Veloren

Veloren is a fully open-source, open-world multiplayer voxel RPG written entirely in Rust — no game engine, no shortcuts. Taking inspiration from Cube World, Dwarf Fortress, and Minecraft, it features a procedurally generated world filled with dungeons, towns, caves, and biomes to explore. The project is community-driven, releases weekly nightly builds, and is licensed under GPL-3.0, making it one of the most ambitious open-source game projects in the Rust ecosystem.

Features

• Procedural world generation — Mountains, deserts, forests, oceans, rivers, caves, and dungeons all generated from scratch each new world
• Multiplayer and singleplayer — Host your own server or join the official public server; singleplayer runs a local server instance
• Combat system — Melee, ranged, and magic combat with a skill-based ability system and character progression
• Crafting and economy — Gather resources, craft equipment, and trade with NPC merchants in procedurally generated towns
• Mounts — Tame and ride animals across the world
• Gliding — Equip a glider to soar between mountain peaks and explore the world from the air
• Day/night cycle and weather — Dynamic lighting, rain, and atmospheric effects
• Custom Rust renderer — Built on wgpu entirely from scratch; no Unity, Unreal, or Godot dependency
• ECS architecture — Uses the specs entity-component system for a highly parallel game simulation
• Active development — Weekly nightly releases, a large contributor community, and regular versioned releases

Installation

The recommended way to install Veloren on Linux is via the Airshipper launcher, which handles downloading and updating the game automatically.

# Download the Airshipper launcher (Linux x86_64)
# Visit https://veloren.net/download for the latest binary or use the options below

# Arch Linux (AUR)
yay -S airshipper
# or install the game directly (no launcher)
yay -S veloren-bin

# Flatpak (all Linux distributions)
flatpak install flathub net.veloren.airshipper
flatpak run net.veloren.airshipper

# Debian / Ubuntu / Fedora
# Download the Airshipper AppImage or binary from the releases page:
# https://gitlab.com/veloren/airshipper/-/releases
chmod +x airshipper-linux
./airshipper-linux

# Nix
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.airshipper

# Build from source (requires Rust nightly and several system libraries)
git clone https://gitlab.com/veloren/veloren.git
cd veloren
cargo build --release

Note: Building from source requires a nightly Rust toolchain and system libraries including libxcb, libvulkan, libasound, and others. See the developer wiki for a full list of build dependencies per distribution.

Quick Start

Once Airshipper is installed and the game is downloaded, launch it from the application menu or via the terminal:

# Launch via Airshipper
airshipper run

# Or run the game binary directly if installed standalone
veloren-voxygen

On first launch, Veloren creates a character and generates a local world (for singleplayer) or connects you to the default public server. The intro tutorial covers basic movement, combat, and crafting.

# Host a dedicated server locally
veloren-server-cli

# The server listens on port 14004 by default
# Clients can connect via the in-game server browser or by entering your IP directly

Gameplay Overview

Veloren places you in a procedurally generated world with no fixed story — the goal is exploration, survival, and progression through increasingly dangerous content.

Architecture

Veloren is a showcase of what a large-scale Rust project looks like in practice. The codebase is split into several crates:

• veloren-voxygen — The client and renderer, built on wgpu for cross-platform GPU rendering
• veloren-server — The simulation server, handling world state, NPC AI, and physics
• veloren-common — Shared game logic, ECS components (via specs), and world generation primitives
• veloren-world — Procedural world and terrain generation algorithms

The renderer uses wgpu directly, giving Veloren a Vulkan/Metal/DX12 backend without depending on a third-party engine. Text rendering and UI are handled by custom systems built atop iced and conrod (historically) and progressively migrated to new infrastructure.

Veloren vs Other Voxel Games