What are some great open source games?
What are some great open source games?
I'm usually a fan of open source games but rarely do they manage to be actually great. People like giving recommendations like Super Tux Kart that haven't aged well and don't play well. What are some open source games that are legitimately good that I've missed?
My favorites are:
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Mindustry
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Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart
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Powder Toy
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GZDoom (and all the amazing mods for it)
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Veloren (even though it's still in alpha)
Battle for Wesnoth
This one never gets the love it deserves. It's a fantastic turn based strategy game with multiple campaigns and storylines, multiplayer, and campaign design tools. It's an old project (started in 2003, IIRC), but it's still fantastic
Hedgewars
Basically, this is Worms but with adorable little hedgehogs instead of, well, worms. Single player is okay, and it has online multiplayer I guess, but the real fun (just like in Worms) is local multiplayer. Also, it has Portal Guns. There's really no downside to this one.
- https://www.hedgewars.org/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223810/Hedgewars/
- Itch: https://hedgewars.itch.io/hedgewars
Re-volt io and RVGL
This one's a little iffy. Re-volt was a fantastic R / C racing game with bright graphics, fun tracks, excellent controls, and a killer soundtrack. For good or ill, it was put out by Acclaim, which self destructed in 2004. The Re-volt fan community, however, doesn't know the meaning of the word "quit."
Nowadays, you can join a lively community with regular online tournaments of the game. There's a new cross platform engine called RVGL (that's Re Volt Game Launcher), and metric tonnes of mods and fan content. You still need the original game's assets, though, which is where it's dicey; they're technically abandonware not open source, unless I'm mistaken.
Anyway, links!
Unciv
This project's aim is to be Civilization V, but with more abstract visuals, and, or course, free. In short, it's FreeCiv, but Civ V instead of II and a UI from the 2020s rather than the 80s. (Not throwing shade here; FreeCiv is an amazing project that is exactly what it wants to be!)
If that's not enough to keep ya' happy, I know a few more, but they've mostly been covered by other folks here.
Edit: formatting
My favorites:
- OpenTTD: Old transport tycoon game, but really fun especially in multiplayer
- Minetest: Minecraft-like voxel game engine, which means there a many different game modes
- Beyond All Reason: Great RTS, also great in online multiplayer or with some friends. (Disclaimer: Possible unfree licenses for artwork)
- Dwarf Fortress (free but not open source, thanks for telling me that one): not everyone’s cup of tea, but sometimes you just get stuck in it for hours on end
Does open source implementation of proprietary game counts? OpenMW
osu! is an amazing rhythm game. Try osu!lazer, it's the new client: https://osu.ppy.sh/home/download
I also like Pioneers and Endless Sky, both space sims.
This might not count, but both Lichess, a chess website, and OGS, a Go website are open source.
There is also Mindustry, but I haven't played it.
It's chess, and it's great!
0 AD Minetest
!opensourcegames@lemmy.ml is good to share such games.
OpenTTD, OpenRCT and OpenRA are all great!
tl;dr: a better Spore
From the site:
Thrive is a free, open-source game about the evolution of life.
From the lowly tidepools of your home planet, you will rise to cosmic dominance. At every step, powerful creation tools and deep simulation mechanics will aid your species’ development. Revolutionary Games is the open-source team of dedicated volunteers aiming to make Thrive a reality.
Our team seeks to accomplish two major goals: create engaging, compelling gameplay that respects our players’ intelligence, and remain as accurate as possible in our depiction of known scientific theory without compromising the former.
One Hour One Life is open source, it is a 2D hand drawn survival game where you have 1 real life houre to live from a baby to an elder and contribute to the player-made society in your life as best you can.
You have to pay for an account on the official servers, but i recommend you do to support the development.
Not sure if the dev accepts community patches or not, but the game is public domain license.
Minetest and several others that I play regularly have already been mentioned, so I wanted to shout out a game I've been following and playing for years, waiting for their 1.0 release: FreeOrion
It's essentially a clone of the Master of Orion series, which are classics in the 4X world.
Crossfire https://crossfire.real-time.com/ Battle for Wesnoth https://www.wesnoth.org/ Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv/ Dungeon Crawl http://crawl.develz.org Feudal Tactics https://github.com/Sesu8642/FeudalTactics
My PC always has 3 games installed, and depending on the distro I'm currently on they may have come directly from the default repos:
- Battle for Wesnoth
- Warzone 2100
- OpenRCT2
I have lost count of how hours I have in all 3.
Xonotic, if you like very fast paced shooters.
This is a pretty cool newish one: https://hypersomnia.xyz/
We will play it during this upcoming event: https://onfoss.org/news/2023/08/27/Next-event-September-23rd.html
Teeworlds is a good game. Unfortunately the player base got very small, even though it's on Steam.
I had fun playing Dink Smallwood (I think the Dink Smallwood HD Version on Android). You run around, solve tasks, and work your way through the story.
It is, as you described, not actually great, but great in a sense that you can have much fun with it. I especially liked the humor.
ScummVM supports many many games. Some people might think it's an emulator, but it's actually a collection of reverse engineered game engines.
eDuke32 and other Build Engine source ports
https://veloren.net/ is a voxel MMO and it is already very playable
I haven't played Warsow in years, so I don't know what state the game or community is in. It's a fast paced FPS multiplayer that turned the old bunnyhopping exploit into a central feature iirc.
Frets on Fire! It was the cool open-source equivalent to Guitar Hero. And you know what - it was pretty hecka cool to wield your keyboard like a guitar.
Space Station 13 is great
My favorite: cataclysm dda, flare rpg, oolite.
Sauerbraten
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Unciv is pretty cool and portable.
xevil
Barotrauma is source available (no commercial, public use, restricted for game modding and contributions) Librerama is dumbways to die style minigames
KeeperRL is a lighter Dwarf-Fortress like game where you play as a Monster making a Dungeon.
Taisei Project for Touhou and other 2D bullet-hell shooter fans (I recommend installing it instead of playing online).
Fragsurf
ClassicUO is a nice open source client for Ultima Online. Need to have the game assets.
zero-k is really good rts. Its similiar to supreme commander
Surprised nobody has mentioned any of the supreme commander offshoots. Lots of them out there, one example is zero-k which is even on steam.
Amagettron advanced en soldat are fun games (not sure if they're open source)
Warfork is my favorite
Wipeout-Rewrite
Cannonball
Gzdoom
yamagi quake
I really liked Speed Dreams when I played it years ago. Never heard anyone else talk about it. Warsow and Red Eclipse were also good.
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Beyond All Reason is a RTS made with Spring Engine that's an open source implementation of Total Annhilation.
I'm not giving any of these a chance.