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River Oath

The River Intendancy has stolen the dike money, and the old flood-markers say the Great Flood will come in twenty years. Lead a band of outlaws on the Long Jade, win the people over, and bring the Intendancy down before the water does: alone against the computer, with up to four players at one computer, or online with friends.

Play in your browser Download How it plays Player's guide Strategy guide

What it is

River Oath is a turn-based strategy game in the retro style of Sengoku and The Broken Seal. Each month your band gives a task to every place it holds: gather rice, raise and train men, repair a dike, help a hungry town, steal an official's ledgers, or raid a garrison. What you do becomes a tale, and tales travel along the river from town to town, so the people downstream hear of you first.

There are three ways to win: petition the court with proof of the Intendancy's crimes, hold the great lock and the river mouth for a year, or bring down the officials one by one until the court offers an amnesty. If the dikes are still standing when you win, the river is kept; if not, the pardon is a hollow one.

Every place, person and tale in the Lian Empire is invented.

Screenshots

The main screen: the river map with its numbered places, the place and band panels on the left, and the month's messages below.
The river and the month's tasks.
A hex battle at Salt Weir: the river runs across the field, the band's units face the garrison near the fort, and the attack keys are along the bottom.
A raid on Salt Weir.
The Tales view of the map, with each place coloured by how well its people think of the band.
The Tales view: goodwill along the river.
Choosing a leader: six leaders listed, with Wen Shuyi's portrait, stats, talents and story.
Choosing a leader.

How it plays

The river

  • 22 places on the Long Jade and its two branches
  • Boats go two links downstream in a month, one upstream
  • Spring floods open the marsh channels, autumn opens the fords, winter freezes the upper river
  • Six dikes decay every month; the Great Flood breaks the weak ones

Bands and people

  • Six bands, 55 people, each with a portrait and a story
  • Might, Craft and Heart, talents, loyalty, wounds, and friendships and grudges
  • Tales of kindness, daring, cruelty and slander set each town's goodwill
  • Five officials with their own plans, and a garrison commander who marches

Battles

  • Hex battles over days of morning, afternoon and night
  • Boats on the river, drifting with the current at night
  • Ambush from the reeds, arrows, charges, burning bridges and bribes
  • Fight them yourself, or let the computer fight

Players

  • One to four players taking turns at one computer, with a hand-over screen
  • Or nobody: watch the computer play every band
  • Two beginnings, three levels, ten save slots and autosaves
  • Keyboard or mouse throughout

The player's guide covers the rules in a few pages; the game's Help (key H) is the same guide. New players should read the strategy guide (also as a text file, and in every download): how to open, keep the band fed, spread your tales, mind the dikes, choose a way to win and fight a battle.

In your browser, and online

River Oath plays in your web browser too, with nothing to install: the same game, screens and music. Saves are kept in your browser; Export and Import move a campaign between the browser and the desktop edition, which open the same files.

The browser edition also has Multi-Player games online, for 2 to 6 players. Make a game, send your friends its invite code, and each choose a band. Everyone gives their month's tasks whenever they like; the month ends when all have ended their turn, or at the deadline the game's creator chose (12 hours to 3 days), and the computer gives the tasks of anyone who has not. You fight your own raids on the battle field. An email tells you when a new month begins.

Play River Oath

Installing

Windows

  1. Download River-Oath-0.1.2-windows-x64.zip and unzip it anywhere, for example in your Documents folder.
  2. Run river_oath.exe from the unzipped folder. Keep the assets folder beside it.
  3. The program is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you the first time: choose More info, then Run anyway.

Linux

  1. Download river-oath_0.1.2_amd64.deb and install it: 
    sudo apt install ./river-oath_0.1.2_amd64.deb
  2. Start River Oath from your applications menu, or run river-oath.

On other Linux systems, use the portable download: extract it and run ./river_oath, or ./install.sh to install it for your user with a menu entry. Music plays through PipeWire, PulseAudio or ALSA (pw-play, paplay or aplay).

Saves and options are kept in %LOCALAPPDATA%\river_oath on Windows and ~/.config/river_oath/ on Linux. Alt+Enter switches full screen.

Downloads

Version 0.1.2, 7 November 2026.

River Oath 0.1.2 for Windows

For 64-bit Windows 10 and 11. Unzip the folder anywhere and run river_oath.exe; keep the assets folder beside it.

River-Oath-0.1.2-windows-x64.zip · 7.0 MB · 7 November 2026

SHA-256 fec98699a8d5db7dbfd3f02d63ee4ff8733740efc59406f31cfbe1fd7c1fe583

Download

River Oath 0.1.2 for Linux

Package for 64-bit Ubuntu 24.04 or later, Kubuntu, Debian 13, Mint 22 and other Debian-based systems.

river-oath_0.1.2_amd64.deb · 11.9 MB · 7 November 2026

SHA-256 186bcdbbb9595c9d27924a97111a6e42d94fa64b34dc48cf7da14b4384869aa0

Download

River Oath 0.1.2 for Linux, portable

For other 64-bit Linux systems, or to install without sudo: extract it and run ./river_oath, or install.sh to add it to your menu.

river-oath-0.1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz · 8.4 MB · 7 November 2026

SHA-256 169acf590fa1e28251f709b203643bfc2fe565667b35dea6c6e7e2302b86818b

Download

River Oath 0.1.2 source code

Free Pascal and Lazarus source, the world data and its generator, the tests and the build scripts for Linux and Windows. GNU GPL version 2 or later.

river-oath-0.1.2-source.tar.gz · 6.0 MB · 7 November 2026

SHA-256 28879d11b408e2a13acf1dc4289213915c10d9c961aeeddcb37306840b4081f3

Download

Checksums

SHA-256 checksums of all the files above.

SHA256SUMS · 0 KB · 7 November 2026

SHA-256 d823af89e69080bbb3b65142e52346a8aeeed47b5a8bf226ac0b310b7f0350db

Download

This is the first release. The Windows version is built here and tested under Wine, not yet on a real Windows PC, and the computer bands are not balanced yet: in the first beginning one band wins far more often than the others. If something doesn't work or plays badly, please let me know.

What's new

0.1.2: a strategy guide for new players, in every download, on the wiki, and linked from the game's help and the browser page.

0.1.1: the browser edition, with online games for 2 to 6 players. Battles now come out exactly the same in the desktop and browser editions, so a campaign moves freely between them, and the game also saves itself at the start of each month.

0.1.0: the first release: the full campaign with two beginnings, hot seat for up to four players, the hex battle, saves, and the four pieces of music.

Licence and source

River Oath is Copyright © 2026 Michael Slater. It is free software: you may copy, change and share it under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version. It comes with no warranty. The retro screen, font and hex battle come from Sengoku and The Broken Seal. The source is in river-oath-0.1.2-source.tar.gz above; it is written in Free Pascal with Lazarus, and builds for Linux, and for Windows on Windows or by cross-compiling. The browser edition is written in TypeScript; its source is linked from the bar at the top of the game page.

Contact

Questions, bug reports and suggestions are welcome. Email slaterm@theiguru.au, or leave a message for the sysop on the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS (telnet bbs.theiguru.au).

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