer and you learn this during the interview.
- jjmarr 6mo agoI don't understand why you're downvoted. Many of my 2025 graduate friends are seeing this problem. Unlimited token-based usage of Claude Code is not in the budget for many students and employees. At the same time, companies are demanding experience with these tools. This is stratifying the industry. I have many talented classmates that can only use free GitHub Copilot. They're likely being screened out in favour of rich classmates with $200/month Claude subs. As a result, they'll be more likely to get low-paying jobs that don't provide access to top-tier AI tools and the effect will compound. I think this'll be even worse as Claude phases out subsidies. If $2000/month subscription to Claude for 4 years of university is the minimum required for a Big Tech job, this field is going to become law/finance levels of cliquey. Nobody is talking about that because it's bad for both AI booster and skeptic narratives but it's happening.
- orangesilk 6mo agoWhat would need to happen that more players are available for online games?
- MarsIronPI 6mo agoI would need more time on my hands.
- mattlondon 6mo agoBlocked by Anubis? Just says "invalid response" with no explanation or instructions for how to fix it. Chrome on Android - not exactly niche. Thanks for that.
- tetromino_ 6mo agoSame happened for me when I clicked on the link, I had to delete the cookies for wesnoth.org and then load the site again. I think their Anubis setup might be broken a bit
- macleginn 6mo agoSo it's like HMM but the whole map is in battle mode?
- Svoka 6mo agoIt feels more like a war game to be honest. I played both for a while and they share some aesthetic, but not much beyond that.
- rkagerer 6mo ago[dead]
- MinimalAction 6mo agoInteresting! Is this similar to Age of Empires?
- phamilton 6mo agoMore like Fire Emblem
- garretraziel 6mo agoNot at all. That would be a game called 0ad.
- CivBase 6mo agoNot really. This game uses a turn-based combat system with a hex grid. It's more like Sid Meier's Civilization, but with a drastically simplified economy and a strong focus on battles. It also has a Tolkein-esque fantasy theme instead of a real-life history theme. If that sounds at all interesting, I suggest giving it a shot.
- Quarrelsome 6mo agothink more hexbased, turnbased, terrain and dice roll mechanics with unit upgrades being extremely important.
- brendoelfrendo 6mo agoMore like Heroes of Might and Magic. It's a turn-based strategy game where battles take place on a hex grid map. It's got full campaigns, lots of factions and units, resources to gather... it's one of my favorite OSS projects. Wesnoth has been in active development forever and is a real labor of love, as well as a showcase of collaborative game development.
- butlike 6mo agoMore like Final Fantasy Tactics
- mdtrooper 6mo ago0 A.D. https://play0ad.com/ https://play0ad.com/ is more similar to Age of Empires.
- plutokras 6mo agoIn high school I kept a USB drive full of portable apps. This was one of them. I can still recommend it.
- coolgoose 6mo agoI've been playing this for 10+ years :) it's one awesome game and the details for sprites and art direction is sweet.
- wiradikusuma 6mo agoSweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this? (Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")
- ecshafer 6mo agoThe Free Civ and Free Colonization games are good. Brogue, Nethack, DCSS are good if you like roguelikes. OpenMW is a totally open source reimplementation of Morrowind, so that might fit the bill.
- jordigh 6mo agoI know it's a very niche domain, but I feel this way about Lizard. My lizard is the lizard of website: https://rainwarrior.ca/lizard/ https://rainwarrior.ca/lizard/ My lizard is the lizard of source: https://github.com/bbbradsmith/lizard_src_demo/ https://github.com/bbbradsmith/lizard_src_demo/
- mock-possum 6mo agoAlso Brad Smith is a heavyweight in the NES ROM/Emulation scene, once you know his name you’ll start to notice it pop up all over the place. (e.g. nsfplay)
- reddalo 6mo agoOpenRCT2 is a reimplementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Just like its cousing OpenTTD which is a reimplementation of Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon.
- fwipsy 6mo agoCataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: Like Dwarf Fortress but post-apocalyptic survival horror. Endless Sky: top-down space shooter inspired by Escape Velocity SuperTux: inspired by Super Mario SuperTuxKart: inspired by Mario Kart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_later_released_source_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...
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- philip-b 6mo agoI heard about this game many many times due to software developers showcasing it as an example of a good libre videogame. However, I don't know a single person who played it and I have never seen anyone recommending it for its gameplay.
- Quarrelsome 6mo agoi played it, its fine, its a solid game. Easily can lose several hours in a session and probably played over 40 in total. Its enjoyable to play through due to the upgrading mechanics and wanting to see all the potential evolutions. That said, I'm not always a huge fan of the level design as you're often encouraged to play into negative fights (e.g. the timing for meeting the enemy aligns with their daytime bonuses) which forces you to play a bit more defensively than I'd like.
- azrazalea 6mo agoIt is a relatively simple formula that is very combat heavy with extremely simple economy. The campaigns are excellent though and as long as the true randomness of attacks/defense doesn't drive you crazy it is a lot of fun. Very challenging and has real strategic and tactical depth as well as pretty well balanced. I personally never did multiplayer but last I checked the multiplayer community was pretty healthy.
- bitwank 6mo agoThat’s absurd. It is the only game I’ve ever played other than chess. Maybe it’s not popular with FPS gamers, but a lot of people don’t like FPS.
