FreeCol

About the game

FreeCol is a turn-based strategy game about founding a colony in the New World, inspired by the 1994 classic of the genre. In 1492 you command a European power, with one ship, a few settlers and a mostly blank map. You sail west, find land, put your first colony on a good spot by the coast, and then grow it: settlers farm, cut wood, mine ore and fish, craftsmen turn raw materials into goods, and every colony builds stockades, docks, schools and churches as it grows.

What you do not make yourself you buy and sell in Europe, where prices move with what you ship. You meet the native peoples, trade with them or fight them, send out missionaries, and watch the other European powers do the same. Meanwhile the king in Europe taxes the colonies more and more, and the Continental Congress, with its founding fathers, slowly builds a case for a break. The game ends when you declare independence and win the war, or when time runs out.

You can pick the Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish or Russian, each with its own advantage, and set the difficulty and how many nations take part. The rules come in two flavours: Classic, which keeps to the 1994 game, and FreeCol, which adds the team's own changes.

About this version

This is BrowserCol, an unofficial version of FreeCol made for the browser by shivan2418, not by the FreeCol Team. The game's own Java code (the model, the server and the computer players) is compiled to WebAssembly and runs in a background worker next to a new interface written in TypeScript. There is no server: the whole game runs on your device and nothing is sent anywhere. BrowserCol was built with the help of AI coding tools, as its author says.

For this site we made a few changes. FreeCol's first-landing picture and its alert sound, which came from collections under non-commercial terms, are replaced with ones we drew and synthesised; the music is re-encoded at a lower bitrate to keep the download small; only English and Portuguese are included; and the credits screen lists these changes.

Playing it here

The game is about 50 MB, mostly pictures and music, and your browser keeps a copy; the music is only fetched if you turn it on, which is off by default. It needs a recent browser with WebAssembly GC (current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari). Games are saved in this browser: use Game, then Save, and "Continue Playing" on the start screen opens the latest one. Clearing the site's data erases the saves, so use "Save" often.

Tips

Found your first colony early. Land the settlers on the coast next to a river or forest, and use the Orders menu to build the colony; waiting costs turns.

Do not forget to end the turn. If a unit still has moves, the game asks you to confirm before it ends the turn.

Read the Colopedia. The Colopedia menu explains units, goods, buildings and the rules of the option you picked.

Save before big decisions. Fights, treaties and the Declaration of Independence can turn a game, so save first.

FAQ

Does it save my game? Yes, with Game then Save (Ctrl+S) in this browser on this device. "Continue Playing" on the start screen reopens it.

Is this the official FreeCol? No. The official FreeCol is a Java program from the FreeCol Team. This is its code, running in the browser through BrowserCol.

Does it go online? No. Nothing leaves your device, and the game needs no account.

Is it free to share? Yes, FreeCol and BrowserCol are free software under the GNU GPL version 2 or later, and the source of this build is linked on this page.

Credits and licence

FreeCol is by the FreeCol Team (freecol.org), copyright 2002 to 2024, under the GNU GPL version 2 or later; most of its art, music and sounds are by the team under the GPL too. The browser version, BrowserCol, is by shivan2418, also under the GPL. The music is by Alexander Zhelanov and Stian Grenborgen under CC BY 4.0 (re-encoded here at a lower bitrate); the ocean and river water are by zookeeper and Zabin and the deer by CDmir, all CC0; the pebbles are modified from "Pebbles surface", CC BY 3.0, and the meat icon is derived from 0 A.D., CC BY-SA. The interface fonts are Noto Sans and Cinzel under the SIL Open Font License. The game uses TeaVM (Apache 2.0), PixiJS and React (MIT). All the credits are in the game's own About screen and in the licence file, and the full source of this build, with our patches, is linked on this page.