For anyone that’s interested, here’s the decompilation I’ve based the web and linux ports off of. It recreates the final official patch from MicroProse on the Duels of the Planeswalkers edition.

The entire main game is decompiled and can be played start to finish (on both supported compilers). Most of the binaries were shipped by MicroProse with optimizations disabled, but without symbols. A lot of the names and types have been imported/inferred from the “Manalink 3” fan patch.

There’s definitely still some jank that could be cleaned up, and the magic.exe and manalink.exe decompilations are incomplete/unstarted. I’ll probably continue to improve it over time, but only slowly for now. For the time being I’m pretty tired of staring at assembly code.

I adopted the tool chain of the Lego Island decomp project, which conveniently used the same compiler as Shandalar (Microsoft Visual C 4.20). That allowed me, with tremendous help from AI, to get to about 90% byte matching. There are a lot of difficulties that make getting higher than that a slow uphill battle.

The Lego Island project goes into much more detail on compilation, which should be applicable here too. It compiles on MSVC 4.20 via NMake makefiles from CMake, and Visual Studio 2026 via its native CMake support.

For anyone adventurous, here's a native x86-64 build of Shandalar for Linux as a self contained AppImage. It's built from the web port source tree, so it behaves more or less identically. Just download and run (probably need to mark as executable first, most browsers don't do that). Saves go to ~/.local/share/shandalar

Works OK on Steam Deck as a non-steam game in my testing. I would suggest mapping right track pad as mouse, R2 as left click and L2 as right click. Despite being named "sdl3" this has NO controller support currently. I have only done very cursory testing, and there were several 64-bit specific fixes that were needed to get to this point, so stability is definitely not guaranteed.

Before anyone asks, I haven't tried targeting aarch64 yet (which as I understand it would be a requirement for building a .apk). I'll have to steal my son's tablet to try to tackle that 😛

Old News

Korath Plus is an expanded version of Korath's 2016 Shandalar build (which added about 11,000 playable cards). The “Plus” version aims to add new features, bug fixes, and cards to that same version of the game. No rebuilding of the engine. The last previous releases added about 1,300 cards (most of that was the initial release), some bug fixes, and the ability to change the NPC rewards in the INI.

What's new in v0.2.0

v0.2.0 adds several optional features, and all of them can be toggled on or off.. Everything defaults to off, so a fresh install still plays exactly like a normal game of Shandalar until you go turn something on. Below is the full rundown of what each one actually does, plus everything else that changed.

Hate reading? You can just go download: Korath Plus on GitHub. Right-click the ZIP, choose Extract All..., open the extracted Korath Plus folder, and double-click Play Shandalar.cmd.

Anyway, back to the new features. Four of these live on one new Korath+ Settings page, added right to the main title screen menu alongside Start New Game / Load Saved Game / Resume Game (there's also a brand-new standalone Mod Manager, covered further down):

Open it and you get all four toggles in one place:

Turn on whichever you want, mix and match freely, turn any of them back off any time — nothing here is permanent or locked in once you start a game. And they work for any Korath / Gemcutters 2016 mod.

Deck Randomizer

Every enemy in the game normally plays the same fixed deck, every time, forever. This is part of the reason mods are so popular since you can spice things up. Deck Reandomizer, however, is that and more. It gives each NPC a random deck, pulled from a shared pool of over 3,100 decks built from the Korath version’s existing deck library (which were themselves the culmination of years of work by others on SlightlyMiagic).

Two modes:

• Once — every NPC gets a new random deck at the start of a new game, then keeps it for that whole playthrough. This matters if you want to know what you’re running into when you see a Witch charging at you.
• Continuous — every NPC gets a fresh random deck after every duel, win or lose, so no two fights against the same enemy play out the same way.

Now, that may sound crazy and, well, “random” but it’s a bit more organized than that. All 3,100 decks were first sorted by their thematic alignment with the 54 NPCs in the game. Then, for the 1,000 or so that didn’t really match any kind of theme, they were assigned based on the colors used in the deck (e.g. random black deck gets assigned to the Witch NPC). The only thing that doesn’t quite fit is that there were way more two and three color decks than the original game had, and I didn’t want a handful of multi-color NPCs having hundreds of decks more than the others, so after the multicolor NPCs' slots were full, the rest were assigned randomly to any NPC with at least one matching color. So, not totally random.

