Unknown Horizons

The description of Unknown Horizons from it's official page describes the project very well:

A 2D realtime strategy simulation with an emphasis on economy and city building. Expand your small settlement to a strong and wealthy colony, collect taxes and supply your inhabitants with valuable goods. Increase your power with a well balanced economy and with strategic trade and diplomacy. 

The game certainly lives up to that and I can attest that it is really fun to play. The game recently got a new release called 2019.1, which follows up from the gigantic release made in 2017. I've been following the progess of development and have been impressed by how much that has been done with this game during the last few years. This new release has, among other things, an isometric mini-map that shows the same rotation as the main game view and ambient objects that makes the world more varied and nicer to look at. There are of course also many internal improvements and fixes of all kinds. A great time to give this excellent game a go!

A nice little settlement in Unknown Horizons.

Wyrmsun - 3.5

Wyrmsun keeps up the regular releases, this time with a winter theme. This classic-styled RTS now has seasons that passes as the game goes on, making this a winter-release in more ways than one. Seasons change the terrain and the day/night cycle, adding new aspects to this tactical game. As always there is a ton of other changes too, so make sure to check this excellent title out.

Wyrmsun showing a small settlement in winter.

Unvanquished - 0.51

After several years it seems Unvanquished is still alive and well, and proves this with an enormous new release! In case you missed it, Unvanquished is a tactical shooter with base-building elements where a team of humans fight against a team of aliens. Each team has completely different gameplay styles, creating some very interesting dynamics and variation. It looks really good and plays even better, and this new release has a massive changelog: a new launcher, many gameplay improvements, loads of work on game assets including some new player models, code clean up and performance improvements, lots of work on maps, new and improved sound effects, better bots, etc, etc. It also seems a beta release is near, so this is probably a perfect time to try this excellent and unique shooter!

A new damage indicator is another big improvement in Unvanquished.

Wyrmsun - 3.4.1

The really enjoyable classic RTS Wyrmsun still has an amazingly rapid development pace. Every day there seems to be something new. The game recently reached a new nice milestone in the form of 3.4.0, that among other things included a new civilization in the form of the Norse, several new buildings for Dwarfs, Teutons and Goblins, a few new units and a whole host of other improvements all around. If you like RTS games and have not yet tried this gem, give it a go!

A dwarven settlement in Wyrmsun.

C-Dogs SDL 0.6.6 - 0.6.8

More than a year ago since I last mentioned the classic multiplayer shooter C-Dogs! There has been several releases with lots of new stuff. Two new spooky campaigns (though I saw this a bit late for Halloween!), several HUD-improvements, semi-transparency effects, a separate key for throwing grenades (trust me, that is useful) and more. To get a full overview of all new stuff, have a look at the projects news section!

C-Dogs showing off the new grenade-button.

OpenRA - 20180923

The extremely polished recreation of the classic Command & Conquer-games (as well as Dune 2000), OpenRA, keeps the banner high with regular releases. The latest is called 20180923 and includes several months worth of work. There is a new player account system bringing together more aspects of the games online community, several UI improvements, AppImage packages, performance improvements and many other fixes, balancing and tweaks. The Mod SDK has received large improvements too, and many interesting mods seem to be in the work. Personally I love the fact that one of them attempts to recreate another classic RTS: KKND.

New mouse-overs displays hints in OpenRA.

Meridian 59

Quite a while ago I covered Open Meridian, a new client for the classic MMORPG Meridian 59. It's source has been available for a while, and just now I noticed the original version of the game is also available to play, completely free. So if you want to rediscover this classic medieval fantasy adventure, complete with both co-operative and player-vs-player gameplay, you can get Meridian 59 from here.

There is something intriguing about the classic 3D-graphics in Meridian 59.

EmptyEpsilon

EmptyEpsilon is a multiplayer starship bridge simulator. Each player takes command of a certain station, such as Helm, Science or Engineering, each having a unique screen with information, controls and functions. There is also a main screen that displays what happens outside the ship. The challenge is coordinating all this, as the players must work together operating the ship to complete various missions. If you have ever watched Star Trek and (like me) dreamt of being captain of your own starship, this is as close as you can get. A very cool simulator with a unique concept and really smart co-op gameplay. An extra cool feature is that one player can act as a game master, controlling the game for the other players, a feature that can be used for cool RPG-like setups. It's also possible to script your own missions. If you have a few interested friends and enough computers this is a must try!

 

The relay officers station from EmptyEpsilon. Only that player sees this screen.

And here is an example of what the main screen displays. All players see this.

Mindustry

Mindustry is a very unique tower defense game where it's not enough to construct turrets to defeat the hordes of incoming enemies – you must also construct supply lines with conveyor belts to provide them with ammo. For those of us who love building and optimizing this game should provide plenty of fun! The game can be downloaded or it can be played directly in the browser. There is an editor so you can create your own maps and there is even cross-platform multiplayer over LAN or WAN, so get your friends together and start constructing!

