183 MB
Build an island colony where every loaf, plank, and trade route has somewhere important to be.
Unknown Horizons is a free simulation game released under GNU GPL v2. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, needs about 183 MB of disk space, and requires no account, payment or trial. On a computer, the fastest route is the PlayBound Launcher. On a phone or tablet, use the official store or site instead.
One-click install
PlayBound fetches the official release — no third-party mirrors.
Open the official Unknown Horizons releases page and download the Windows installer for the latest packaged stable release.
Run the installer, keep the default components unless you have a specific reason to change them, and finish setup.
Launch Unknown Horizons, review the resolution and language settings, then start the tutorial before building a free-play settlement.
Minimum
Windows 7 / Wine · dual-core CPU · 2 GB RAM · OpenGL 2.0 GPU · 500 MB storage
Recommended
Windows 10 / Wine · quad-core CPU · 4 GB RAM · dedicated GPU · 1 GB storage
Yes. Unknown Horizons is open-source software released under the GNU GPL, with no purchase or paid currency required.
It is a real-time economy and city-building strategy game focused on island settlement, production chains, trade, and diplomacy.
The latest broadly packaged stable Windows release is 2019.1. Development continues in the source repository, so PlayBound lists it as Testing until newer Windows packaging is verified.
The project has included multiplayer code and server tooling, but current packaged multiplayer reliability has not been verified by PlayBound.
Yes. unknown-horizons met PlayBound's "actively maintained" criterion when last checked on 2026-08-30 — it had a release or meaningful commit within the preceding twelve months.
Yes. The source code is published at github.com/unknown-horizons/unknown-horizons under Open Source. Open source is a nice property when it is present — it is not required to clear the PlayBound Bar.