Hearthsea is a hex-island board game you play in the browser. Roll for resources, trade for the ones you’re missing and build your way to ten points. Every mode and every island is free to play, against computer rivals or online with friends.
Playing needs a free account. Nothing to download.
Every clip here was captured in the game itself, on the same board you’ll play on. Tap a step to jump to it.
Hearthsea opens in your own hall, not a menu. Your character waits by the open doors, the island glows out on the water, and a board is already laid out on the table.
Nine niches for the trophies you win. Pick which stand there. The ones you haven’t won wait under a blue velvet sheet.
It hangs on the wall above the table, and it follows you to every room you join.
A card tells you how near the next one is, with a game set up to go for it.
Open a room, share its four-letter code and your friends sit down from their own phones, tablets or laptops. Everyone sees the same dice and the same trades as they happen.
Send the code or let people scan the QR. Empty seats take a computer rival.
Add friends once, see who’s online and invite them straight to your table.
Playing in one house? The host’s screen shows a QR code. Everyone scans it and joins, no app needed.
Pick a mode, a map size and a player count, and Hearthsea seats you with people after the same game.
Hosts can pin a room to the harbour board, where anyone looking for a game can sit down.
Tap anyone at the table to see their character, their banner, their level and every trophy in their cabinet.
Lose your signal and you have two minutes to rejoin before a computer player keeps your seat warm.
Gather up to thirty players under one flag. Every game a member plays earns clan points, the clan climbs its own levels and opens new flags and dice, and a leaderboard shows who carried it this week.
Let anyone ask to join, or keep the door shut and invite friends by username.
Clans rank against each other by points, and your flag and motto lead the row.
Open a table and it shows to everyone in the clan, so a game is always one tap away.
Choose one of 17 hand-painted islanders, from the Farmer and the Shepherdess to the Pirate Queen and the Hearth Keeper. Your character stands beside your name at every table, waits for you in the hall, and cheers when you win.
Characters change how you appear, never how you play. Some come as you level up, and every character you unlock is yours to keep.
For everyone
The Farmer and the Shepherdess. Every account starts with both.
Ten to collect
Ten islanders, among them the Miner, the Harbour Master, the Merchant and the Old Tinkerer.
The rarest five
Five legends: the Old King, the Island Queen, the Pirate King, the Pirate Queen and the Hearth Keeper.
Seven characters come free as you level up: the Miner at level 3, the Harbour Master at 5, the Merchant at 10, the Alchemist at 16, the Lady Alchemist at 24, the Warden at 32 and the Lady Commander at 38.
Paint your pieces too: twelve special colours beyond the everyday twelve, six of them gradients that run from the foot of each piece to its roof.
Pick one of twelve painted banners. It hangs in your hall, over your head in every waiting room, and beside your name while a game loads, so the whole table knows whose it is before the first roll.
Fleur-de-lisCommon
Under sailCommon
The oakLevel 5
The krakenLevel 10
The beaconLevel 15
Lion and isleLevel 20
The crownLevel 25
The starsLevel 30
The phoenixLegendary
The sea serpentLegendary
The armadaLegendary
The winged lionLegendaryIn a waiting room every player stands under a banner hung on ropes from the rafters: their own, or one of the hall’s until they choose. It stays rolled up until they tap Ready, then drops open, so you can tell who is ready from across the room.
A building theme restyles your settlements, cities, roads, harbors and ships, in your own player colour. Everyone at the table sees your pieces that way, online too. The Hearthsea set is free for everyone. Viking houses come with your levels, Japanese houses later on, and every set is yours to keep.
Turf-roofed longhouses with dragon gables, a great mead hall behind a palisade, log roads and striped-sail longships at the jetty.
Settlement1 point. It gathers from every island around it.
City2 points. It gathers twice as much.
RoadLinks your towns. The longest road is worth 2 points.
HarborA town on a port: it trades with the bank for less.
ShipSails the open sea in Seafarers, carrying you to new islands.Every piece is drawn in your own player colour. A theme is a look only: it never changes how the game plays.
Twenty-one trophies, each a porcelain statuette won three times over: Bronze, then Silver, then Gold. A few come in your first games. Most of them take real play.
Beat three Veteran bots in one game.
Hold six harbors in a single game.
Win from seven points behind.
Win in twenty rounds or fewer.
Ten friends join with your invite link.
Finish a game thirty days in a row.
Under the sheet until you begin them.
Tap a trophy in the game for a close-up: tilt it, share it, or start a game set up to win it.
Every finished game earns XP, more for a win and more against tougher rivals. The level road shows what is waiting: characters, banners, frames, dice, tables and houses, nineteen rewards in all.
