VCMI

VCMI is “an open-source recreation of Heroes of Might & Magic III engine, giving it new and extended possibilities”. It doesn’t contain the game itself: it uses “the original game’s graphics, sound, and text assets”, which you import from a copy you own. The project says: “Buy Heroes III on gog.com, we don’t support piracy!” This site hosts only the engine.

Getting the game files in

You need the original Shadow of Death or Complete edition. VCMI’s Android guide gives two ways:

• GOG installer (recommended): download GOG’s offline backup installer, which comes as an .exe and a .bin. In VCMI, choose to import GOG files and select the .exe, then the matching .bin.
• From a PC: copy the Data, Maps and Mp3 folders from an installed copy to the phone, then point VCMI’s data import at that folder.

After that, the launcher offers to download recommended mods. The game files, saves, logs and mods all live in the app’s own storage, so uninstalling VCMI deletes them; back them up first.

Playing on Android

• It runs in landscape, and haptic feedback is on by default.
• It has basic game controller support, accepts a mouse, and can appear on the Android TV launcher.
• Saves from a different major version of VCMI usually won’t load, so the project suggests finishing ongoing games before updating.

What goes online

• Multiplayer: a global lobby (New Game › Multiplayer › Online Service, at lobby.vcmi.eu) or a local network game. The project’s privacy policy says the host shares its IP address with the other players and that the VCMI team “does not collect and store any multiplayer data”.
• Mods: the launcher reads VCMI’s mod list from GitHub and checks it automatically by default; mods download from GitHub too.
• Updates: by default the launcher checks a file on GitHub for new versions at startup and shows a link to the download page; it doesn’t install anything itself.
• Otherwise, “VCMI team does not collect any data produced by VCMI app.”

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 1.7.5, compiled from the source code and signed with F-Droid’s key. F-Droid removed a Google Play Services library that the upstream code uses for secure connections on Android 4.4, and raised the minimum to Android 5.0. VCMI’s own guide recommends its Google Play version, and also offers APKs on GitHub; those are signed differently, so they can’t update this copy, or the other way round, without uninstalling first.
• This copy is the 64-bit ARM build; F-Droid publishes separate builds for other processor types.
• The engine code is under GPL-2.0 or later and VCMI’s own assets under CC BY-SA 4.0. F-Droid flags no anti-features.
• Brazilian Portuguese: the launcher is about 95% translated and the engine’s own text about 64%, by the project’s translation tracker. The game’s original text is translated by a separate Portuguese (Brazil) mod.
• The 37.5 MB file needs Android 5.0 or later and declares 4 permissions. Our scan found no trackers.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.