There is also a modern continuation from the original Creator, called "Pioneers of Pagonia"[1]. It's Early Access at the moment, but v1.0 is planned for release in some weeks (11.12.2025). And so far it looks promising, seems to be a pretty good game for Settler-Fans. As I remember, it's a reaction on the catastrophic fail of the latest official Setter-Game, which is not with Ubisoft, so I guess serving the old fans is one of the goal.
It's a shame that Pioneers of Pagonia doesn't stick to the same strict path-network mechanic, that was my favourite part of the earlier Settlers that later went away.
From the recommendation of another commenter, here's a more recent indie game that seems focused exactly on that style of path logistics:
I absolutely loved The Settlers 1 and 2 as a kid. I feel like they are responsible for a fascination with distribution logistics that carried into adulthood.
By the way, there is also an open source clone of these games that is very well done: https://www.widelands.org/
I never played the first, but Settlers 2 was fantastic. I always preferred it to later installments because it had a strict grid of nodes, creating a complex graph of buildings and paths, rather than the more freeform pathing.
It was such a joy to grow the supply chains and deal with the all messy network logistics and bottlenecks. It sounds quite boring said out-loud, but we are in HN after all, I think you'll get it :)
> To get the game to start you need one file from the original settlers 1 game because graphics and sounds are read from there.
Leaving aside the moral aspect of compensation for the artists who created the original graphics and sounds (who probably won't see any money from sales of the original game anyway), would it be legal to reverse engineer (intentionally simple) prompts for each piece of art needed, and then commission either humans or GenAI to create these, to then be able to distribute the remake without any dependency on the original?
If I included the exact same graphics as the original, but I did paint them all by hand myself, would you think that makes a difference? No it doesn’t. And what you are proposing is just the same with extra steps. They could include graphics that don’t look the same but I guess that defeats the reason for the game.
The Settlers 2 was one of my favorite games growing up - really felt like they polished up the mechanics of the first game and made the UI more tolerable.
If anyone is looking for a more modern 3d equivalent but in a slightly different setting, I'd recommend The Colonists.
I did try going back to Settlers 2 last year and it was just as good as I remember it, it really holds up. At least the remake which is also the one I played when I was a kid.
I think my kids might love this. I certainly loved the original as a kid. Not even the second or third installment. The first one has always been my favorite, because it was so god damn punk rock simple.
>I think my kids might love this. I certainly loved the original as a kid.
Right. A sentiment one too often stumbles upon on this site: "I loved my nerdy tinkering indoors so my kids must have their own Linux box by the age of 5" (instead of playing outside)
I loved all these games as a kid and I'm 25. I played it on my DS and had Widelands on my computer.
The artificial constraint of building roads with little people acting as relays holds up today because it makes the graph theoretic nature of the problem apparent to a 10 year old.
I can intuitively see flow and choke points in a way most games don't allow. I will see a pile of junk stacked up on a given node if my road network sucks. I often attempted to build more roads. I thought it was cool seeing how stuff moved through a network.
To contrast Rimworld, I needed a theoretical understanding of graphs before I could mentally model goods' flow between raw production, storage, and secondary production. Otherwise people would just walk long distances and everything would feel slow without understanding why. I did not understand the benefit of a relay system until hundreds of hours in.
That isn't to say Settlers 1 and 2 are perfect. The lack of in-game help and tutorials killed my progress past a certain point.
There is also a modern continuation from the original Creator, called "Pioneers of Pagonia"[1]. It's Early Access at the moment, but v1.0 is planned for release in some weeks (11.12.2025). And so far it looks promising, seems to be a pretty good game for Settler-Fans. As I remember, it's a reaction on the catastrophic fail of the latest official Setter-Game, which is not with Ubisoft, so I guess serving the old fans is one of the goal.
[1] https://pioneersofpagonia.com
It's a shame that Pioneers of Pagonia doesn't stick to the same strict path-network mechanic, that was my favourite part of the earlier Settlers that later went away.
