Play Sołtys online — free, instant Runs natively — no emulator
Sołtys — a Polish point-and-click comedy adventure from Laboratorium Komputerowe Avalon, freed by its own publisher and playable here in English. No download, no sign-up, nothing to install.
L.K. Avalon released this game as freeware in 2011. This is that release, running in your browser through ScummVM.
Starting Sołtys…
Downloading the ScummVM engine (about 12 MB) and the game (about 8 MB). This happens once — after the first visit it's cached and starts straight away.
Controls — what does what
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Walk and use | Left-click — on the floor to walk there, on a thing to use it. |
| Look / other verbs | Right-click cycles the action for whatever is under the cursor. |
| Skip the intro | Esc — the L.K. Avalon logo animation plays first. |
| Inventory | The row of slots along the bottom. Click an item to pick it up, then click where you want it used. |
| Save or load | Ctrl+F5 opens the ScummVM menu. |
This game is genuinely free. L.K. Avalon released it as freeware in 2011 — not abandonware, not a demo. The licence file ships with the game and permits exactly this. See the provenance notice for dates and sources, and the licence itself.
What you're playing
A sołtys is the elected head of a Polish village — the person who has to deal with everyone else's problems — and that is who you play. The game is a straight point-and-click comedy adventure set in a rural Poland of log cabins, dogs on chains and neighbours with opinions, drawn in the bright hand-painted VGA style that Polish studios were doing very well in the mid-nineties.
It ran on CGE, L.K. Avalon's own engine, which is why it needed dedicated work in ScummVM rather than arriving free with the SCUMM support. That work is done, and the game runs cleanly.
The honest reason to play it isn't that it's a lost masterpiece. It's that adventure games from outside the Anglo-American studios almost never got translated, so an entire regional style of the genre is invisible to most players. This one was translated, and then given away. It is about as easy as this gets.
How this works
ScummVM isn't an emulator. It reimplements the engines these games ran on — including CGE — so instead of simulating a 1995 PC it runs the game logic directly. That's why it's quick, why it scales cleanly to a modern screen, and why it can run in a browser tab at full speed.
This page runs ScummVM itself, compiled to WebAssembly with the project's own Emscripten backend, pointed at the English freeware release. The engine is GPL-3.0; the game data is L.K. Avalon's freeware release. Nothing is uploaded and nothing needs installing.
Saves
Press Ctrl+F5 and save from the ScummVM menu. Your saves are stored in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to them — but they live on this device, in this browser, and won't follow you elsewhere. Everything you have saved across the site is listed on the saved games page.
Frequently asked questions
Is Sołtys legal to play here?
Yes. Laboratorium Komputerowe Avalon, the game's publisher, released it as freeware in 2011. The licence shipped with the game files permits free distribution on any medium provided the licence and copyright notices stay intact, which they do — the licence file is served alongside the game.
Is it in English?
Yes. The freeware release includes an English version, and that is the one this page runs. ScummVM identifies it as Sołtys (Freeware v1.0/DOS/English).
I have never heard of this game. What is it?
A Polish point-and-click comedy adventure from the mid-nineties, made by L.K. Avalon on their own CGE engine. It was well known in Poland and almost nowhere else, which is exactly why it's worth twenty minutes — it looks and sounds like nothing from the American or British studios of the same period.
Can I save my progress?
Yes. Press Ctrl+F5 for the ScummVM menu and save from there. Saves are kept in this browser's storage, so they survive closing the tab, but they stay on this device in this browser.
Does it work on a phone?
It runs, but it's built around a mouse. A tap works as a left-click, which covers most of the game, but the interface is small on a phone screen. A tablet or a desktop is a better fit.
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