Unknown Horizons

I played Unknown Horizons in high school — one of those open-source gems you'd find on a forum thread at 1 AM and lose a whole weekend to. It scratched the Anno itch when I couldn't afford the real thing, and I never forgot it.

Years later I found out the project had gone quiet. Dead upstream, no updates, just sitting there. That bothered me more than it probably should have.

So I'm bringing it back under TuningFork. Same game, kept alive and actually improving — because "rescuing abandoned mods, one fork at a time" turns out to apply to games too.

### What's new in 2026.2

**The Aristocrats tier.** The original team designed six population tiers and shipped five — Aristocrats stayed on paper for over a decade. Now it's playable end to end: coffee production chains, garment workshops, theatres, palaces, and three new citizen needs to keep your upper class happy.

**Military depth.** The new Ship of the Line (12 guns, 400 hull) joins the frigate at the boat builder. AI opponents build real fleets, pirates grow bolder as the game progresses, and the AI now raises wooden tower defenses around its settlements.

### Where it goes from here

Fleet commands and blockades. Diplomacy with teeth — trade agreements, tribute, AI rivals that remember betrayals. Multiplayer resurrection. Performance for sprawling late-game cities. No dates, just direction: we'd rather ship than promise.

### The deal

Free, open source (GPL-2.0), Linux x86_64. Fixes attempted in this release — please report bugs.

Source: https://github.com/tuningfork-mods/unknown-horizons

Tips welcome at ko-fi.com/tuningfork.