Looking for FOSS Games
Looking for FOSS Games
Hey there,
I enjoy Linux gaming via WINE/Proton, but I often wonder about Linux-native FOSS games. You often see brilliant titles like 0AD and Mindustry mentioned, but there are also some unspoken gems in the "genre" like Minetest and it makes me wonder what other FOSS games are out there, that people just don't talk about much? I'm looking to discover and play more of these titles.
Unciv - this one's especially good on mobile
FreeDoom
Sonic Robo Blast 2 if fangames are acceptable
Edit: Since I mentioned FreeDoom -- Gzdoom acts as a sort of platform for Libre FPSes. Ashes 2063 and Wolfenstein Blade of Agony for instance.
To name a few: AssaultCube, Battle for Wesnoth, Cube2: Sauerbraten, FligthGear, Freeciv, Freeciv21, Nexuiz Classic, OpenArena, OpenHV, OpenRA, OpenTTD, Remnants of the Precursors, SpeeDreams, Stone Kingdom, SuperTux, SuperTuxKart, Unciv, Urban Terror, Veloren, Warozone 2100, Widelands, Xonotic
P.S. It may be that not all of them are FOSS, but they run natively on linux.
I have thousands of hours in Urban Terror. I wish the jump mechanics could be enabled in other games. I have so many neurons dedicated to it.
There is [email protected] here on Lemmy.
Many thanks! No idea how I wasn't already subscribed to that!
BAR - Beyond All Reason, for Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander style RTS, learned about this one in another thread here on lemmy
Zero-K - similar premise, plays different from BAR, also the graphics seem less demanding
OpenSoldat - 2D arena shooter. For anyone that never played or saw something similar, think of multiplayer maps of halo, quake or unreal, but if it was a 2D platformer
Not quite open source, but Daggerfall Unity is a FOSS update to the engine for Daggerfall, a game which Bethesda has made free for years now. You can get the game off GOG, too.
I've played and enjoyed:
OpenTTD
OpenRCT2
OpenClonk
Hedgewars
Foobillard++I've also been looking at Tabletop Club but haven't played with it much yet.
Oh wow, both seem really great.
Games which I have played for more than 100 hours.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon: A traditional rougelike dungeon crawler.
Rhythia or Sound Space Plus: Rythm-based aim game.
Taisei: A Touhou FOSS Fangame.
Osu!: A rythm based game.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Hell yeah CDDA.
I'm currently installing solar panels and wind turbines on the roof of a firestation to act as my garage and home base while I'm fixing up a luxury RV that I drove out of a mall. Surprisingly, it was in great condition except for all of the glass, boards, and quarterpanels; the chassis itself and all of the internals are practically untouched.
Ones I've played (mostly when I was younger) and enjoyed a lot:
Teeworlds
Warmux
SuperTux
Cube 2: Sauerbraten
Hell yeah Sauerbraten all the way
Unfortunately Warmux is now a dead project, with official site taken over by unrelated company and only unofficial Flathub distribution exist.
Even Windows built and other OS is gone.
There is a Wikipedia article about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_games
It is, however, vastly incomplete, as entries without "reliable sources" get deleted. Mind that linking the source code repository, the steam page, the license file and news about a game going open source are not enough to count as "reliable source".
I'm a fan of Freedroid Classic, a FOSS remake of a commodore 64 game called "Paradroid". You're a robot on a deserted space ship full of other malfunctioning robots, and you have to hack / shoot all of them. You start out as the worst robot, but if you encounter a better one, you can hack it to take over its body -- if it doesn't kill you first.
Takes a few runs to get the hang of it, but it's a lot of fun.
Endless Sky is an amazing one. I've put tons of hours into it. It's a top down 2d space trading/fighting game, very similar to Escape Velocity if you've ever played that game.
also check out libregamewiki its got lots of free games
Here is also a website where you can see if there is an open source port to non-open source games or an alternative that e.g. tries something of its own / based on the gameplay. As an example, the following "clones" are listed for Minecraft: Minetest, Mineclone2 (now VoxeLibre), ManicDigger and more.
Edit: fixed some grammatic fails.
Would reccomend osu!. A cool rhythm game with support for different gamemodes. The lazer version is open source and is on development to ensure it can match all expectations.
Supertuxkart and supertux
Does Katawa Shoujo count? Itās not quite FOSS, but itās a renpy game under CC BY-NC-ND.
Nikki and the Robots, it's written in Haskell
For those unaware, what is the significance of it being written in Haskell?
It's a functional programming language, so you have to think quite differently when using it if you're used to imperative programming languages (e.g. C++, Java, Python, Basic). I learned it at uni and it was quite fun, but I wouldn't know how to write a larger project in it.
Language on the broad scope doesnāt matter, but something with a nicheāespecially not another object-oriented framework as dominates video games but less so elsewhere in the last decade where encapsulation & state have been seen more as anti-patterns in most casesācan make it either a better tool for the job or at least a curiousity on how to construct a full application of the type in said languageāwhich helps fans of this or adjacent languages have a repository of ideas to draw upon.
Adding to what others have said If you are looking for or interested in game engine clones https://osgameclones.com/
Every couple of years I throw 40-80 hours into (eg) https://crawl.akrasiac.org:8443/#lobby
its pretty complex and can be hard to learn, but flightgear is super fun once you get the hang of piloting.
I can also recommend Rota, it's a relatively new puzzle platformer. https://snapcraft.io/rota
Snap is closed-source backend and is hardcoded to use Canonical's repo (therefore centralized). Kinda ironic I think. I can't find it through flathub sadly.
Selaco is a quite recent FOSS game, pased on DOOM.
Selaco looks awesome, and GZDoom it's running on is indeed FOSS, but the game itself appears to be a commercial endeavor and not FOSS itself, from what I could find. :)
Absolutely a cool looking game though. Super impressive.
Here are some less mentioned FLOSS games, that are excellent quality:
Fillets-ng (2D fish sokoban)
The Dark Mod (3D stealth game, bow and sword)
Crrcsim (3D model glider flightsim, slope soaring)
BZFlag has existed for a while now.
I haven't played it yet, but a game called Veloren looks really good, and I've heard great things about it.
I spent several years on OpenBSD playing mostly foss games (no WINE support) before I got my steam deck, so I feel fairly qualified with recommending Cataclysm DDA, Xmoto, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Say goodbye to the next several months of your life. Other cool FOSS games that grabbed me, but not to the same level: Ur Quan Masters (Star Control 2), and endless-sky.
@[email protected] Sonic RoboBlast 2 and Sonic RoboBlast 2 Kart.
The former is a fork of the original Doom that turns it into a 3D platformer. The latter is a fork of the former that turns it into an online kart racing game