Widelands

Widelands is a free slow-paced real-time strategy video game under the GNU General Public License. Widelands takes many ideas from and is quite similar to The Settlers and The Settlers II. It is still a work in progress game, with development still required in graphics and bugfixing. The game runs on several operating systems such as Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows.

Gameplay
Widelands has single-player, network and internet multiplayer modes, single player campaign missions and an internationalisation system with translations for Czech, German, English, Finnish, French, Galician, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Slovak, Swedish and Dutch. Players may select one of three different tribes. Widelands provides two tutorial missions. Advanced players can create their own maps with the included map editor and it is also possible to import and play original Settlers II maps.

Development
Widelands still contains some bugs that need to be fixed until a final (1.0) version will be released, further some wished features, graphics and sounds are still missing.

Reception
The game was reviewed by Linux Journal which noted: ''Delve into this game, and there's much that lies beneath the surface. It has simple things that please, like how the in-game menus are very sophisticated and solid, with none of the bugginess you get in many amateur games. But, it's the complete reversal of hyperspeed in its gameplay that I really love. I always want to get back to building my base when playing most RTS games, but I'm constantly drawn away by fire fights. This game lets you keep building, and places serious emphasis on how you do it.''

The German LinuxUser magazine reviewed Widelands in issue 4/2008 in a three A4 paged article.

The German C’t magazin wrote a short review of Widelands in their 4/2008 issue and included a Windows version of Widelands Build11 on their magazin DVD.

The French free software web site Framasoft said : ''This 2d game with a top-down view is a classic RTS remake, with simple graphics, although functional and efficient. We quickly found the happiness of the old Settlers series with the management of different sized sites, the positioning of the roads which bring resources and advancing your zone of influence with different military buildings.''