#wesnoth

I love this man. He went to save the prince from being executed by the evil queen, and take him into hiding with the elves.

Thing is, he failed.

He was too late.

It’s a free, open-source, turn-based strategy game with a medieval fantasy theme!  There are kingdoms and outlaws, wizards and knights, orcs and elves, and so on!

In the typical multiplayer game, you select a “leader” from one of a handful of factions, and recruit units matching your leader’s faction to send out and kill the enemy’s leader (which can either be the computer, or another human player).  Combat takes place on a hexmap, chance to hit is determined by terrain, and damage against certain units by elements and weapon types, as well as time of day.  You increase the power of your army by leveling up individual units, which advance into new, stronger unit types once they get enough experience points.  You recruit new units by collecting gold from villages, villages which you can even steal from the enemy so that their army won’t be able to replenish.  I hear people compare the gameplay to Fire Emblem, but I can’t personally say how accurate the comparison is since I’ve never tried that game!

If it sounds complicated, it’s actually easier than that.  Most of it is logical stuff (like undead being weakened by daylight, and elves being harder to hit in forests).  I was able to grasp the basics and play fairly even as a small child.  The game is designed to be easy to learn, but challenging to master.  The AI is made to be intelligent, too, preventing player vs. computer situations from getting too easy or boring.It even comes with a tutorial, which I highly recommend trying out before diving in.  Even if you don’t beat the tutorial, it still teaches you what you need to know to play the game, and it’s not mandatory, either!  There’s no campaigns or factions in Wesnoth that are blocked behind a prerequisite, so you can try any part of it, at any difficulty, in any order.

Speaking of campaigns, they’re basically Wesnoth’s version of “story mode”.  In each one you control a different leader, and follow their story through multiple scenarios.  Unlike multiplayer mode, campaigns let you “recall” units from previous scenarios, allowing you to build up a powerful, experienced army.  Campaigns also may have objectives besides defeating enemy leaders (ex. surviving til the end of turns, or moving a unit to a certain location), so you’ll have to employ different strategies in those situations!

Wesnoth has a modding community that spans worldwide, so there’s tons of add-ons you can install from the official servers if you run out of canon content!  There are custom factions, campaigns, maps, and more.  Fanmade content is unrestricted by mainline Wesnoth’s canon, so you can see some pretty different stuff out there!  Wesnoth’s code is easy to learn if you ever want to become a mod creator yourself– all you need is a text editor and a fair understanding of English!

And if English isn’t your first language?  Wesnoth has different translations that you can switch between from the main menu!  There’s Spanish, French, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, German, Polish, Hebrew, Japanese, and at least a dozen more.  I can’t say how accurate or quality any of them are since I only know English, but they come with the game!  Fanmade content doesn’t have translations as often, but the older and more popular mods are more likely to.

The game is solely maintained by its dedicated fanbase.  The latest stable version is 1.14.9, which is also available on Steam!  However, if you want more mods and are fine with playing an older version, I highly recommend checking out 1.12.6 or 1.10.7, too.  Every version of Wesnoth plays about the same; most differences are tiny balancing fixes, cosmetic updates, and streamlining the code and UI.

If you’re wondering what device you can play Wesnoth on, the answer is: most of them!  There are official releases of Wesnoth for Windows, Mac, and Linux, all of them free.  Wesnoth is sometimes even listed as one of the best games available for Linux computers.  There are also versions for iOS and Android, but I haven’t much looked into those since I play exclusively on desktop.

I tried doing Doux, Buttons, Blight, and Viola from ONE in Wesnoth’s sprite style!