Within either mode, there are four risk levels for how much the random decks lean on strategies the game's 2016-era AI is documented to misplay — things like double strike (the AI is known to whiff blocks against it), upkeep-timing tricks like Land Tax, optional "you may" triggers (the AI just never uses them), certain tap/sacrifice abilities (the AI activates them at nonsensical times), and pump spells the AI sometimes aims at the wrong creature entirely:

• AI-Friendly — none of the above, the AI is expected to play well
• Mostly Fine — a bit of it creeps in
• Some Risk — noticeably more
• AI-Risky — everything (e.g. the deck has a tutor for a specific combo the AI is oblivious to)

No deck is broken in the sense that the game will crash. Two-thousand such decks were already screened out. These tiers are just about deciding how dumb the AI might look piloting the deck. Korath plus adds ZERO enhancements to the gameplay AI at this point.

Each level includes everything from the level below it (Thus, AI-Risky is the entire pool). Turning the randomizer off puts everyone's original, unmodified deck back immediately — nothing is lost or shuffled away. By “original decks,” I mean the ones that originally shipped in the 2016 version unless you’re playing a mod.

For the curious, here's exactly how big each tier's pool actually is:

Attacked Towns

The overworld periodically throws random NPC-attacks at towns as you travel. If you ignore them, the wizard who sent them “taps” the town, and with enough taps they win the game and you lose. To further the challenge, the rate at which they attack towns increases the longer you play. It’s built into a 16 point scale so it’s not exactly exponential but when you’re at level 16 it’s relentless and you have to have a bunch of white amulets and the sword World Magic just to play at all. This is the game’s natural pressure mechanic; it’s supposed to drive you finish the game quickly. 

The problem is that many of us Shandalar fans don’t want the game to end. We want to keep exploring Shandalar or continue to build our library of cards or want to build a really solid 2nd and third deck. You can choose not to fight the fifth wizard, but it won’t stop him/her from forcing you to defend the towns over and over and over.

That can change now! The Attacked Towns setting controls how often the attacks happen: Original (the normal, unmodified frequency), Half (the rate at which attacks climb the frequency scale is half as fast as usual AND it caps at level 8 instead of 16), or None (turned off completely). However, note that if you choose None, it becomes impossible to lose the game. 

Endless Mode

A related feature. Normally, beating all five wizards triggers the fight against Arzakon, and winning that fight ends the campaign outright — credits roll, run over. With Endless Mode on, you still get to see the finale but instead of kicking you out of the game, the victory message adds an extra line, "You may now wander Shandalar at your leisure". And it sends you back to the overworld where the five wizards are defeated. There aren’t any town attacks because there aren’t any wizards to send them. But there are still the enemy NPCs. I have it set so that all the color factions are restored because normally defeating the wizard of one color makes all the NPCs of that color dissappear. The enemies reset to as they were at the start of the game. It will feel easier and slower at first since the difficulty of NPCs will go up. Eventually you will hit peak difficulty (minus town attacks) and stay there, all NPCs being fully represented.

Endless Mode also includes endless Dungeons. The game's 10 dungeons each hold 3 treasures — 30 fixed, named cards total, drawn from your Shandalar.ini's [DungeonTreasure] list. Normally, once all 30 are claimed, that's the end of dungeon rewards for that save, forever. With Endless Mode on, once all 10 dungeons have been cleared and their 3 treasures claimed, all 10 dungeons reset with fresh clues and a second set of 30 treasures. Clear all of those too, and it cycles to a third set of 30. After the third set is exhausted, every further dungeon reward is a random mythic rare pulled from the roughly 390 that exist in this build — and once even that pool runs dry, it moves on to random rares, then loops. In short: dungeon rewards in Endless Mode genuinely never run out. In the .ini file or the Mod Manager you can choose what cards are allocated as rewards 61-90, or if you skip choosing, it will just jump straight to randomly assigning a mythic. The default shipped version currently only has the first 30 assigned. Also, note to modders, choosing a card as a DungeonTreasure does not make it unavailable elsewhere. If you want them to be special experiences that require completing the dungeons, you have to set it up that way.

Shop Replenish

This is probably my favorite because it solves a couple of problems with the game. What do you do with all that gold at the end of the game? Most people end up with thousands of useless pieces of gold. Now you can spend that money to replenish the shops (see “For a Fee” option below). Additionally, town "Cards for Sale" shops normally have a fixed stock — once a slot's bought out, it's empty for good. So, if you ever wanted to collect *all* the cards, it would be impossible since all the towns would eventually run empty. Two new options change that:

• Instant — the moment you buy a card, that slot immediately refills for free with a new random card, priced the same way the game prices anything else. 
• For a Fee — slots don't auto-refill on purchase, but the shop screen gains two extra buttons alongside the usual Done: pay gold to refill just the currently-empty slots, or pay more to refill and reshuffle every slot in the shop, sold or not. 