From the recommendation of another commenter, here's a more recent indie game that seems focused exactly on that style of path logistics:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/677340/The_Colonists/
I absolutely loved The Settlers 1 and 2 as a kid. I feel like they are responsible for a fascination with distribution logistics that carried into adulthood.
By the way, there is also an open source clone of these games that is very well done: https://www.widelands.org/
It's one of those game you start playing in the morning and when you want to make a little pause, you realize is 10PM.
I would think it's more common that you start playing in the afternoon and when you make a little pause, you realize it's 4am.
I have done both!
I never played the first, but Settlers 2 was fantastic. I always preferred it to later installments because it had a strict grid of nodes, creating a complex graph of buildings and paths, rather than the more freeform pathing.
It was such a joy to grow the supply chains and deal with the all messy network logistics and bottlenecks. It sounds quite boring said out-loud, but we are in HN after all, I think you'll get it :)
> To get the game to start you need one file from the original settlers 1 game because graphics and sounds are read from there.
Leaving aside the moral aspect of compensation for the artists who created the original graphics and sounds (who probably won't see any money from sales of the original game anyway), would it be legal to reverse engineer (intentionally simple) prompts for each piece of art needed, and then commission either humans or GenAI to create these, to then be able to distribute the remake without any dependency on the original?
If I included the exact same graphics as the original, but I did paint them all by hand myself, would you think that makes a difference? No it doesn’t. And what you are proposing is just the same with extra steps. They could include graphics that don’t look the same but I guess that defeats the reason for the game.
The Settlers 2 was one of my favorite games growing up - really felt like they polished up the mechanics of the first game and made the UI more tolerable. If anyone is looking for a more modern 3d equivalent but in a slightly different setting, I'd recommend The Colonists.
"Return to the Roots" is a faithful remake/modification of The Settlers II for modern computers, with multiplayer support!
https://www.siedler25.org/
Well that’s quite exciting :)
I sank a non-trivial amount of time in my younger years in to both Settlers and Settlers 2. I’m hoping now that it’s not rose tinted memories!
I did try going back to Settlers 2 last year and it was just as good as I remember it, it really holds up. At least the remake which is also the one I played when I was a kid.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_settlers_2_10th_anniversary
I'm gonna try Widelands from the recommendation of another commenter, it looks like it's a deeper open-source clone of Settlers 2.
https://www.widelands.org/
And The Colonists also looks great, a modern indie successor that also has the path network mechanic that I loved at its core.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/677340/The_Colonists/
I think my kids might love this. I certainly loved the original as a kid. Not even the second or third installment. The first one has always been my favorite, because it was so god damn punk rock simple.
>I think my kids might love this. I certainly loved the original as a kid.
Right. A sentiment one too often stumbles upon on this site: "I loved my nerdy tinkering indoors so my kids must have their own Linux box by the age of 5" (instead of playing outside)
I loved all these games as a kid and I'm 25. I played it on my DS and had Widelands on my computer.
The artificial constraint of building roads with little people acting as relays holds up today because it makes the graph theoretic nature of the problem apparent to a 10 year old.
I can intuitively see flow and choke points in a way most games don't allow. I will see a pile of junk stacked up on a given node if my road network sucks. I often attempted to build more roads. I thought it was cool seeing how stuff moved through a network.
To contrast Rimworld, I needed a theoretical understanding of graphs before I could mentally model goods' flow between raw production, storage, and secondary production. Otherwise people would just walk long distances and everything would feel slow without understanding why. I did not understand the benefit of a relay system until hundreds of hours in.
That isn't to say Settlers 1 and 2 are perfect. The lack of in-game help and tutorials killed my progress past a certain point.
There's also Widelands [0], which is basically an open source Settlers II with extra features.
[0] https://www.widelands.org/
Anyone runs this on linux?