- asdfghjhgfdsd 6mo ago[flagged]
- steveharing1 6mo agoOpen Source Games are really underrated Gems
- helle253 6mo agoFond memories, playing this throughout my youth :')
- dhbradshaw 6mo agoMy kids and I have been playing this for about 20 years. It's worked on Linux, Mac and Windows and has never stopped working. In the meantime so many other favorite games have disappeared or become obsolete. There's no absolute reason great games can't be as immortal as chess. Maybe Wesnoth can be.
- anthk 6mo agoNethack/Slashem too in case of Roguelikes. Nethack adds tons of Terry Pratchett references as and homage and it's cool but Slashem has tons of weapons, classes, objects, environments... And supertux2 has both the main campaingn add tons of downloadable ones too. Ditto with Oolite, tons of community content. Shattered Pixel Dungeon it's a fork and still has tons of contents and it might be the most playable FLOSS game in Android among Unciv. Oh, and it can be run on potatos. Sometimes you don't need AAA graphics.
- steviedotboston 6mo agoI remember playing this a lot back in the Ubuntu 6 days.
- totetsu 6mo agoI think this was featured on the Ubuntu software manager at some point and that’s how I discovered it. It was one of the few games on Linux that’s was genuinely fun to play
- shevy-java 6mo agoWhat is pretty cool is how long-living the project has been. I have seen many open source games die over the last 2 decades; some were quite cool. So wesnoth staying alive is pretty epic in itself.
- rdevilla 6mo agoI loved this game playing on an Arch Thinkpad in university with budget graphics capability. The best part is being able to pin locations on the map for your teammates, so we were able to plot the adventures and battlegrounds of a goated unit by naming the pins "Ronant's Triumph," "Ronant's Revenge," "Ronant's Folly," and ultimately "Ronant's Last Stand." Great times with a few beers and the lads. RIP Ronant, Wesnoth will never see another hero of your like again.
- midzer 6mo agoThere is even an Android build since this year https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth/
- pferde 6mo agoI tried it on my tablet last month, and it's pretty unplayable. The touchscreen input needs a lot of work, half the time it does something completely wrong and random, like selecting a tile halfway across the screen from where you touched.
- MarsIronPI 6mo agoWait, how is that build different from the one Alessandro Pira (?) has been publishing for years now?
- nightrate_ai 6mo ago[dead]
- everdrive 6mo agoJust downloaded Wesnoth due to this post. I'll try it out this weekend maybe. I was wrong in my other post -- I believe I played it around 20 years ago.
- freetime2 6mo agoIt's been probably 20 years since I played this game. But I still think it's the best Open Source game I've ever played. I had lots of fun, and more than a few late nights, running through some of the campaigns. I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!
- MarsIronPI 6mo ago> I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one! I think many would be, but AIUI it's illegal. It would require modifying the source to use Nintendo's SDK which is under NDA. The GPL would require releasing the modified source, which would be prohibited by the NDA. So it's legally impossible without special permission from every single Wesnoth contributor ever. Unless you mean a homebrew port, in which case it's doable.
- MarsIronPI 6mo agoSomeday I hope Wesnoth will have Fire Emblem-esque cutscenes. I can dream. Oh, and I'd really like them to be in the original style of Heir to the Throne. I'm a sucker for the old anime style of 1.10.
- throw7 6mo agoIt's been a long time ago since I last played and I was one of those rng haters (that's why i never got hooked... i want to have fun, not some pseudo random roll the bones simulator). I just took a look and I see three different "rng modes"... i have to laugh and give credit to the devs for sticking to their guns.
- vivzkestrel 6mo agostupid question: if your game is open source, how do you prevent some random dude from ripping your code and releasing a slightly different version?
- TYMorningCoffee 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Dungeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Dungeon is an example of that. The bad forks dont become popular
- kbelder 6mo agoAnd if it's a better fork... it's still open source, so you can switch to it or fork it back. Open source licenses shouldn't be viewed as a marketing strategy; it's a gift.
- wavemode 6mo ago> how do you prevent You don't. Giving people the right to do this is the whole point of open source. If that possibility is not acceptable then don't open source your game.
- dragontamer 6mo agoBecause of the level-up mechanics of Wesnoth, I don't think its really possible to balance a long-running campaign. The tier3 or tier4 units are just so much more powerful than the earlier tiers... and yet a "recall" costs only 20G. I'm not sure how I'd balance the game. You want the feeling of progression, but its too "slippery", the game gets easier if the player feeds their units and lets them grow. But it feels like the player could get "trapped" if they had unfortunate or unlucky losses at the incorrect time. On the other hand, I always thought the "single map" or "scenario maps" of Wesnoth were excellent. I mean, I like the campaigns its just... tough to figure out the proper design scope there.
- wise_blood 6mo agoOh man My first distro was a live cd with Knoppix. It had this game, I played so much. This, and Kobo deluxe. So many good memories
- merlin1de 6mo ago[flagged]
- LAC-Tech 6mo agoGreat game. I only wish there were more "one off" or even random scenarios - I like playing against the computer but I find campaigns become a bit of a grind with the whole "OK we need to level these units for the scenario coming up..."
- cisco801 6mo agoWhat kept Wesnoth alive for twenty years is the same thing that kept BBS door games alive in the 80s: the content was community-created. Trade Wars 2002 was different on every board because the sysop configured it differently and the players made it their own. Wesnoth's WML scripting language lets anyone build campaigns, factions, entire rulesets. Most open-source games die because the core team burns out and nobody picks it up. Wesnoth survived because thousands of people have a stake in their own content inside it. The game is a platform, not a product.
- vfalbor 6mo ago[dead]