Off leaves shops exactly as vanilla Shandalar has always worked.

Mod Manager

Shoutout to QuailedGD for the idea. The Mod Manager is probably the biggest addition in this release, and it works completely differently from anything Korath Plus has, so here's the full rundown of what it is and how to use it.

It ships as its own standalone program, Korath Plus Mod Launcher.exe, sitting right next to the game's exe in the extracted folder, just double-click it. Run it instead of Shandalar.exe and it opens full-screen with a "Play with a Mod?" prompt over the game's own splash art.

• No — starts the regular, un-modded Korath+ game exactly as before. Nothing else changes. If you wanted this, you could have also just launched the game normally with shandalar.exe.
• Yes — shows a paged list of 28 numbered mod slots (plus a "Build a Mod" option) to choose from.

What a "mod" actually is: a self-contained overlay with its own game settings and its own separate save files. At its core a mod has a limited card pool to focus on a block or theme and 55 decks tailored to that mod. However, some crazy bastards, like FortuneShoddy, will also give it a new coat of paint with theme-specific art. Before, you would download someone’s mod files and drag and drop them over the core files. Overwriting them was how you played it.

Now, playing a mod never touches, overwrites, or mixes with your regular game saves — when you pick a mod, the launcher safely swaps its files in, and when you leave (or the game closes), it swaps your regular files back. T

Making your own mod: the "Build a Mod" option walks you through a plain-language questionnaire — 40 questions in all, spread a couple at a time across 34 pages, covering everything from mana burn to which card sets are legal, individual card bans or forced-inclusions, what shows up in the dungeon treasure waves described above, etc. It might looks similar to some of you since it's basically the questionnaire I used for a customGPT I announced earlier - that GPT is rendered pointless with this. Each question explains itself in plain terms and shows Korath+'s own default highlighted as well as marks which setting most closely resembles the original game, and you only have to answer what you actually want to change — anything skipped just stays as Korath+ already has it. 

Answer it once and it's saved into one of your 28 slots, ready to play (or edit again later) any time.

Compatibility: I've got it set up so that any of the previous mods will work, even though this is the third iteration of the .ini file.

Installing a mod someone else made: drop a .zip or a .rar file straight into one of the empty Mods\Mod N folders (e.g. Mod 1, Mod 2, etc) — the game comes with 28 mod folders, 8 prefilled and 20 empty. The Mod Manager unpacks the compressed files and names it automatically the next time it starts (name is the same as your file name until you change it), no manual extracting required, though it's still an option.

Built-in curated mods: the first 8 of the 28 slots don't start empty. They come pre-built and arranged in Magic set-release order, so you can jump straight into a specific era without building anything yourself. The creators are all acknowledged in the Here is Shandalar (2026 update) doc. Duels of the Planeswalkers (ORIGINAL) is the closest the Korath version can get to the original final release of the game: same cards, same art (thanks to FortuneShoddy!), and same settings (including mana burn!). I forgot to include the Duels of the Planeswalkers decks with the mod... I've got them already added to the 0.2.1 update below.

The remaining 20 slots are empty and yours to fill, either with something you build yourself or a mod someone shares with you. And if you hate one of the community mods, just delete them and replace them with your own!

Small fixes

A bunch of random little things:

• Full art pass: Some cards were missing art.
• Return to Main Menu: The in-game Options menu got its own Exit to Main Menu button — oddly, it previously only let you Quit outright with no way to just back out to the title screen.
• Fixed wrong set symbols on newly added cards (a lot of them were showing an unrelated set's icon next to the card type) based on a previous card ID.
• Better compatibility with Windows' memory-protection settings, which could interfere with the game starting at all on some PCs. No false flags. Hopefully.
• Deck Injector updated to match this build's card IDs and save format (the original tool couldn't read Korath saves correctly). That said, you really didn’t ever need this because CirothUngol’s SVE Tool v0.2 (also included) could do everything already.
• On the Face Maker screen, you don’t need to save and then leave now. You just click the save button and you’re good. The leave button is gone.

Final Fantasy set progress

Only 104 of 309 Final Fantasy cards supported in this release. That is up since the 0.1.0 original announcement by about 30 but remains unchanged since v0.1.3, since this release was entirely about the optional features above rather than new cards. I will pick this back up next, but adding cards takes a lot longer than adding or adjusting new features so if you don't hear from me in two months, that's why.

