What are your favorite open-source games?

ModerateImprovement@sh.itjust.works to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 282 points –
164

OpenRCT2

An open source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2

I really wish someone would do an OpenRCT3. It was so much fun being able to ride your creations. I had a 3D projector back then too, which made the game even more awesome. Such an underrated sequel.

And yes I'm aware that Planet Coaster exists but has anyone actually tried playing that game? They made everything way too complicated and I just can't get into it. I don't want to engineer every single bend and design the perfect landscaping from scratch, I just want to slap some rides together, see the guests come pouring in, and occasionally ride one of my rides (in VR, ideally). No game since RCT 3 has satisfied that itch for me.

You might want to have a look at parkitect! Its an hommage to rct1/2 but in a modern 3d presentation

OpenRCT2 is awesome, but as of now you still need the original commercial game to play it, since the open source version doesn't have graphics.

Maybe one day they're going to recreate graphics from scratch, like they did with the other Chris Sawyer's reversed engineered game OpenTTD.

The ones that come to mind are Beyond All Reason and Battle For Wesnoth.

OpenRA and OpenTTD

OpenTTD is fantastic. The graphics might give new players pause, but if you like building networks or logistical puzzles, or just like trains, it's still one of the best in the genre.

Mobile on Android: Shattered Pixel Dungeon and Techmino.

+1 for Pixel Dungeon, never heard of Techmino I'll check it out

It's Tetris but for mobile and very good quality

Tried to check it out - for me it's neither on Google Play nor on F-Droid. Is it still supported and updated?

You have to get it directly from github. I use Obtainium to help with that.

it receives relatively frequent updates, and it uses love2d (with a native lua module for the AI) so it's crossplatform.

I asked this a while ago which is how I discovered Beyond All Reason which has been my FOSS game of choice as of late.

I'd also recommend Naev and Endless Sky (Both are based on the Escape Velocity Series, Naev is getting a 3D PBR renderer in the next release). Mindustry is good fun, actually purchased this one on steam to support the amazing developer. Extreme Tux Racer is a bit of fun and Super Tux Kart seems to get better with every update (did I mention it can run on the Nintendo Switch via homebrew!)

Edit: I forgot about 0ad and Minetest which I used to play a bit of a while back

BAR is great -- Total Annihilation was always one of my favorite games from childhood and BAR feels the most like it compared to other spiritual successors like SupCom/FA and other community projects. I actually tried to contribute a couple commits to the project but I don't think they took them.

I also found bar from an open source thread on Lemmy. It's such a good game. You a cortex or Armada player?

I've only been spamming cortex I haven't tried arm yet.

Quite the opposite—I've only played Armada, not that I have any real strategy to speak of buy I like to set up lots of radar as well as claim the airspace early then once I've built the nuke the game is pretty much won. Haven't tried that on a real player yet though

Since you're in aus timezone you might see me around. I play most nights under the name Fizzz

Space Station 13.

Too many amazing moments and memories to even count, always more to learn. I love how the open source nature of the game means there's many different servers branching off from each other, running their own custom versions of the game. Smaller servers "downstream" pick and choose which features they want to keep when the upstream servers implement something new.

You might not be aware but there's also a fairly content-rich successor project called SpaceStation 14! Its obviously nowhere near as featureful as 13 is, due to lack of development time but has a very active development community around it.

One of the major (imo) improvements is a move to per pixel "real time" movement instead of the tile movement of ss13, it helps make them game feel much more alive and interactive.

Definitely worth a look for fans of ss13, and its also open source and Linux compatible.

https://spacestation14.com/

Is there anyway to play on Linux? I've always wanted to try a role playing game but never found one that I think I'd vibe but ss13 looks right up my alley.

It's not open source, but I do want to mention Barotrauma here -- it's not totally unheard of, but I don't think many people realize that it's a spiritual successor to SS13. Supports a lot less players, but still up to 12 or something on the bigger ships, and it manages to turn the absolute insanity of SS13 into a compelling survival game that still has plenty of goofiness.

I entered SS13 with the ssethtide and I stuck around past the worst of it but I haven't logged in since probably 2021. Is it a good time to come back and see what's up? I enjoyed high population servers and a lot of people were leaving with the tide around and before when I did. What's an average server pop these days?

