Varnhal

A free fantasy real-time strategy game you play in your browser. Raise a fortress, gather gold, train battalions, call on heroes and monsters, and fight for the vale against bots or friends online, in battles of up to eight players. No download, no account.

Seven peoples at war

Three peoples stand for the good side and four for the evil one, each with its own soldiers, buildings, heroes and powers:

• Kingdom of Highvale: men of the west, with steady soldiers and archers, the best cavalry and many heroes.
• Elves of Aelindor: deadly archers, treeherds and eagles; fragile up close, unmatched at range.
• Dwarves of Durnhold: slow, costly and nearly unbreakable, with fearsome siege engines.
• The Ironspire: a wizard's industrial war-machine of ironbred infantry, berserkers and wolf riders.
• The Ashen Horde: endless orcs, trolls, war mammoths and the Hollow Riders on their fell wyverns.
• Goblins of Gloomdeep: cheap hordes, spiders, trolls, giants and dragons that overwhelm with numbers.
• Rimeholt: the frozen north, with black knights, hill-clans, trolls, wolves and ice sorcery.

How you play

• Build a base, earn gold from resource buildings and raise barracks, stables, siege works and towers; buildings grow through three levels.
• Command battalions in formation. They gain ranks in battle, regrow lost soldiers and buy better weapons and armour.
• Summon heroes who level up to ten and unlock abilities, and spend power points on a spellbook that ends in strikes such as a dragon from the sky.
• Capture toll towers for gold, beacons for sight and shrines for healing, and break the enemy's walls and fortress with siege engines.

Battlefields and modes

• Twenty-one hand-made maps across seven lands: green meadows, autumn woods, the frozen north, ashen wastes, golden steppe, smouldering volcanic fells and fenlands, with islands, rivers, mountain passes and cliffs.
• Day and night, rain, snow, storms and ash, all drawn in hand-made-looking pixel art.
• Skirmish against computer opponents of several difficulties, free-for-all or in teams.
• Online battles with friends: host a room and share its code or link.
• The Training Grounds teach the basics in six short chapters, and The Seven Peoples guide describes every army.
• Plays in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Turkish.

Play

Varnhal runs in any current browser with WebGL 2, such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari: open varnhal.bkymz.net and choose Skirmish. Play with a mouse and keyboard, or by touch on a tablet or a phone turned on its side.

A BKYMZ (Testchambr) game, created by Berkay AKIN.