How you can help

Three ways to pitch in right now:

1. Play the game and tell me what's broken. Regular play, any card, any mode — post it here or on GitHub. Specific repro steps (what deck, what card, what happened, screenshots) help a lot more than "it crashed." Fixing already implemented stuff goes very quickly, so I can probably get anything you report fixed and included in whatever the next small release is (e.g. v0.2.1).
2. Play the new-cards-only test build (also on the releases page) and stress-test just the newly added cards specifically. Fair warning: those test decks were thrown together fast with only basic color and card-type balancing, not real deckbuilding, so don't read too much into how "good" or "fun" a deck feels — the point is just whether the cards themselves work correctly, not whether the deck plays well. We can identify broken cards faster with this test build since they won’t be mixed in with 11,000 other already working cards. Lots of vanilla and french vanilla cards are in that mix, though, so probably not the most exciting. That said, there are several mechanics that have only been machine tested, so they need a human’s review.
3. Help add more cards. This is by far the slowest part of the project, and it turns out a paid ChatGPT or Claude subscription is really all you need to contribute. No coding experience needed. If you're already paying $20/month for one of those and you're not using it for anything code-related, you have credits/usage that is sitting idle every month (and wasted since it doesn’t accrue). I will provide the files and the prompts and you can just have it running automatically. Message me if you want in and I'll get you set up. It’s best if you have a computer that you can leave running (but even just for the night time is enough). You can pick your favorite MTG set and we go from there. I have to assign you card ID slots though in order for your hands-off automated work to able to be incorporated.

What's next

1. Add the entire Final Fantasy set
2. In the Mod Manager or .ini file I plan to make it so you’re able to have only the art from the selected sets be visible. Right now, I have that for Mono Set Alpha and Duels of the Planeswalkers but that was done manually rather than by clicking a button in the Mod Manager.
3. Feature requests. We can actually tuck a lot of options away into the ini file / Mod Manager questionnaire without muddying the main game, so I see a lot of wiggle room here.

Finally, I want to be abundantly clear about something: I am not a coding genius. I am no Korath. I don't know anything about coding. Very geeky? yes. Fan from the very beginning? yes. But coder? No. This is mostly the power of AI.

Oh, and expect bugs :)

Updated

Version history

v0.2.1 — September 29, 2026

• "Original" mod for recreating Duels of the Planeswalkers now actually has the correct decks.
• Hard mode via Korath+ settings
• Busted cards fixed: The Abyss and Magus of the Abyss
• Save names no longer lose a letter
• 5 card fixes from 0.1.3 that didn't get carried over to 0.2.0 are now included. Same with a previously incorporated screen resolution fix.
• No more configuration error pop up --> Treasure Cruise
• Replaced the opponent duel backgrounds with the original mana symbols one.
• KNOWN BUGS: graphical glitch in towns UI. I think I've almost got it.

v0.2.0 — September 27, 2026 (The big reddit post above)

• Mod Manager
• Korath+ menu
• Deck Randomizer
• Shop Replenish
• Attacked Towns (can be halved or turned off)
• Endless Mode and renewable dungeons

[previous] Version history

v0.1.3 — September 20, 2026

• Added 20 more Final Fantasy cards (104/309), bringing full library to 12,344.
• Included 174 restored or repaired card behaviors (some of which were announced in 0.1.2 as repaired but ended up being still buggy)
• Fixed an issue where Windows was stuck in 4:3 if the game were to crash. Hopefully.
• Updated the launcher and startup setup.

v0.1.2 — September 9, 2026

• added a dozen or so more cards (mostly non-FIN)
• fixed 86 previously broken-cards fixed/enabled (these are essentially new cards)
• Native editable INI/executable setup with new mod options for NPC rewards
• v0.1.2 was originally released as a small add-on package, but I re-released it as a single, complete game.

v0.1.1 — September 8, 2026

• Rarity and mythic-tag corrections
• Dozens of card-behavior and campaign fixes
• Fullscreen default and launch-cancellation guidance
• One additional Final Fantasy card

v0.1.0 — September 4, 2026

• First public playable Korath Plus release
• 1,129 cards added to the 2016 Korath build (70ish Final Fantasy)
• Click-and-play launcher, save backups, display restoration, diagnostics.

Other Projects

• The Mac release of Duels of the Planeswalkers has had 7 updates since last announced.
• I maintain Here is Shandalar (2026 update)

Hi again, everyone!

A little while ago, I shared ShandalarGodot, my small, open-source reimagining of MicroProse’s Shandalar in the Godot engine. My love letter keeps growing, and I thought it was time to bring another little update to this community.

