Listen to Erathoniel ranting on and on in good ol' conservative Christian fashion.
What games are good? Look here!
Published on April 7, 2008 By erathoniel In PC Gaming

      You're probably here for a list of good free and open source games. When I say free, I do not mean Free as in Mabinogi, with its cash shop, I mean 100% free. I will say if there's any commercial interest that will affect the average player. Use Google or Wikipedia to find these games.

    Battle for Wesnoth: Five @'s. Probably the best turn-based strategy game I've ever played, at least from a military strategy, as opposed to X-COM style. Nice fantasy setting, plenty of addons available. It is open source, and has single player and multiplayer.

Battle For Wesnoth Title Screen

    Spring: Five @'s. An awesome RTS, 3D, all the good stuff. Plays TA and its mods, with a conversion process. SP (Downloadable AI DLL's)+MP. Open Source.

TA Spring

    GearHead: Five @'s. A decent giant robot roguelike, GearHead and its sequel, GearHead 2, deliver on all fronts. It is single-player only, but is definitely worth multiple (randomly generated) campaign play throughs. It is open source.

GH1's Overworld

    ToME: Five @'s. A very good Roguelike, it only suffers due to its similarity to almost every other mainstream roguelike, despite taking it a bit further. I recommend ToMENet's multiplayer as being fairly accurate, and the base singleplayer ToME is very good. It is open source.

Bree in ToME

    Paintball 3 Extreme: Five @'s. A very good 2D tile-based Zooptek game. Though it can be glitchy, it generally delivers a nice play experience. It has single player against bots and multiplayer (no bots) support. It's rare, though, and hard to find.

    Paintball 2: Four @'s. A very good 3D Quake 2 based paintball simulator. It supports single-player, and multiplayer, both with bots.

    Warsow: Four @'s. One nice FPS, that's for sure. It's got Cel Shading, and good everything. It also has Parkour, or Freerunning as one of its major aspects, and is in a cyberpunk/VR world. It is open source, and has single player (vs. AI, no campaign), and multiplayer (Standard Modes+Race, AI possible)

WarSow

    Shadowbane: Four @'s. A good MMORPG, with castle building. It is a bit difficult to interact with players, and some of the places are ghost towns. It is multiplayer only (though you really only find n00bs on the test server), but has advertisements (easily ignored).

    Sauerbraten: Four @'s. A decent FPS, with a lot of SP support, though it really equates to Doom-style bots of different flavors. The MP, especially on Assassin Edition, is very useful.

Sauerbraten

    ADOM: Four @'s. A good roguelike, though it tends to be a bit windy and lengthy. It probably deserves five. Singleplayer only.

ADOM's Overworld

    AssaultCube: Four @'s. A good modern-day FPS. Supports SP Deathmatch and multiplayer. Based off of the same engine as Sauerbraten. Open Source.

AssaultCube Screenshot

    ChexQuest: Four @'s. A good-ol' advergame based on Doom. Supports everything Doom had, in a kid-friendly environment.

    Dwarf Fortress: Four @'s. An excelent game, if you can scratch its surface. SP only. Incredibly complex, God Game, Roguelike, and Simulated World in one. Eats up a lot of system.

Dwarf Fortress

    MegaMek: Four @'s. Battletech simulator. MP+SP. Simulates tabletop, pretty nice with everything counted.

    Gate 88: Four @'s. An excellent RTS game, with a twist. Plays kinda like Asteroids. I like it. Simple. MP+SP.

Gate 88

    I Wanna Be The Guy: Four @'s. Most annoying game ever, difficulty wise. SP only.

I Wanna Be The Guy: I Didn't Get This Far.

    Command And Conquer: Four @'s. The awesome first true RTS. Now free. SP more or less only.

C&C Cover- It Doesn't Get Cooler Than This.

    Privateer: Ascii Sector: Four @'s. One of the best ASCII non-roguelikes. SP only.

    The Elder Scrolls: Arena: Four @'s. One of the best early RPG's. Enjoyable, but needs DOSBox. SP only.

Firewatch in TES:A

    Tyrian: Four @'s. Pretty darn good. Buy custom ships and whatnot. SP and MP.

Tyrian Screenshot

    Tremulous: Four @'s. Nice Tactical FPS, with basebuilding and different sides. MP only.

Tremulous Screen

    Plasma Pong: Three @'s: An simple, but fun Pong remake. SP and MP, but MP only against other player at the same location.

 Plasma Pong Screen

 


Comments
on Apr 08, 2008
Vegastrike: Four @'s. Space flight simulator. Like Tie Fighter or X-Wing. It's open Source. SP + (some) MP

Babylon 5: I’ve Found Her: Five @'s. Space Combat Simulator with the typical realistic B5 physics. Great campaigns. SP

Toribash: Five @'s. Awsome concept. It's a turn based beat'em-up. Great physics, kind of artistic SP and serious MP.

Track Mania: Nations: Four @'s. Stunt racing game. Mostly MP.

Frets on Fire: Five @'s. The Guitar Hero Clone. 'nough said. Open Source.

PokerTH: Five @'s. Open Source Poker Engine. SP + MP

Bots'n'Scouts: Four @'s. RoboRally written in Java. Sp + MP

UFO2000: Five @'s. Tactical battles from X-Com for MP! Open Source.

And of course there are always freeciv and freecol.
on Apr 08, 2008

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll put them in sometime, after I play them.

Three out of the first 4 don't work on my PC, though.

on Apr 08, 2008
I think deliver open source games through Impulse would have been a great hit. Maybe have a montly winner that get a posision on Impulse.

Birger
on Apr 08, 2008
freecol


Sweet , I didn't know of that one. Colonization was my first game on CD. Sadly there is no freeMOM. Well you can't have everything.

By the way, abandonia also has many older games.

on Apr 08, 2008

Yeah, I know about most of those sites, I just have too little memory space to make good use of them.

on Apr 08, 2008
World of Padman: http://padworld.myexp.de/index.php?news

It's one of the best multiplayer-shooters ever created.

on Apr 08, 2008
Nethack is king to all these games
on Apr 08, 2008

I mentioned NetHack in my earlier article. It was featured, too, BTW.

on Apr 08, 2008
Since when was Tyrian free?
on Apr 08, 2008

Since 2004, if I recall correctly. The author released it as free.

I played World of Padman. It gets 2 @'s. My one word response would be "meh". I've had better experiences tossing a stick into a river and fetching it in -20 degrees celsius weather and removing it. It uses up too much system, looks like it tries for a feel but fails, lacks a large selection of game-modes, and is very user-unfriendly.