fheroes2

fheroes2 is “a recreation of the Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine”, written from scratch, with “high-resolution graphics, improved AI, numerous fixes and user interface improvements”. Its FAQ is clear that it is “not a mod”: it “does not modify any files from the original game”. Like other engines, it doesn’t include the game itself. The project notes that the rights to the original game “belong to former The 3DO Company. These rights were transferred to Ubisoft”, and advises buying it on GOG or the Ubisoft Store. This site hosts only the engine.

Getting the game files in

The APK installs two icons: the game, and fh2 Toolset, which prepares it. Until the original files are in place, the Toolset says the game can’t run and offers three ways in:

• Extract HoMM2 assets: put the ANIM, DATA, MAPS and MUSIC folders of your copy into a ZIP archive, copy it to the phone and select it. The Toolset extracts only those folders. If the ZIP contains GOG’s CD image, it unpacks the game’s videos from that too.
• Import GOG installer (.exe): new in 1.1.17. Select the installer you downloaded from GOG and the Toolset extracts the game from it directly.
• Download HoMM2 demo: opens a copy of the free demo on the Internet Archive, the one the project’s own guide links to, in your browser; fheroes2 doesn’t download anything itself. Then use Extract HoMM2 assets on the downloaded ZIP.

Everything goes into the app’s own storage, Android/data/org.fheroes2/files. The Android guide adds that the music may be on the original CD or in the GOG or Ubisoft installation folder, and that the intro and other videos need the ANIM folder.

If you own the expansion, The Price of Loyalty, include its files too: fheroes2 detects them and uses the expansion’s content. The map editor appears in the main menu only when the expansion’s files are present, so it isn’t available with the demo or the base game alone.

Our guide to game files for Android engines explains Android’s storage rules and how to copy folders from a computer.

Playing on a touch screen

From the Android guide:

• Right-click (for information about anything) is “touch and keep touching on the item of interest and then touch anywhere else on the screen”.
• The map doesn’t scroll at the screen edges; you “press anywhere on the adventure map and slide around”.
• In combat, actions “must be confirmed”: the first touch shows what will happen, the second does it. You can also swipe from the square you want to attack from to the enemy to choose the angle of attack.
• It runs full screen in landscape. To see the clock, turn off full screen under Graphics in the settings. Game controllers and a mouse are supported but not required.

What it changes, and what it doesn’t

• Resolution: you can choose higher resolutions than the original’s.
• AI: written from scratch, and “unlike the original AI, the fheroes2 AI does not have artificial advantages such as seeing the whole map”. Version 1.1.17 improves it in battle and on the adventure map.
• Balance: the FAQ says fheroes2 “does not aim to change the balance” of the game, its factions, creatures or spells.
• Languages: the interface is translated into more than 20 languages, Brazilian Portuguese among them, but the original game’s text and voices “will remain on the initial language”.
• Also new in 1.1.17: much faster start-up and a smooth scrolling option for the adventure map.

What’s in the APK

We unpacked the file. Besides the engine itself it contains:

• No files from the original game.
• fheroes2’s own graphics file (resurrection.h2d), with new images and fixes to original ones, and the translations.
• Seven maps made by players and added to the project, among them Final Invasion, Ravenhold and Eruption. Their authors are credited inside each map; the maps carry no licence of their own beyond the project’s.
• 88 instrument samples for playing the game’s MIDI music, from a freely distributed set of Gravis UltraSound patches. Its author wrote that apart from a few drum and pistol sounds, which this set doesn’t include, “the rest of the patches are fully public domain as far as I know”. That is the author’s understanding rather than a formal licence, and the note is in the project’s source code, not in the APK.
• The SDL and SDL_mixer libraries (zlib licence), and libsmacker (LGPL-2.1), which plays the game’s videos.

About this file

• This is the project’s own release of version 1.1.17 from GitHub, signed by the fheroes2 Resurrection team. On GitHub, the project publishes its Android build only inside a ZIP archive, fheroes2_android.zip, together with the licence and readme files. We check that ZIP against the hash GitHub publishes and host the APK from inside it unchanged.
• The Google Play version, from the same team, is signed with a different key and can’t update this one (see the questions below). A different app on Google Play, Free Heroes 2, is an older, unrelated port that was last updated in 2020.
• The 28.4 MB file runs on ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit, from Android 5.1. It asks for no permissions apart from one Android uses internally, so it has no internet access. Our scan found no trackers.
• fheroes2 is licensed under the GPL-2.0; its source files say “version 2 … or (at your option) any later version”. The APK doesn’t include the licence text, which the project’s ZIP has alongside it: here are the GPL-2.0 licence and the source code of exactly this version (download as an archive).

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Recent releases on the project’s GitHub. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.