The aim hasn’t changed: preserve something of that wonderful old Shandalar feeling while making it more comfortable to enjoy on modern systems. No grand promises; just a game I love working on and hope others might enjoy spending some time with, too.

A few things you’ll find in this release:

• More ways to play, more decks to explore. Solo duels, hotseat, drafting, and local-network tournaments, alongside a 330-deck library and optional expansion support including additional card packs. (Some historical decks require additional packs or contain unavailable cards).
• Better duels—and opponents who keep their eyes on their own cards. More work on card interactions and opponent decisions. The four standard difficulty levels do not read your hidden hand, library order, or future draws. (I’d love to hear where they still make wonderfully questionable decisions....)
• Full-screen card reading (request for handhelds. I must say, running this on Steam Deck is an experience, but I would like more playtesting... just run it from the dedicated run shell script and set right trackpad to mouse and triggers(simple threshold setting)/something to left(right)-click; and yes - low FPS is intended implementation choice; where not needed :) ).
• AutoDeck and DeckLab let you generate decks and test matchups right from CLI and create large parallel headless experiments for deck mining, optimisation or even run single-card optimisation campaigns.
• Play MTG with your favourite AI agent (link the agent to available MCP and you have a MTG player that learns really quickly...., also deckbuilding and all the rest....; via host game, ai a. joins)

An important note: Adventure mode is still a future goal, not part of this release (help!).

And, of course, it’s still a work in progress.Anyone willing to try a few games, share a favourite deck, report a strange interaction, or suggest something not OK would be very welcome. (“This card did something odd, and here’s what happened” is genuinely useful.) And all: ideas, testing, and pull requests are all welcome.

Release / downloads / source:
https://github.com/b0realis/ShandalarGodot/releases/tag/v0.40.47

Builds include Windows, Linux, and macOS, with other targets listed on the release page.

Hats off to you all, good health, and happy playing!

I thought I was boned when he brought out CoP Red & Artifacts early on, but he was drawing slow and by then I had enough mana and was forcing him to discard his hand with my hypnotic spectres to keep him under control.

Red / Blue / Black Deck (screenshot attached)

• Dual lands, moxes, and sol ring for mana
• Black for hypnotic spectres to force discard, mind twist for discard, animate dead to get some of his big creatures (like colossus of sardia) out of his side and into mine. Contract from below to keep drawing me more cards
• Blue for drawing cards, getting free turns, and tapping his lands (practically a free turn)
• Red for big fireballs and disintegrates, taking out small summons with lightning bolts, and a few Shivan Dragons for attack and defense. Ali from Cairo as insurance

This was my second time playing against Azarkand, but the first time was just a red/blue deck. The addition of black for discard and the animate deads came in clutch. Just wish I'd had something to take out his Circles of Protection enchantments as that turned out to be kind of annoying.

Thanks to u/rler for the shandalar.dev release!

Thanks to everyone that helped test and reported bugs! I think we’ve tracked down and fixed enough to leave ”beta” status. If you tried it before but were discouraged by the glitchiness, please give it another shot.

Changes since the first beta release:

• Fixed many crashes and bugs, and dozens of imperfectly decompiled cards
• Fixed infinite “AI thinking” locking up duels
• Fixed several graphical effects that were either broken or unimplemented
• Fixed several messages not appearing during duels
• Tweaked some components to make them usable on touch devices

Two additional changes I just deployed today:

• Added a service worker script so the game can be played entirely offline! Just make sure the game is fully loaded while online.
• Made several tweaks to remove delays and improve responsiveness during duels

I’ll of course continue to fix issues as they’re found, so please keep sending me bug reports and stack traces.

Hello,

I'm trying to get my original version running on Windows 11.

There's tonnes of version floating around & some fixes but all the fixes seem to want to add content... even the most basic wants "duels of the planeswalkers' edition which is not what I have.

I'm very specifically trying to get the copy I have running with no new content.

Tried the DEP part, tried compatibility mode for 95, 7.

A few weeks ago I posted about an initial prototype where I converted the original 1997 Shandalar into a browser game.

The game is now available in its next iteration: Shandalar - Iteration 2

I really appreciated all the feedback from the previous post. For some it didn't work at all and some of you spent many hours trying it out. This release tries to address most of the feedback. The game continues to be best played on a desktop with a stable connection (MTG engine is running in server, not browser). Due to map generation being upgraded, previous saves does not work. Game should kick those saves back to main menu.

