Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

https://www.wesnoth.org

190•akyuu•2h ago

Comments

uberman•1h ago

I 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•1h ago

An 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•1h ago

Grew up playing Wesnoth, still adore the game. There is a TON of third party content and a serious extended universe, too!

hyperionultra•1h ago

Could you name a few places to find 3rd party content?

tmtvl•43m ago

Last time I checked there was an option on the main menu to download user-made campaigns.

IsTom•42m ago

There's a "addons" browser in the game.

ramses0•1h ago

A+! They even had an iOS version a while back: `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_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•1h ago

Also on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/599390/Battle_for_Wesnoth...

everdrive•1h ago

I 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•1h ago

Same!

drob518•40m ago

Same! Just downloaded the latest version for nostalgia’s sake.

myky22•21m ago

Same, i think It was on my first Linux OS. The good old days hehe

anilkuscu•1h ago

only 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_•57m ago

Modern 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/Chainmail_(game)

rhdunn•1h ago

My 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•54m ago

It's OSS, no?

tmtvl•45m ago

It is, but making a change that doesn't mess up the balance of the game can be tricky.

jjmarr•40m ago

I'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•22m ago

Yeah 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.

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•57m ago

Never heard of this game. Is it similar to Warcraft III?

orangesilk•52m ago

No. Warcraft 3 ist real time strategy, Wesnoth is turn based strategy.

aetherson•52m ago

Not really. It's turn-based and hex-based.

the_af•45m ago

No. This is turn based, it doesn't play like any RTS game.

jjmarr•55m ago

Highly 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

wwilson•30m ago

Thanks,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.

szmarczak•23m 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.

ecshafer•15m ago

I am very surprised if he can't find a job, as an American, in DC, with 12 years of C++ experience. Sure companies aren't great at assessing open source experience, but there is one area its easy to find a job as a dev: work that requires a clearance.

orangesilk•50m ago

What would need to happen that more players are available for online games?

mattlondon•49m ago

Blocked 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_•24m ago

Same 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•39m ago

So it's like HMM but the whole map is in battle mode?

MinimalAction•33m ago

Interesting! Is this similar to Age of Empires?

phamilton•27m ago

More like Fire Emblem

garretraziel•25m ago

Not at all. That would be a game called 0ad.

CivBase•20m ago

Not 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•20m ago

think more hexbased, turnbased, terrain and dice roll mechanics with unit upgrades being extremely important.

brendoelfrendo•16m ago

More 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.

plutokras•33m ago

In high school I kept a USB drive full of portable apps. This was one of them. I can still recommend it.

coolgoose•30m ago

I've been playing this for 10+ years :) it's one awesome game and the details for sprites and art direction is sweet.

wiradikusuma•26m ago

Sweet! 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•12m ago

The 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•8m ago

I 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/

My lizard is the lizard of source: https://github.com/bbbradsmith/lizard_src_demo/

philip-b•26m ago

I 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•22m ago

i 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•15m ago

It 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.

asdfghjhgfdsd•25m ago

this game is like wearing ham to a wolf convention

steveharing1•20m ago

Open Source Games are really underrated Gems

helle253•5m ago

Fond memories, playing this throughout my youth :')

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