A field note from the archipelago

Inselkampf

The original. The revivals. And what came next.

A small island. A real opponent on the other side of it. Construction in hours, fleets in hours, a raid that resolves overnight and lands in your inbox at breakfast. From 2005 to 2014, that was Inselkampf — and a small handful of us never quite let it go.

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What Inselkampf was

The game where you expand your island. Inselkampf was the classic browser strategy game built around exactly that — settling an island, raising a navy, and contesting the archipelago with other governors in real time.

Inselkampf — German for island battle — was a free, browser-based multiplayer strategy game developed by Sven Schramm and launched in 2005. You started with one island. You raised a Main House, a Lumber Camp, a Stone Quarry. You queued research at the Laboratory. You built a Harbour and, eventually, you found the nerve to send your first ship across the water.

Time mattered. Construction took real hours. Fleets took real hours to arrive. A raid you launched at midnight wouldn't resolve until morning. You'd check in twice a day, queue an action, and find out what happened later. Battles were resolved server-side; the report appeared in your inbox.

It was, in retrospect, the slow-strategy sweet spot: deep enough to think about, slow enough to live with. Surprisingly cruel, deeply social, and unmistakably its own thing.

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The shutdown

By the early 2010s the browser-game audience had moved on. Mobile-first was the new default. Flash was sunsetting. Slow, asynchronous PvP with a small dedicated audience didn't compete with the faster, monetisation-heavy genres taking over the browser space.

On March 15, 2014, the developer announced the shutdown. Servers went dark. Alliances dissolved. The handful of forum threads still tracking the game went quiet. For the most part, the genre went with it.

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The people keeping the flame alive

Inselnova isn't the only project carrying the Inselkampf torch. A small community of developers and players has been quietly rebuilding the game across the years. If you want the feel of the original — the visuals, the German-language UI, the exact pace — these two are the closest you'll get:

Kampfinsel
kampfinsel.com

A faithful revival of the original game. If you played Inselkampf and want that exact thing back, this is the closest place to look.

Visit →
Inselkampf.net
inselkampf.net

A long-running community-run version that keeps the German-language Inselkampf experience available for the people who never wanted it to end.

Visit →

We're not affiliated with either of them — but we're rooting for them. The more people who get to play this kind of game, the better. If you're the kind of player who wants the original back the way it was, those two are a better fit than Inselnova. If you want something built from the same DNA but reimagined for modern browsers and mobile, read on.

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Inselnova — a different take

Inselnova is a separate project with a different goal. Rather than recreating the original pixel-for-pixel, it picks up the design instincts and rebuilds them for a different era of browsers and players.

What we kept

  • The real-time pace — construction, training, and travel happen on the clock. Our current world runs at ×5 speed, so a campaign lasts weeks rather than months.
  • Persistent worlds that keep going when you log out.
  • Real consequences — a lost fleet is lost for real.
  • Asynchronous PvP. Reports arrive in your inbox.

What's new

  • Mobile-first UI. Same account on phone and desktop.
  • Live map and reports — no page reloads.
  • A coin-anchored economy with a proper marketplace and bazaar.
  • A new lumen resource and a pantheon of gods to court for blessings.
  • A workshop for upgrading units and unlocking specialisations.
  • Honors and achievements that track standing across the archipelago.
  • A council-affairs system that turns governance into recurring narrative choices.
  • English-first, with German on the way.

Come and play

Free to play. Browser-based. Mobile-first. No install.

Create your governor More about Inselnova →