Graphs & Virgins: Evil Cult

Evil Cult [latest version]. One of my favorite games. A 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) turn-based game with little micro-management so far (I consider this a huge plus).

The developer recently posted a blog update. You can follow him on Twitter. Much development discussion is going on in this thread.

I made two videos of the gameplay: a 5x time lapse and an Let's Play for your pleasure.

Evil Cult 5x speed
Music by (c) Natlyea

Evil Cult Let's Play

Regarding 4x games: There's an ongoing Master of Orion 2 rewrite. Latest activity in the repository: Mon Apr 11 11:55:42 2011 +0200. Here's a custom news feed if you want to follow the project. (I won't be adding custom feeds to the planet for now).

I also created a news feed generator for FreeOrion.

[Read More...]

A bunch of updates

Very creative headline, I know... but news of various games were piling up in my "should post about it on FreeGamer" link-list... yet I never really felt like actually writing an article about. So some of it might be old news... but hey at least it hasn't been featured here AFAIK.

So, where to start?

Maybe with some nice puzzle games: Rezerwar is a pretty nice mixture of a pipes game and some sort of tetris, and it was even created using only open-source software. Another pipes game is Cooldown, which might be worth to check out, too. Graphically a bit more advanced is Octaspire: Crates, a block movement type game or something like that ;) But see for yourself:

Octaspire:Crates Tutorial

A non puzzle game worth checking out are Hero of Allacrost (a 2D RPG), which recently had it's DEMO 1.0 release. Another, albeit 3D RPG (engine) is DNT (DccNiTghtmare), which is set in a "satirical post-apocalyptical world".

If you are following the development of the promising turn based colony game Unknown Horizons (aka the artist formerly known as OpenAnno), their new development blog might be of interest. Oh and did I mention that FreeCol also got a bunch of updates lately?

Very neat is also the recent release of FreeOrion, a turn based space colonization game. It still lacks some important features to be really playable (combat and diplomacy), but otherwise it is already a pretty good looking game:

FreeOrion

Another game currently heavily updated game (engine) is OSARE, which aims to be a fully featured base to build Diablo like story lines/games with. An already slightly outdated (v0.08, newest v0.09) shows what can be done already:

OSARE loot drops

Another interesting project I came across lately is the Darkplaces based Blood Omicide, which is of course sadly based on copyrighted material. Overdose, a recently already mentioned open-source "in engine but not in media" (and even the engine code has yet to be released) game has recently shown some rather nice enemy model screen-shots. Furthermore their newest video is quite amazing in regards to the light rendering.

A game-engine and the games based on it that is probably vastly under-reported here on FreeGamer, is the Spring RTS engine. I guess it might be due to my dislike of Total Annihilation like RTS, but there is actually one (with public domain licensed media) that strays from that kind of RTS concept: Kernel Panic puts you right inside of a PC, and has quite a bit of nice uncommon game modi that break up the usual RTS grind.

Kernel Panic promo

I guess that's all for today... my link-list is not yet completely empty, but the rest will have to wait for another day ;)

[Read More...]

HE'S ALIVE

*Qubodup's eyes shift left and right*

Qubodup mutters, "I smell death."

*Charlie jumps out from behind a tree*

"No! It's me!"

Or maybe Q meant death by a thousand of Charlie's bad jokes? I got jokes, man.

Ok, ok... games stuff. Enough inane joke stuff. Games...

FreeOrion 0.3.14 came out with a fairly mega changelog. A preview of the 3d space combat is in there, as well as lots of fixing and balancing and content enhancing. It's becoming a very deep game and once the 3d combat is done it'll be one of the stand out open source games you can play, and only getting better. Hats off to the developers for their dedication to realising their dreams, it's been a long haul. Here be a video:

FreeCol 0.9.3 just came out. Fixes ahoy! Good game, that, although I still don't understand how to play it. One day I'll swallow my pride and ask how the hell you assign hammers and build things.

Danger from the Deep 0.4 preview release for those who are a bit brave. It might torpedo your computer, yuk yuk yuk =). It's got great graphics, although is more of a simulation than a game - but that's a good thing in my book. Part of the fun in a submarine game is in the challenges that befell those unfortunate enough to end up in a watery grave. Ah, video ahoy:

XreaL. It's not dead. Actually there's a video in that link that will blow your mind, it looks so good. You won't be able to see the forest for the trees (that'll make sense if you see it). No youtube though here's a [rather dark] video showing off a few XreaL levels:

Looks like YAOSCSC (Yet Another Open Source Counter Strike Clone) is underway although this one is probably more likely to succeed than some of the other rather limp efforts. This one is called Code 43: Urban Warfare and it uses XreaL. It is formed by the people associated with the ET Mod True Combat: Elite which could never really be open source.

And now for something completely different. And I'm not talking about breaking English grammar rules by starting sentences with 'and'...

Runesword II is a 2D RPG made in 2001 and now open source. They released version 2.6 recently, which can be downloaded from Sourceforge. Bizarrely the 2.6 release announcement never seems to have been made outside of the forums. Sadly it is made in VB *ew* and can be run on Linux via Wine. Still, it looks like a fairly involved RPG game.

I eagerly anticpate Egoboo 2.8.0, which has been a year in the making. They got a new website.

Which reminds me. Nothing to do with it, but I haven't yet tried UFO:AI 2.3...

[Read More...]

Non RTS strategy games

An update so quickly? Behold the Free Gamer world is coming to an end. :p


So, we mentioned some promising RTS games in the last update. OK, I forgot to mention Spring1944, but I am also a bit reluctant to mention Spring and its mods since it is such a pain in the backside to get it running correctly. :(


Back on topic... there a quite a few really great non RTS FOSS strategy games. I guess I don't really need to mention the classics to the typical reader of this blog, but Wesnoth, FreeCiv, FreeCol and UFO:AI are all very playable and good looking games! However there are others that get less attention and also some that show great promise!

Advanced strategic command

Advanced strategic command is one of those that gets relatively little news coverage, even though it is a really playable game. Granted, its graphics are pretty much the same as its big inspiration, the classic Battle Isle series, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad, right?

A new version was just released a few days ago, which finally also includes a tutorial for those new to this type of game.

Also interesting is the (German) Project: Battle Planets, which could be described as a MMOTBS based on ASC. It is not quite what you would expect from this description as most of the MMO part is done manually by human game moderators, which exchange ASC games states between players (sorry, it is a bit hard to explain exactly ;) ).

A similar game to ASC is Crimson Fields by the way, which has found its way to many mobile platforms.

Widelands

Another often neglected game is Widelands, which is obviously based on the classic game the Settlers (no not the Settlers of Catan, check Pioneers for that).

Widelands game play

The graphics could still be improved a bit, but it is shaping up to be a very faithful and fun re-implementation of that great classic game.

Unknown Horizons

While we are at FOSS re-implementations of great games... Unknown Horizons is continuing to become a Anno1602 clone of epic proportions. ;)

UH game play

It is not quite at the point where it could be described as a fully playable game yet, but you can expect it to become one relatively soon, I guess! (Another not quite playable but really promising game worth surely mentioning is FreeOrion by the way).

8Kingdoms

Last but not least, there is 8Kingdoms, which really is one of those games people don't even try after having a short glance at the screenshots. Yes, it's programmers art, albeit one that at least tried to hide it by having a plastic-like style for the figures. ;)

But if you actually try it, you will realize that even though it is a bit rough around the edges (why can't I set a custom wide-screen resolution :( ), the game play and the engine is already quite advanced.

What this game clearly needs is an artist taking over the graphical matters, and then this could quite quickly become one of those true FOSS strategy game gems!

[Read More...]