To whoever would wear the Crown
Britain and Ireland lie in a hundred shires, and every one of them has a lord who thinks it his. You begin with one castle, a few farms and a handful of soldiers.
Make it strong. Feed your people, train soldiers, send out scouts, and take the next village - then the town - then the shire. Lay out your own walls and towers, and man them when the enemy comes with ladders and rams.
The other lords will write to you: with offers, with demands, and now and then with insults. Answer them as you see fit. Rule England, and the Crown is yours - for as long as you can keep it.
Play it alone, in your own time - or in the online world, where some of the other lords are real people.
What you will see
Britain and Ireland to scale, with nearly three thousand real towns and villages. Your own fly your flag.
Your town, built plot by plot: farms and houses, a barracks, a market - and the walls you lay out yourself.
Battles you can watch and command: archers on the walls, ladders, rams and boiling oil.
The lords of the realm write letters. Some of them even mean what they say.
Three ways to play
In your browser
- Press "Play now".
- Wait while the game loads - about 28 MB the first time, much less after that.
- Play. The realm you play alone is kept in this browser, on this device.
Best on a computer with a mouse, in a new Chrome or Edge. The Windows and Android games run faster. If the browser's stored data is cleared, a realm played alone in it is gone.
On a Windows PC
- Get the file (54 MB).
- Right-click it and choose "Extract All".
- Open the folder and double-click "StNicholasCastle.exe".
Windows 10 or 11. The first time, Windows may say it "protected your PC": press "More info", then "Run anyway". The game is not signed by a company.
On an Android phone or tablet
- Get the file on the phone (69 MB).
- Open it. When the phone asks, allow this once: "install unknown apps".
- Press "Install". If Play Protect asks, "Install anyway".
Android 7 or newer. The game is not in the Play Store. For an iPhone or iPad there is no app. "Play now" in its browser may work - it has not been tried there.
Have the game already? Then you need nothing from this page. Start the game: when there is a newer version, the title screen says so, with a button "Update Game".
One Britain, shared
"Play online" takes you into a world that runs day and night. The old lords are in it - and so are other players, each with a castle of their own.
- Make an alliance, and send soldiers to stand guard in a friend's castle.
- Declare a war - the other side is told at once, and the war begins some hours later, so they have time to look to their walls.
- Call your army back when your own walls are in danger.
- A newcomer is left in peace by other players for the first days.
- Your lord lives in the world, not on one device: log in from the browser, the PC or the phone and it is the same lord.
For parents
- Nobody can write to your child. Players cannot type messages to each other. Every message is picked from the game's own book of about 650 ready-made sentences, so no player can send another their own words.
- It is a game of castles and battles, and the battles show blood. The Settings window has a switch, "Blood in battles", that turns it off.
- No adverts, nothing to buy. There is no shop in the game and nothing in it costs money.
- Played alone, the Windows and Android games need no account and no internet.
- An account for the online world is a made-up name and a password. No real name and no date of birth is asked for. An e-mail address may be given, only to get a forgotten password back.
- What is kept about a player is written down in plain words: what the server keeps.
This world is run by the person who gave you this address, not by a company. If something is not as it should be, tell them.
New in version 1.9.2
- The game can now be played in a web browser, on the game's own website.
- A battle left waiting when the game was closed is fought first when you come back.
- A battle you command in the open field no longer wipes out the beaten side: those who ran limp home.
- Men on the castle walls are no longer counted as lost after a defence that was won.
- Closing the news of a battle with the X no longer leaves the next battle waiting.
- The minus on the Army tab asks before it sends men home.
- Letters of a house that has fallen, and offers to end a war that is over, can no longer be answered.
- A vassal who joins your realm brings his mines, quarries and camps with him.
- About thirty smaller mends, in the game and in the online world's server.