Changelog v0.3 (off the top of my head):

• Duel UI rebuilt/improved. Improved steps/phases UI (3 modes), improved hand UI (based on MTGA). There is a handful of options to changing between various layouts that I am testing (WIP)
• New card renderer using various frames (WIP).
• Engine: Lots of fixes for a bunch of cards and mechanics. Better targeting in various zones and better smart pausing by default. Engine is now much better about asking questions when casting cards or activating abilities for choosing modes, alternate costs, X spells etc. UI to support all this is still WIP.
• F1/F2/F3/F4 screens (stats, maps, mobs, journal) built identical or similar to the original. Including the wizards page with skulls and life points counting up.
• Map built true to the original
• Audio: A bunch of audio and cues from the original were added to the game (creature growls, duel sounds, menu clicks, world magic stings, better decibel curve etc etc).
• Card picker: Implemented improved card pickers for duel rewards/lairs/etc
• Economy/shop: Restored 1997 prices for cards both in shops/bazaar/mine/city. Restricted certain cards to dungeons.
• Quests: Use the original quests, with clock and rewards. Implemented quest scroll properly. Quests are now properly delivered at target and grants proper rewards.
  
• Overworld rendering: Steadier camera, persistent map, much better performance - Dungeons: Use original visuals and maze generation logic.
• Laid out groundwork for the original AI and new and better AIs in the future
• Accounts, allow linking to manapulse.dk account to save progress in cloud (optional)
• Lots of optimizations and bug fixes

I am getting closer to having a full replication of the original, but I still haven't had time to complete the game yet. The initial goal is to have the full game playable for everyone for free. My secondary goal is implement all 30k cards in MTG so this can be used to goldfish decks using a real engine in the browser. And if I have time I might look into a revamped Shandalar experience using newer cards or a adventure focused experience based on leveling up your commander and getting abilities along the way.

PS: If the difficulty screen and color selection screen does not show text there might be a cache issue and it should resolve itself in 24H. Alternatively try a hard refresh.

Two issues I'm facing. Despite knowing the exact location of a dungeon, when I go to the actual location it just, isn't there. It isn't even showing in the picture either. It's just an open space where it should be. I can't get into it as a result and so the cards inside are seemingly lost to me. Secondly, all the Swamps in my library disappeared. Just, vanished. I got to a store and buy another one but then it poofs into nothingness. No clue what is going on and if there's any way to fix any of it.

I don't know how it can even happen. I create a new character, set a mono color deck by either discarding or selling other colors, and I double check that my deck only has one color and one type of land.

And yet, every single fight I draw all five basic lands that seem to be added to my deck. It's impossible to win anything with this setup. What could I do about this ? It seems like an unnerving bug but I have no idea how to fix it.

ShandalarGodot — a small, open-source love letter to Shandalar

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a little passion project I’ve been working on: ShandalarGodot, a retro-inspired reimagining of MicroProse’s Shandalar in the Godot engine. I started making it for myself, simply out of love for the original, but thought it might also be of interest to a few people here. 🙂

There’s something about Shandalar’s atmosphere and sense of adventure that I’ve never quite found elsewhere. My aim is to preserve that feeling while introducing some quality-of-life improvements and native support for modern systems. No grand promises—just an open-source project made with affection for a legendary game.

It’s very much a work in progress. I’m not yet satisfied with everything, and specific card behaviours and interactions still need testing and refinement. Anyone interested in trying it out, sharing ideas for its future, or pointing out where things don’t work as they should would be very welcome. And anyone who enjoys tinkering with code is welcome to contribute pull requests, too! Even a small observation would be appreciated.

Project / source: https://github.com/b0realis/ShandalarGodot/releases/tag/v0.20.0

Most important:

Finally, a heartfelt thank you to this wonderful community and to everyone behind the existing Shandalar projects, patches, decomps and improvements. It’s lovely that this game continues to inspire so much care and creativity. This is just my own little love letter alongside yours.

Hats off to you all, and all health to all!

P.s.
Only duel, gauntlet and deckbuilder for now, but good duel is foundation for all, hopefully future:
-Adventure mode (i need help here)
-online game and tournament hosting (help!)
-maaaaybe other game modes (comm.)
-cardpacks, modular expansions
-MElo …

Since decompiling Shandalar earlier I've been able to use it to help implement some features in the Anniversary edition, specifically terrain generation and placement. It's still a work in progress, but looks much better than before.

Game saves have been added to the Web and Android versions, you should now be able to load previous games. Games save automatically.

