Open Source Games

Published on 2020-07-14

Today I would like to list some excellent open source computer games that I would recommend people play.

It is truly a breath of fresh air having open source games, since they can be easily modified, preserved, and ported to different platforms.

0 A.D.

A real-time warfare strategy game. You build up your civilisation (based on real ancient peoples), command your troops to fight against your enemies, or collect resources, until all enemy buildings are under your control.

It has 3D Graphics which are impressive, but fairly taxing, so requires a beefy PC. Gameplay feels good for a game still in alpha, and follows all the the tropes of the genre. The AI is well designed and can be a challenge to play against. Otherwise multiplayer is available.

Mod support is very good. There exists some very good mods, such as 'Millennium A.D.' which adds medieval civilisations and maps to the game. But the game still currently lacks campaigns, leaving only custom matches available for play right now.

Battle for Wesnoth

A turn-based strategy game. Simple, yet hard to master gameplay. You play interesting scenarios, each with their own story-lines.

This game has a lot of polish with beautiful 2D tile-based graphics, good music, a level editor, and networked multiplayer.

Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup

A rouge-like dungeon crawler, fairly basic graphics wise, but has good gameplay.

For those who don't know about rouge-like's. Basically choose a character class with a certain skill you want to use. Then crawl around randomly generated dungeons killing, obtaining, and using stuff until you die forever (and have to start again)

Flare

An action RPG engine. Comes with a fantasy-style campaign, high quality. But others can be downloaded.

Select a character, level up skills and kill monsters in real-time. Game is quite polished as well.

Isometric 2D graphics which are good. Runs well on a Raspberry Pi.

Honorable Mentions

Games which are good, but not quite my style.

FreedroidRPG - Post-apocalyptic RPG similar to Fallout 2. Has a hacking mechanic, making it very different from any other game in it's category.
FreeCiv - Civilisation-like game. My IQ is too low to play this.
Xonotic - Arena multiplayer FPS, Quake fans need to play this. High quality graphics and map design make this the best in it's category.
SuperTuxKart - Kart racing game, has a story mode that reminds me of DK Racing.
SuperTux - 2D platformer, has a good default story. Other levels and tilesets can be added.
Minetest - A minecraft clone that's worth playing mainly due to its excellent mod API.
Valyria Tear - JRPG game, similar to Final Fantasy.

Engine-only

These games can be played with an open source engine but requires external copyrighted resources (graphics, maps, audio, scripts etc.). Although someone could make free/open content for these engines.

OpenMW - Requires TES III: Morrowind. One of the best RPG games. OpenMW is way better than the official engine at this point.
ScummVM - Plays many point and click adventure games. Plays well on Android.

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