Look at these amazingly intricate designs!

Freeciv 2.6

Freeciv has had a major release after three years of hard work. This great empire-builder has so many improvements I couldn't even begin to mention them. Rest assured that the game plays better than ever, so perhaps it's time to get a multiplayer-session together and have some fun! Remember that if you don't think the main game has enough options or a graphical style that suits you, you can change it up with rulesets, modpacks or new art and tilesets. Also, don't forget that the game can be played online in the form of Freeciv-web, complete with a WebGL-based 3D engine.

You probably need to click this image of Freeciv to notice all the little detail that hides beneath those flags. :)

TripleA

TripleA is a strategy game designed to play as a digital version of the classic Axis & Allies boardgames. It can be played both online, over LAN or single player against AI. There are several maps included, focusing on everything from World War 2 to the Napoleonic Wars, even including several futuristic and fantasy scenarios. It's possible to create new maps and share them with other players as well. TripleA will probably require a bit of patience but there is certainly a lot to like for those who want to invest time in it. I also must mention that many of the maps looks really good.

The beautiful Napoleonic Empires map from TripleA.

Warzone 2100 - 3.2.3

Soon there will be more updates on this page - there are several new interesting Free game projects I want to mention. But they will have to wait until I have a bit more free time. In the meantime though, here is a small update to the excellent RTS Warzone 2100. Release 3.2.3 is mainly a bug-fix release, but it also adds support for higher levels of anti-aliasing, optimizes graphics and adds some new scripting functions. Also don't forget that this game has excellent modding capabilities with a huge archive of hundreds of interesting addons and maps.

I found this screen in the Warzone 2100 addon archive, from a stat-balancing mod called YAGeSM.

C-Dogs SDL - 0.6.5

Frequent visitors know I like the game C-Dogs SDL. Besides being very fun, development is very quick with many new features to play around with in each release. This is of course also true with 0.6.5, which contains a new campaign, a new character editor as well as some additional weapons, using a new more advanced collision code. Look at the video below for a small example:

Example of the new hitscan weapons from C-Dogs SDL.

Isleward

Isleward is a moddable multiplayer roguelike. It combines elements from roguelikes such as permadeath and randomly generated worlds, with elements from mmo-games like social and tactical interaction, all playable online. It looks like a lot of work has gone into it and it has a very interesting minimalist art style. Read more about it here!

A small animation showing off the unique artwork of Isleward.

OpenTTD - 1.7.0

Transportation business simulation game OpenTTD has reached a new milestone in 1.7.0. Besides bug fixes and smaller improvements the majority of the work seems to be based around the New Graphics Resource File that should make modifying the game easier and more flexible. (If I have understood this right. :) There are also some UI improvements, realistic acceleration for trains and road vehicles, performance improvements and more. Be sure to check it out if you fancy this rather advanced strategy game.

This screenshot from OpenTTD is old, but I'm having trouble finding new ones. :)

Xonotic - 0.8.2

The super-awesome FPS Xonotic have released version 0.8.2 after over a year of work. It's a big release, with loads of improvements to UI, in game menus, spectating and all those small details that makes this a fantastic e-sports game. There are also several new maps, even nicer weapon models, several improvements to vehicles, mini-games to play while waiting for the next match, new game modes, a new type a grenade that slows down time around opponents and of course many many code improvements and fixes. Get it while it's hot and enjoy it's amazingly tuned gameplay and fantastic sense of polish.

A short clip from Xonotic showing of the new HUD shake effect.

Tank Arena

Tank Arena is an arcade game from 1997 that just got it's source code released, qualifying it for a mention here. :) It's playable against another player on the same computer in either a deathmatch, race, capture the flag or co-op play. There also seems to be a bunch of single-player levels to tackle alone. You can drive tanks, chopper and planes and there are several different ones to use, as well as four different worlds, a complete map editor and joystick support!

A few screens from Tank Arena, showing classic pixel art and splitscreen play!

C-Dogs - 0.6.4

Ever-fun run-and-gunner C-Dogs just got it's new nice walking animations! There is also a new features that lets objects spawn items when destroyed, so now you can get healthpacks by destroying those crates!

Here's the new walking animation in action. Looks fancy!

Tremulous - 1.3 Alpha

I had no idea Tremulous was still being developed. The classic humans vs aliens FPS got forked into much more modern games like Unvanquished a long time ago and I thought it was left unattended. But now it seems it's still going strong, with an 1.3 release scheduled for April 27. The release notes mention an OpenGL2-renderer, multi-protocol support, LUA integration, a new installer and updater as well as tons of bug fixes.

Overview of a small base in Tremulous.

Urban Terror 4.3.2

Urban Terror - the FPS that favors fun over realism but still has a bit of the latter, is now on 4.3.2. While the team is working on a new game improvements are still coming to this long lasting FOSS shooter. There are several improvements to the InstaGib and GunGame modes, engine optimizations, some interface improvements, a bit of balancing and more.

Spectatin a street-corner battle in Urban Terror.