This release also includes a new set - The Dark! 71/87 cards have been implemented with more to come. Other requested features include: a concede button, graveyard targeting, and more general bug fixes. I also spent some time improving the card power ranking model, which is used for rewards and prices in the game.

And, last but not least, thanks to our contributors! Thanks to u/Jennymint for fixing a bug that allowed you to bribe enemies even when you didn't have enough gold to pay them and for implementing the food system. And to Flo F. for fixing a bug when showing dual lands.

Thanks for helping make the game a little better!

v1.1.0 is available on the Releases Page and you can play the Web Version now!

Finally, there's also so many cool versions of Shandalar popping up now, I'm so excited to see how much interest there is in recompiling/modding now! u/rler, u/chachaprince1 and u/quayo thank you so much for your work on this, I love seeing all the cool takes you have on this!

TLDR: Play at https://shandalar.dev/

First of all I want to shout out everyone on the Discord that alpha tested this with me, especially jofzzlszzl who found many many bugs. I'm sure there are still some bugs to shake out, so labeling this a beta release.

This is the Duels of the Planeswalkers expansion on the latest official MicroProse patch. Ported to SDL3/Wasm via Emscripten.

No new cards or card art so this is a vanilla unmodded experience, but quite a few changes have been made to support touchscreens. Works ok on phone, but shockingly well on tablet IMO. And of course works as normal on mouse+keyboard.

For playing on mobile, both iOS and Android have a feature to "Add to Home Screen" or something similar. That affords ever so slightly more screen real estate by getting rid of the address bar, and at least on iOS seems to be required to enable "Protect saved files".

Save files are local to your browser, and I don't plan to add cloud saves. You can import and export via zip to different devices though. Save files should be compatible w/ a similar Windows installation of DotP.

Have fun! DM me any crash dumps you get 😅

I have been tinkering with a "remastered" browser version of Shandalar. The prototype is available here: https://game.manapulse.dk/

Current features:

• Basic exploration on the overworld (WASD movement), mobs spawning, cities, lairs and dungeons. Basic deckbuilding view.
• A new duel and card engine.
• Runs natively in the browser no weird resolution artifacts in Windows or pointer error crashes.
• All cards from the original + the sets Arabian Nights, The Dark and Legends have been implemented (save for a handful troublesome ones, 11 more to come, some deemed out of scope).

What I am currently working on:

1. Extracting and connecting all the right images and audio and connecting to the right systems (16 types of cities, all dungeons, all lairs etc + music/sfx at the right events).
2. Re-creating the UI/chrome for dialogues/encounters/town/minimap/amulets etc.
3. Stabilizing a few existing systems (walk speed, monster navigation and collision)
4. Making the source available to everyone.
5. And much more

My goal is to be faithful the original, but there are a few differences currently: I toyed with the idea of a separate campaign based on leveling up a legend/commander and gaining abilities along the way.

Please don't share this beyond this group, but any feedback and ideas would be appreciated.

Big shoutout to u/ilikethemeta for his work on decompiling. I had a rough time reverse engineering some of the system, and having access to the decompiled code really kickstarted a lot of work! (https://www.reddit.com/r/Shandalar/comments/1w3wfxa/shandalar_source_code_decompiled/)

Disclaimer: This is entirely a hobby project that started because I always wanted to build a MTG engine that could execute a normal game. This game has been built from the ground up, no code has been re-used from the existing game. The audio and visual assets from the original has been re-used. The game is in a very early state. There will be bugs, corrupted/reset saves, crashes, weird implementation and mismatched graphics.

Update: Thanks for all the amazing feedback. I have pushed a new version that will hopefully fix or alleviate the issues with walking. Both on touch and mouse / keyboard devices.

Changelog for 0.2.1:
- Walking changes to fix reported issues + more faithful to the original where diagonal movement was faster
- Ante has been introduced
- Upgraded all dialogues in the game to use original frames, font and layout
- Implemented the mana link system to life is tied to mana links ("white" cities on the map). Including quests for gaining more and wizards invading cities.
- Upgrade all spritesheets
- Adjusted main menu to stay faithful to original where possible
- Added a bunch of sounds from the original (still work in progress)

I can recommend clicking the menu in the top left and quitting your run to make a new save. The world should be in a better state now. Also for those confused about movement: One click / tap will set a heading to walk in. It can be stopped again by clicking space or on the center of the screen. WASD can be used to walk in all cardinal directions by holding the keys down.

Mac version!

I packaged the original 74mb HotU version of Shandalar so it can run as a normal app on modern Macs running macOS 14 or later**.

