The Settlers II (Return to the Roots)

Game: The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici (DOS, 1996)

Return to the Roots (RTTR): a fan-made open-source reimplementation of The Settlers II that rewrites the whole game and keeps its original graphics and sounds, which it reads from your copy. According to the project, almost all of the original game’s features are already implemented, including the Roman and world campaigns, whose missions are scripted in Lua. It adds online multiplayer through its own game lobby server, higher resolutions, AI players, replays, a random map generator, and a list of add-ons that change game rules, such as the leather economy that reached the nightly builds in February, with skins, tanneries, and armor for soldiers. The latest stable release is 0.9.5 (February 28, 2022); according to the project, most players use the nightly builds, for 32- and 64-bit Windows, macOS, and Linux, the latest from October 21. Seven of its last 100 commits, all from 2026, list Claude as a co-author.

You needThe DATA and GFX folders from your own copy of The Settlers II Gold Edition, copied into the folder RTTR points to. Plus Windows (Vista or later), macOS, or Linux with SDL2 and SDL2_mixer.

How it gets to PC

Fan reimplementation

Console

MS-DOS

Original studio

Blue Byte

Year

1996

Author

Settlers Freaks

Stars

601

Last activity

2026-10-30 · 1 day ago

Latest version

v0.9.5 · 2022-02-28

License

GPL-2.0

Language

C++