I’m looking for recommendations on high quality open source games to try. Some of my favorite games I’ve played recently are Factorio, Kerbal Space Program, and Outer Wilds, but I’m willing to try many kinds of games (besides FPS).
If you like Factorio you definitely like Mindustry
Yeah I saw a recent post about that one and am trying it out. It seems pretty good so far, and that’s what got me to ask this (most open source games I’ve tried have felt really unpolished, whereas with other software I primary use open source). But because the creative aspect of games I’m perfectly fine with using closed source games (they aren’t really as fungible as other software).
Ooh, I’m going to check that out. I remember really liking tower defense games when I was younger
My favourites are:
- Endless Sky (2D space sim, singleplayer)
- FlightGear (3D flight sim, singleplayer and multiplayer)
- OpenTTD (transport management game, singleplayer and multiplayer)
- Torcs (racing game, singleplayer)
Each of these are quite polished (especially for open source games!), widely packaged, not too complicated to start playing (except perhaps FlightGear) and have been around for a long time. Endless Sky, FlightGear and OpenTTD have quite active development, while Torcs is much quieter nowadays (although there is an actively developed fork called Speed Dreams which is awesome, just not widely packaged yet).
I’ve been meaning to try out FreeOrion and Minetest for a while now, looking forward to seeing what else pops up on the thread!
I just wish Endless Sky would migrate some folks over from Reddit to the Fediverse. The Discord is ok, but there is a certain amount of unnecessary toxicity that’s seeped into the development. I kinda feel like having another place to talk about development outside the Discord might help.
Thanks for the recommendations! FlightGear looks very interesting to me, I’ll definitely check it out.
Games originating in modding communities:
- 0ad
- SpringRTS
- OpenRA (total conversion mods required)
- OpenTTD
- The Dark Mod (Mod for DOOM 3, but is not FPS)
Games that are also sold on app stores, steam etc:
- shattered pixel dungeon
- mindustry
- keeperrl (only ascii version is free and I don’t know how playable it is in that state)
Games that are around for quite some time or gained quite a community around it at some point:
- The Battle of Wesnoth
- Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
- BrogueCE (animated ascii graphics)
- Minetest
- Super TuxKart
- Super Tux
- Hedgewars
Open sourced commercial games:
- Castle Doctrine
- Warzone 2100
- Soldat
- Astromenace
Though for those who are more engines (SpringRTS and minetest) the quality really depends on the mods you are playing.
Some stuff I just found and never played myself:
- Catburglar
- Roboden
Open sourced commercial games:
- Charge Kid
- duelyst
- Super Lemonade Factory
- OpenClonk
- Seven Kingdoms
Assets are unfree but freely accessible:
- Cendric2 (nc-nd)
- Star Ruler (nc without music)
- Cart Life (freeware)
- Postal (freeware)
- Pocket Island (nc-sa)
- Strange Adventures in Infinite Space (nc)
I’m not sure about whether these games got 100% FLOSSed or still require bought assets:
- BYTEPATH
A special case because these use CC BY-NC-SA even for source code, which is effectively unfree. They are ports of older Mac games, but most are 3D:
- Mighty Mike
- Cro-Mag Rally
- Bugdom 1
- Bugdom 2
- Billy Frontier
- Nanosaur 1
- Nanosaur 2
- Otto Matic
The “problem” with the open source game landscape is, that a lot of games are either focused on multiplayer or have randomly generated worlds, because that developers can play that too. There are games with single player story line, I think open sourced commercial games are doing a bit better with this. Commercial open source games that are open source from the beginning are a newer development.
This recently got a 1.0 release. Sort of in the same vein as dwarf fortress. Has a commercial version, but there’s also a free version that lacks the graphics and sound of the paid version, and is open source.
It’s been on my radar for years but I’ve still yet to try it out
The FLOSS version got a bit neglected. At least when I play the paid version in ASCII mode, there are still a lot of graphics in the menu etc. The result is that everything looks different in the menu and in the world.
Excluding the two games that were already mentioned, personally I find Zero-K and FreeOrion to be pretty high quality open source games and enjoyed both of them. The first requires steam afaik so there’s quite a limitation and the latter is still far from complete, but it was still enjoyable with a lot of interesting game mechanics when I played it.
Some other FOSS games that I consider high quality but haven’t played quite as much so can’t say for sure, or don’t have strong opinions about:
0AD, OpenRA, OpenTTD, OpenRCT2. Simutrans, Unciv, CorsixTH, UFO:AI, BitburnerSome other FOSS games that I’ve read about a lot and as far as I know are really popular and considered relatively high quality, but I either haven’t tried them at all or find them (a bit) overrated:
Beyond All Reason, Freeciv, Unitystation / Space Station 14, Hypersomnia, VelorenYou wrote that you’re not looking for FPS games. Note that Hypersomnia is a top-down shooter and Veloren is a third person (over shoulder) action RPG. So if you dislike shooters or if you dislike specific camera locations these might not be for you.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a mobile game built upon Pixel Dungeon. Both are rogue-like, turn-based, dungeon-crawlers.
If you don’t mind severe time investment, Tales of Maj Eyal. It has a paid version on steam for people who want to support the devs, or a donation option on their site, but it’s also open source.
Can you elaborate on what is “high quality” for you please? So it’s easier to recommend something you might wanna try.
I just mean games that feel a little more polished and less like a toy project; games that have a stable release separate from development would be one example of a more mature polished project.