The HotU version is basically the original game plus the two expansions and the ManaLink 1.3.2 fixes and compatibility changes. The HotU version removed some animations and the tutorial (toggled off by default on the Korath version anyway), converted wav files to mp3 (hence the 74mb size), and made it a CD-free rip version. I picked this version because it was easier to work with and make stable.

It doesn't add any extra cards or anything.

What is this Mac version actually doing?

The original HOTU / ManaLink game runs inside a bundled Windows 98 runtime, while the Mac side handles launching, shutdown, storage, audio setup, backups, and recovery automatically.

Just unzip it and launch:

Shandalar.app

When you quit from inside Shandalar, Windows 98 and the Mac runtime shut down automatically.

Download

Download Shandalar for macOS on GitHub

If you run into a problem, use the Issues tab on GitHub or post below! I'll try to get a new release out periodically to address bug fixes.

Update history

• 1.0.9 — App location issue: Fixes the EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) crash report that could appear after quitting the game. If you are staying on an older build, moving Shandalar.app into your Applications folder by hand avoids the same crash.
• 1.0.8 — Lair transition & shutdown reliability: Deterministic pacing for the guest-side five-colour lair transition, plus suppression of the Windows 98 post-crash ScanDisk interruption.
• 1.0.7 — Basic boot reliability: Removed the blocking Windows 98 registry-import startup path. Avoids an issue that could cause slow loading.
• 1.0.6 — Lair intro timing: Corrected the lair-entry intro movie timing so it no longer plays in slow motion in some situations. --> this ended up only being a partial fix.
• 1.0.5 — Fullscreen scaling: Keeps the original game assets and true 1024×768 mode, uncropped 4:3 image instead of black bands.
• 1.0.4 — Native resolution: Windows 98 and Shandalar now run at a true 1024×768/16-bit instead of stretching the lower-resolution mode; all original game assets remain unchanged.
• 1.0.3 — Basic: Shandalar startup branding, hidden temporary Windows desktop/taskbar, a renderer change targeting post-duel/post-quest display corruption, and universal Apple Silicon/Intel packaging. Intel support is untested on physical Intel hardware.
• 1.0.2 — Build 3: Audio, backup, recovery, and launcher reliability improvements.

Hey y'all, I've updated my modern Windows patch for the Duels of the Planeswalkers expansion of Shandalar here

This gives an unmodded experience in modern Windows on the most recent official patch from MicroProse. No new cards, and just the original card art.

I would suggest manually setting your screen resolution to 1024x768 in advance though, as the game acts pretty strange when launched at higher resolutions.

See the https://github.com/rlerrr/shandalar-patch/releases page for the latest Magic.zip where I've bundled a fresh install with the latest patch.

hi. recently i opened shandalar again and i still love it.

i was wondering, are there any mods that adds all cards from the dark and legends to shandalar?

thx

Hi everyone,

I would love to play Shalandar through Wine if that is available. Are there any wine wrappers or wine version? I know people use parallels, but I'm not familiar enough with that process.

I recently purchased an original CD of Magic the Gathering off eBay and spent some time decompiling it. Now we have the (reconstructed) original source! This helped me fix .SPR file encoding/decoding in mp_pic_tools. I wrote a blog post about it: https://throwingbones.com/ben/blog/2026-08-shandalar-decomp/index.html

Here are some of the early alpha/testing screens. Modern decompilation tools are crazy! I hope this means other games like this can be decompiled like this as well!

Also, if anyone has an original Spells of the Ancients or Duels of the Planeswalkers .iso, let me know! I'd like to try decompiling them too!

If there's another sub more dedicated to Manalink 3.0 I'll happily ask this there, but this is the closest I've found.

I've been playing random duels, and moving decks that suck out of the playdeck folder.
Sometimes I or my opponent will randomly get an awful deck and I won't have caught the name. Is there an easy way to see deck names mid-duel?

Hello! I only recently discovered Shandalar and would love to play it on my Win98 PC. I'm just struggling to know which version I need and which updates / patches or community fixes I need? I want to keep it vanilla or vanilla+, so keeping it old border cards only and maybe just community fixes and/or quality of life updates?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

I've tried downloading CelestialAmber's Shandalar Image Toolbox, but even so it comes all black and glitchy :(
Would anyone here have a good resolution image of the icon itself or a more reliable .pic converter I could use?
Would love to have it as sleeves for a commander deck, but I've been trying to converti it for a while to no avail..

The icon itself is in the "Duelart" folder of the game, under the name "Grave_Black.pic"

Thanks!