3The MinerA character
4Driftwood frameA frame for your face5The Harbour MasterA character10The kraken bannerA banner
16The AlchemistA character20The lion bannerA banner
32The WardenA character
35Laurel crown frameA frame for your face
38The Lady CommanderA characterDaily goals add three islands to win every day, Bronze, Silver and Gold, with XP for each.
Classic is one island ringed by harbors, with everyone fighting over the same coast. Seafarers spreads the map over open water and adds ships, a pirate and islands hidden in fog. Highlands raises parts of the island into high ground that you climb by mountain pass, with copper mines on top and a yeti that keeps to the heights while the robber keeps to the lowlands.
Free Standard, Balanced, Big Island, Harbormaster, The Oases, The Crossroads, Twin Valleys, The Lagoon, The Long Coast, The Volcano, The Fjords, The Misty Isle, The Hidden Garden, The Delta, The Horseshoe, The Plateau, Smugglers’ Coast, The Orchard, The Old Quarry
Free New Shores
One free game a day Four Islands, Fog Islands, Through the Desert, Six Islands, Drought, Treasure Islands, Oceania, Archipelago, The Narrows, Crescent Isles, The Maelstrom, The Spice Route, The Sunken Kingdom, The Tidewater, The Pirate’s Strait, Lighthouse Rock, The Broken Bridge, The Wreckers’ Reef, The Ice Floes, Twin Harbors
Your first settlement on each new island is worth 2 extra points.
One free game a day The Peaks, The Ridge, Twin Peaks, The Highland Rim, The Tablelands, Mine Valley
Everyone starts in the lowlands. Your first settlement on each stretch of high ground is worth 2 extra points.
No one free tonight? Fill every seat with computer players. They take their own turns, block your corners and make offers you’ll have to think about. Or take the campaign: fifteen chapters across all three modes, each with more and sharper rivals than the last.
A friendly beginner. Builds what it can, hoards cards and rarely trades. Stays home.
A solid player. Plans ahead, trades fairly and sails when an island is worth it.
Plays to win. Blocks your best corners, counts your cards and sails early for every island.
Hearthsea runs in any modern browser. On a phone, turn it sideways and the island fills the screen with the controls along the edges. Add it to your home screen and it opens like an app.
Once a device has signed in, solo games keep working offline.
Yes. Every mode and every island is free to play in your browser, against computer rivals, pass-and-play on one device, or online with friends and strangers, with every table and the campaign. Characters, house themes and paints come with levels or as one-time purchases. You need a free account, made with an email address or Google.
Highlands is Classic with high ground. Some hexes stand up on stone terraces with cliffs all round, and you climb them with mountain passes, which cost 1 brick and 1 ore. Copper mines up there pay a resource of your choice, and a yeti roams the high ground the way the robber roams the lowlands. Your first settlement on each stretch of high ground is worth 2 extra points.
There are twenty-one trophies, each a porcelain statuette you win three times: Bronze, then Silver, then Gold. A few come in your first games; most take real play, such as beating three Veteran bots in one game, holding six harbors, or winning from seven points behind. The ones you win stand in the cabinet of your hall.
Every finished game earns XP. Forty levels hold nineteen rewards along the way: characters, banners, face frames, dice, tables and house themes. The level road in the game shows each one and how far away it is.
Yes. When someone hosts on a shared Wi-Fi network, Hearthsea shows a QR code and a local address. Everyone else scans it with their phone and joins the same table, no app needed.
Hearthsea runs in modern web browsers on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. There is nothing to download. On a phone, turn it sideways and the island fills the screen with the controls along the edges. You can also add it to your home screen and open it like an app.
No. Characters, house themes and paints are cosmetic only, and no pass includes them. The Farmer and the Shepherdess are free; seven more characters come as you level up, and every character you unlock is yours to keep. Nothing you can buy makes you stronger at the table.
Yes, for free. Choose Settler, Merchant or Veteran rivals for each seat. Computer players take their own turns, build toward the win, and make and answer trade offers, so you bargain with them as you would across a real table.
Reach the target score on your own turn. Settlements are worth 1 point, cities 2, victory point cards 1, and Longest Road and Largest Army 2 each. Classic games run to 10 points (11 on Harbormaster), Seafarers maps to 12, 13 or 14 and Highlands maps to 12 or 13, and you can change the target before a game. The full rules cover the rest.
The game’s own subreddit, run by the developer. Players post room codes every day, show off the islands they won on and hear about each update first. Bugs and ideas posted there get read.
Open a room, post the code under Looking for players, and fill the seats with people instead of bots.
Every new version gets its notes there: what changed, what was fixed, what’s next.
Share the island you won on and ask how others would have opened.
A pinned thread every Friday for one big night of games.
r/Hearthsea
Run by the Hearthsea developer