Wainhold Frontier
Indirect command
Drop buildings and roads; your settlers choose their own jobs and routes. No micromanaging every villager.
A browser strategy game
Build the
Realm
Lay down buildings and roads — then watch your folk gather wood, quarry stone, fish, farm and haul it all by donkey-cart, raising a thriving settlement on their own. Research upgrades, trade your surplus for gold, and raise soldiers to keep the raiders out. You command the plan. They do the work.
Forged in the spirit of
The Settlers·Age of Empires·Warcraft·Dota 2
The core loop
You don't move the workers. You give them a world worth working.
Wainhold Frontier takes the Settlers II approach to control: place a building, draw a road to connect it, and your folk figure out the rest — pathing, gathering and relaying goods flag to flag until the whole economy hums.
Living supply chains
Logs become planks, rock becomes blocks, the catch becomes food — each chain crafted across linked buildings.
Roads & haulers
Donkeys relay goods between flags. Busy roads pave themselves and earn faster horse-carts as traffic grows.
Research & grow
Raise an Academy and spend gold on realm-wide upgrades — faster carriers, doubled goods, quicker training, even bridges across the water.
Raise a garrison
Train infantry and archers at the Barracks to defend your stores — then march them over a bridge to storm the enemy raid camp on its island.
Isometric, in true 3D
An orthographic Three.js world with sculpted terrain, cast shadows and a day/night cycle — press N to light the lamps.
Deterministic core
The simulation runs headless and tick-perfect, fully decoupled from the graphics — ready for server-authoritative multiplayer.
Single-player first
A complete economy you can play in the browser today — nothing to install. Multiplayer is built into the foundations for later.
The realm
One island, ringed by mountains — yours to settle.
A single hand-charted frontier: a great lake and its islets at the heart, the Whispering Pines and the Deep Glimmerwald along the treelines, and a raiders' camp brooding on its own island. Every game you carve your own roads and holdings across it.
The economy
Many goods. Tangled chains. One bustling depot.
Every refined good is the end of a journey — felled, mined, fished, farmed or hunted, then hauled and crafted before it reaches the Warehouse, the beating heart of your realm. Surplus rides the Trading Post cart out to market and comes home as gold.
Sawmill
Stoneworks
Fish Factory
Mill → Bakery
Trading Post
The settlement
Raise the buildings that make a realm.
Each structure has a job and a character of its own — a turning sawmill blade, a fenced plank yard, lantern-lit junctions at night.
Trailers & screenshots
See the frontier in motion.
A look at Wainhold Frontier as it plays — settlers hauling goods along the roads, the realm taking shape one building at a time.
Desktop client
Play from your desktop.
A native window for the game — sign in and play your realm straight from your desktop. It connects to the live server, so it's the same account, saves and highscores as in the browser. An internet connection is required.
🪟 Windows
⬇ Download installer (v0.15.0 · 79 MB)
Install
- Run the downloaded installer and follow the prompts — it adds Start-menu and desktop shortcuts.
- The app isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC" — click More info → Run anyway. (A signing certificate will remove this later.)
Run
- Launch Wainhold Frontier from the Start menu or desktop, then sign in.
Prefer no install? Portable .exe (78 MB) — just run it, nothing to install.
🍎 macOS
⬇ Download .dmg (v0.15.0 · 172 MB)
Install
- Open the downloaded
.dmgand drag Wainhold Frontier into Applications. - It isn't notarised yet, so on first launch macOS may say it "can't be opened." Either right-click the app → Open → Open, or allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
Run
- Launch Wainhold Frontier from Applications or Spotlight, then sign in. Runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel.
🐧 Debian systems
⬇ Download .deb (v0.15.0 · 72 MB)
Prerequisites
- A 64-bit (amd64) Debian-based system.
- An internet connection — it's an online game.
- No manual setup needed: the required system libraries (GTK 3, NSS, …) are pulled in
automatically when you install through your software manager or
apt.
Install
- Easiest: double-click the downloaded
.deb— it opens in your software installer; click Install. Dependencies are handled for you. - Or in a terminal:
sudo apt install ./wainhold-frontier_0.15.0_amd64.deb
Run
- Open Wainhold Frontier from your applications menu (under Games), then sign in.
To remove it later: sudo apt remove wainhold-frontier
Other Linux (Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Steam Deck…) ▾
Flatpak
Works on virtually any distribution, sandboxed and self-contained.
⬇ Download Flatpak (v0.15.0 · 74 MB)- Requires Flatpak with the Flathub remote (preinstalled on most distros; otherwise
sudo <your-pkg-manager> install flatpakand add Flathub). - Install:
flatpak install --user wainhold-frontier-0.15.0.flatpak— or just double-click it to open in your software centre. The shared runtime is fetched automatically. - Run Wainhold Frontier from your menu, or
flatpak run io.thern.wainhold.
AppImage
⬇ Download AppImage (v0.15.0 · 104 MB)- Make it executable:
chmod +x Wainhold-Frontier-0.15.0.AppImage— or right-click → Properties → Permissions → Allow executing file as program. - Double-click to play.
Closed alpha · live standings
The Hall of Builders.
Every settler leaves a mark. Your score grows with every plank stockpiled, every workshop raised, every tile of road laid, every villager in your service.
- Stockpiled goods 1–8 pts each
- Buildings raised 20–75 pts each
- Road tiles laid 1 pt per tile
- Settlers in service 5 pts each
#
Builder
Score
Set
- Loading the rolls…
No download · runs in your browser
Your settlement awaits.
Sign up for the closed alpha — request your name on the founding rolls, and you'll get in the moment the gates open.
▸ Sign up for AlphaThe tale
The Tale of Wainhold
A wagon, a handful of settlers, and a stretch of unclaimed frontier — that's how every Wainhold begins.
Wainhold Frontier is a laid-back medieval settlement builder forged in the spirit of The Settlers, with a good measure of Age of Empires and Warcraft in its blood. You don't command your people directly; you shape the land. Plant a Woodcutter by the trees, raise a Sawmill nearby, and link them with a road — then watch donkeys carry the logs while the sawyer turns them into planks. Every good is a little journey, and the whole settlement is a clockwork of those journeys humming along.
Quarry stone into blocks, fish the shallows into food, sow the farm's fields, and send hunters into the wilds. Train more villagers, stretch your roads across the map, and let a quiet, self-running little world grow out of the choices you make.
It's an early Alpha — rough edges and all — built in the open. Pull up a chair and help shape it.
The settlement
📚 Building Guide
How to play
📖 How to Play
Get in touch
Contact the workshop
An investment enquiry, a question, or a bug to report? Send a message and I'll get back to you.
Help out
A one-person workshop.
Wainhold Frontier is built by a single person — a small indie developer with no studio behind him, no publisher, and no investors. Every building, every line of code, every donkey plodding down a road is hand-made in evenings and weekends.
That also means there's no paywall, no ads, and no loot boxes — just a game made for the love of it, built in the open. If you'd like to see the frontier keep growing, you can chip in toward the hours it takes to build. Even a small tip genuinely helps keep the lamps lit.
Curious who's behind it? Read my CV at cv.thern.io →
Buy the builder a coffee
All donations go to PayPal info@thern.io — every coin goes straight into development. Thank you.