Zubrenn: First Claim is a turn-based, hex-grid 4X strategy game. Explore a procedurally generated continent of fractal terrain, biomes, and winding rivers; found colonies, work the land for Food, Material, Energy, and Wealth, raise farms, factories, and docks, and lay roads, monorails, and canals to link your settlements. Compete with configurable alien AI opponents and race to build the largest civilization on the planet.
Linux • macOS • Windows
Every game generates a fresh continent with fractal terrain (diamond-square / fBm), eleven biomes — sea, grassland, plains, hills, forest, jungle, desert, wetlands, mountains, and frozen ice — plus elevation and rivers that flow from the peaks to the sea.
Enable east–west wrapping so the left and right edges of the map meet, and scroll continuously all the way around the world.
Rivers flow downhill along cell borders to the sea, give adjacent land extra food, and feed canals. Every mountain region spawns at least two rivers.
Found colonies in Biodomes and build Farms, Solar Panels, Factories, Docks, Air Fields, Barraks, Graineries, Warehouses, Banks, and energy storage within your zone of control.
Each colony works surrounding tiles to produce Food, Material, Energy, and Wealth and keeps its own stored resources. A building only contributes its production, upkeep, and storage while its cell is worked — idle buildings do nothing.
Each colony accumulates stored happiness from its food balance. Positive happiness grows the population; negative happiness shrinks it — manage your workers to keep colonists thriving.
A tech-like progression gates advanced structures — a Factory needs a Solar Panel, a Farm needs a Solar Panel, Graineries need a Farm, and more — so colonies grow in meaningful stages.
Build Roads and Monorails overland, dig Canals along cell borders, and raise Docks and Air Fields. Paths are plotted cell-by-cell, and road/monorail bridges can span a single sea tile.
Colonies linked by road, monorail, river/canal, a sea route (both with Docks), or an air route (both with Air Fields in range) cover each other's shortfalls, borrowing from whichever connected colony stores the most.
Grow a colony past the population threshold and launch a new biodome to a distant land cell. Materials and colonists travel overland, with arrival time based on terrain movement cost and river crossings.
A configurable number of alien species establish and grow their own colonies and compete with you for the best land. If an AI turn ever stalls, Ctrl+Esc force-ends it.
The map starts hidden under fog except a circle around a random land tile. Founding a colony reveals the land around it, and explored visibility is saved and restored with your game.
Scattered terrain bonuses — from Morrowback Herds and Starfall Alloy Craters to Aurora Spires and Echo Monoliths — enrich the cells they occupy with extra Food, Material, Energy, Wealth, or Happiness.
Area-of-Control view, minimap, hover tooltips showing terrain yields, a colony work view with per-cell base + bonus breakdowns, and a statistics panel with population, growth, and stored resources.
A looping original theme plays in the game window, with on/off and volume controls in Settings ▸ Audio.
Almost every rule and all content lives in config.json — terrain yields, building costs, economy constants, and more — so the whole ruleset can be tuned without touching code.
Save your campaign and pick up right where you left off, with explored map visibility preserved between sessions.
Built with Electron for Linux, macOS, and Windows on both x86-64 and ARM64.
Explore a hex continent of biomes,
elevation, and flowing rivers.
Assign workers to tiles and watch
per-cell Food, Material, and Energy.
Raise farms, factories, and docks,
and lay roads, monorails, and canals.
See your zones of control, the minimap,
and your reach across the world.
New games can be created with
extensive customization.
The Nexus Data Core database provides
extensive information on game objects.
Buy Zubrenn once for the desktop game, then explore endless procedurally generated worlds, found colonies, and race alien AI opponents to the largest civilization. A license key also removes the startup splash and periodic reminder.
A turn-based, hex-grid 4X strategy game for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Zubrenn: First Claim is a turn-based, hex-grid 4X-style strategy game built with Electron. You explore a procedurally generated alien continent, establish colonies, work the land, build infrastructure, and compete with alien AI opponents for resources, with the goal of building the largest civilization you can.
Start a New Game and choose your map size, water, rivers, wrapping, and number of AI opponents. Right-click a habitable land cell to establish a colony, double-click a biodome to assign workers to surrounding tiles, build Farms, Solar Panels, Factories, and transport within your zone of control, then end your turn and watch your population and resources grow.
Each colony works surrounding tiles to produce Food, Material, Energy, and Wealth and keeps its own stored resources. A building only contributes its production, upkeep, and storage while its cell is worked. Each year the colony stores excess production up to its worked buildings' caps and draws from storage to cover shortfalls; if a resource runs out, you idle buildings to fit the budget.
Every colony builds up stored happiness from its food balance. While stored happiness is positive the colony grows, and when it is negative it shrinks. The growth rate combines the Biodome's base rate, a food-driven happiness bonus, and building growth modifiers.
Yes. Colonies you own that are linked by road or monorail, a river/canal path, a sea route (both with Docks), or an air route (both with Air Fields within range) can cover each other's shortfalls, borrowing from whichever connected colony stores the most of a resource.
Yes. You set the number of alien species when you create a map. They establish and grow their own colonies and take their turns automatically. If an AI turn ever stalls, Ctrl+Esc force-ends it.
Almost every rule and all content lives in config.json — terrain yields and movement costs, building costs and bonuses, economy constants, colony-founding thresholds, and the alien name list — so the ruleset is highly tunable without changing code.
Zubrenn is built with Electron and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, on both x86-64 and ARM64. macOS ships a notarized .dmg; Windows ships an NSIS installer; Linux includes .deb and .rpm packages.
Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Defender make it very difficult to download software from the internet these days. See this page for instructions on how to download and install perfectly safe and free software from the internet.
No. One optional license key is good for all platforms and all computers that you as an individual own. Send an email to Glowing Cat Software for information about commercial licenses.
Yes. Zubrenn source is available under the GPL 3.0 license.
Yes. Zubrenn is donationware — purchasing a license is optional, but it removes the startup splash and periodic reminder and helps support open source software development.
Download Zubrenn: First Claim and build the largest civilization on an
alien world — on Linux, macOS, and Windows.