Clanhold
Raise a hold in an endless, darkening world and keep it for hours — from three workers and a hall to a walled city, with mages you earned, not trained.
A pixel-art real-time strategy game. Play alone, or share a world with a friend that stands whether either of you is in it or not.
Download
The desktop app is the same game as the browser version, in its own window, with its saves on your computer. It updates itself.
The app is not signed by Apple or Microsoft yet, so your computer will ask once before it opens it. Here is how. All releases →
A hold that grows for hours
Clanhold is Warcraft II's bones in Realm of the Mad God's pixels, built for the long game. Pick a clan — Humans, Orcs or Elves — and grow a single hall into something worth defending, and something that can fall.
From a hall to a city
Your workers chop lumber, mine gold, quarry stone and dig iron. Farms become homesteads, villagers move in when the hold is quiet and a bed is free, and their feet wear paths that become roads.
- Halls climb to Keeps and Castles; specialist buildings open new units.
- Land is a resource: you can only build inside your borders, and outposts push them out.
- Renown, ranks and a Chieftain: every deed you do is remembered in your hold's chronicle.
Magic against the darkness
Day turns to dusk and the purple blight comes closer. At night the unquiet rise from unlit ground, so torches, lamps and lit windows are your walls as much as stone is. Raids march on your hold out of camps in the wild — an event, not a metronome.
- A real day and night: light pools, cast shadows, a hold that glows.
- Wraiths on unlit ground; workers run from them.
- Raiders come for your people and your stores, not only your walls.
Earned, not trained
The strongest things in Clanhold cannot be bought at a barracks.
- Mages. A unit may be born Gifted. Carry a scroll out of an Elder Ruin to your arcane building and awaken them. A mage's death is permanent.
- Runestones. Clear a rune's warden, found a shrine on it, and your mages learn its spell.
- Horses. The stable trains nothing. Find a wild herd, send one tamer in alone, walk the horse home.
- Iron. Take the iron hills, and the forge arms every soldier you own.
Armies, walls and siege
Name your armies, give them a post and a stance, and drag out the line they form on. Walls and towers climb from timber to stone; ordinary weapons barely scratch stone, so taking a fortified town means bringing rams.
- Persistent, coloured armies that answer a call to arms.
- Formations that march at the pace of their slowest member.
- Ramparts, gates and towers your archers can man.
A world that plays back
The world is endless and gets harder the further you push from home. Enemy towns run their own economy behind their own ramparts, send scouts who must get home to report, and raid you with war bands sized to your army. Fail to take one and it swears revenge.
- Camps, raider stockades, Elder Ruins and dragon lairs, each with a name and a legend.
- Fog of war; every site says what it guards before you fight it.
- Four difficulties, from Settler to Bloodmoon.
Play with a friend
Make a world, read out its code, and your friend joins from the app or the browser. The world is saved on a server and stands whether anybody is in it, so you can play together in the evening and alone on a Tuesday.
- Allies share a team; rivals each build their own hold a long march apart.
- Nothing happens to a hold while its owner is away — no raids land on an empty hold.
- Both computers run the game; only orders travel, so it feels local.
From the hold
How to open it the first time
Clanhold is a small project, and paying Apple and Microsoft to sign the app is not worth it yet. Your computer will warn you that it does not know who made it. You only have to do this once; updates open normally.
Mac
- Unzip the download and drag Clanhold into Applications.
- Right-click (or Control-click) Clanhold and choose Open, then Open again in the dialog.
- If macOS only offers Done or Move to Trash: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the line about Clanhold, press Open Anyway, and confirm.
Pick “Apple Silicon” for M1/M2/M3/M4 Macs and “Intel” for older ones ( → About This Mac → Chip / Processor).
Windows
- Run the installer (or unzip the portable build and run Clanhold.exe).
- If a blue “Windows protected your PC” box appears, press More info, then Run anyway.
- If your browser warns about the download itself, choose Keep (in Edge: … → Keep → Show more → Keep anyway).
The portable zip needs no installer: unzip anywhere and run.
Or skip all of it
The browser version needs nothing installed and is the same game. Your saves live in that browser.
What it runs on
| Mac | macOS 12 Monterey or newer · Apple Silicon or Intel |
|---|---|
| Windows | Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit |
| Browser | A current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on a desktop or laptop |
| Memory | 4 GB RAM (8 GB is comfortable) |
|---|---|
| Graphics | Any GPU from the last decade; integrated is fine |
| Input | Mouse and keyboard (a touchpad works; right-click matters) |
| Online | An internet connection to share a world; single player works offline in the app |