1y ago

What are some great open source games?

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/3160775

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:
Mindustry
Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart
Powder Toy
GZDoom (and all the amazing mods for it)
Veloren (even though it's still in alpha)

30 comments

OpenTTD ( https://www.openttd.org/ ) is pretty popular and has been for a long time.

0 A.D.

Endless Sky
It’s a single player, top-down, 2D space combat and trading game. If you ever played Escape Velocity back in the mid 90s(?), it’s essentially a clone of that setting and gameplay.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/404410/Endless_Sky/
https://endless-sky.github.io/
- Should also be available in most Linux Repo's from what I know.
  Try not to crush me for the wrong words there, its 3am

Forge, the open sourced MTG client. It's written in java, fully portable with an android version even. Full rules enforcement, an incredibly active dev community with the new sets implemented pretty quickly after release. I've honestly put more hours into just playing against the AI in 4v4 commander games than most steam games I own.
https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge
- wait with this i can play magic the gathering for free?
  
  Yes*
  It's got all the cards with art, a good deck builder, and it supports multiple game modes, including Commander. It's also got bot players that are good to test decks against and it forces game rules, so it's good for learning.
  *I've never gotten the multiplayer to work. My friends use Cockatrice for that. (Also FOSS) Cockatrice is clunkier and much more manual to use but, the multiplayer works.

ASCII survival isn't for everyone, but I do very much enjoy Cataclysm, Dark Days Ahead or Bright Nights depending on your preferences in realism.

Honestly, I've been playing quite a lot of SuperTuxKart recently and it is by any standards a great game! The amount of mods and skins is just the cherry on top.

Sauerbraten (Cube3D)
- I used to play it a lot about a decade ago. Good times.

Nethack

Open Hexagon is pretty good if you enjoy music reaction/arcade games. It’s an open source successor of Super Hexagon with several community made level packs. The only flaw is the steep learning curve of the gameplay.

BAR is also nice if you like RTS games

Battle for Wesnoth
Mindustry is the clear winner though

The selection isn't huge to begin with but shattered pixel dungeon is a great one, it's cross platform but I love to play it on my phone when I am bored!

If you like classic RPGs, I can't recommebd you Andor's Trail enough o

Xonotic
Tee Worlds
Hedgewars
- Xonotic is the only one I've played out of all the games in this post. Only tried it for a couple hours, but it was fun.

Like many open source games, it has that distinctly 'alpha' feel to it right now, but I do enjoy NodeCore on occasion. It's a zen minimalist block game with a unique diagetic crafting system. Instead of a traditional "recipe book" or "crafting grid", you produce new materials through in-world transformations. For instance, to make glass, you have to surround sand with fire, and to control fire, you basically want to build a deliberately-shaped dirt or stone pit... the whole thing feels a little like minecraft and a little like a sand physics sim or cellular automata.
- Pretty interesting, reminds me of Vintage Story. Thanks for sharing.

Pixel Dungeon, or its more updated and popular fork, Shattered Pixel Dungeon.
Randomized Dungeon Crawler.
Available on PC and Android (at least)

Helium Rain launched a few years ago as a commercial game with an open source launcher (BSD-3), and as of a few weeks ago the game became free on Steam. The developer is no longer maintaining it, but there's still a small community that are interested in it.

Space Station 13. it's great.

Technimo, a fantastic android version of tetris with tons of options and modes.

Games rarely work with an open source business model, so that's why there aren't any really great ones.
- It's not all about business models. People make things out of personal interest too.
- Tell me you have no clue about video games without telling me you have no clue about video games.
  
  its funny how wrong they are, like games are probably the best suited case for it - no massive security risks, players could implement features they want.
  if Minecraft was open source from the get go, it'd probably be bigger than unreal by now

30 comments