The overcomplexity of the game is part of why I love it so much but it's also what drove me off of it, because I couldn't figure out how to run an offline server to practice roles and I wasn't trying to do my first day of engineering or doctoring on a public lobby if I could help it. I had a lot of fun in Mining and Cargo and occasionally just faffing about as an assistant helping Botany grow weed or bringing monkeys to the chef - but I'd like to learn "a real job" one of these days (he says, knowing exactly how pissed off everyone gets if mining or cargo either die or are understaffed). And most folks didn't usually seem inclined to adopt assistants, unfortunately. Remember folks, adopt wandering assistants and then spay and neuter them because unattended assistants will cook their hands off trying to break into the armory.

I mostly play on tgstation's european server Terry, which often gets up to 100 players in the busy hours.

I know exactly the kind of anxiety you mention when it comes to having to learn a new role. That was partly why I also had the idea of installing a server locally to tinker with the mechanics in, which fortunately tgstation actually makes very easy. My problem then is that I only have like 10 minutes alone on the station before the power runs out, and I have to go set up the solar panels to continue my experiments. Turns out being solo crew on a space station isn't all that easy.

Endless Sky. And AisleRiot Solitaire.

Endless Sky is a great game, and the Android port is solid. If you liked any of the Escape Velocity games then you'll love Endless Sky.

Simutrans and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Simutrans

Can I finally create a city with proper public transportation, full of trams???😳

Wait, there's opentdd, another similar game👀

Probably not unless you get public funding (eg, run a massive deficit, take control of the public AI to build stuff, debug features, etc) or you first create a resource chain or two to pay for transit.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead Battle for Wesnoth OpenTTD Doom

it's not really a game, but openmw

Morrowind was Bethesda's peak moment, so obviously foss engine keeping it alive to this day is awesome!

Definetly openTTD. I love trains and its so cool to see your little trains drive around, load some cargo, etc.

Cube 2 Sauerbraten, an online FPS. Not many players left anymore though.

Is this something like counterstrike/tf2? Seems interesting

Edit: I see there are Assault Cube, Assault Cube reloaded, Xonotic etc. Didnt know there were so manu

More similar to counterstrike than tf2, but I'd consider it more of a Quake clone. The (probably) less than 50 players only really play CTF nowadays.

I played this in high school circa 2013. There was a server up 24/7 that hosted an infinite loop of the Venice map that always had the highest server pop. You'd occasionally find other servers going, or be able to host your own and get randoms, but more often than not, I played a TON of Venice for about a year. Good times.

24/7 insta team Venice is still a thing! Normally less than 5 players on it nowadays though.

Open sudoku?

As you can imagine, I'm no fun at parties...

Which one? And does it have killer sudokus?

Your likely looking for the app "Puzzles" ob Android or one of its desktop versions, I am not entirely sure if they are actually open source but there are at least some people's contributions and it not only has "Killer" sudoku but a whole bunch of additional options (as well as tons of other awesome puzzle/logic games)!

No variant rules unfortunately according to the Fdroid. You should check out the sudoku games from Cracking The Cryptic on the Google Play store if you want that. They aren't FOSS but they have hundreds of handcrafted puzzles for a few bucks.

Yes, that's what I've been using for now. Best interface features and good puzzles, but sadly ads and the interface feels a little old.

Edit: went back to it, the UI is better than I remembered and you pay the ads away with 2,50€ or something.

Again Edit: I'm an idiot, I confused it with easybrain and logic wiz

I still haven't tried it, but I've heard how great Veloren apparently is. It's an MMO voxel game that takes inspiration from Zelda: Breath of the Wild and is written in Rust.

Early game is a bit confusing and direction less last I played but once you get your bearings its a load of fun

Mindustry, SuperTuxKart and Thrive probably

Is Thrive exceptionally similar to Spore?

I would say yes and no. It is a game about evolution with some similarities but it is very focused on a realistic representation of evolution. This makes it a more complex game than spore and actively encourages many different niches not just agressive, peaceful and mixed as spore did.

Aldo currently they are working on finishong the cell stage and the beginning of the multicellular stage while have more in deapth discussion about the transition between the microscopic and macroscopic phases among other things.

Cool. I think I'll wait until it's more complete to buy it.

It’s free, so don’t let that stop you, but it is very fair if you want a more complete experience before trying it out.

(It is paid on steam as a way to suport the game, but free downloads can be found on their website)

From a quick video I saw, they seem similar indeed, but I haven't played Thrive enough. I have only made it to a single-cell prokaryotic organism, lol (which is basically very close to the beginning of the game).

I am surprised that 0 A.D. is not mentioned.

Although initially unplayable, the game was fun in the mid-to-late 2000s.

I haven't checked it out in a while, but it holds high nostalgic value for me.

Great game, can recommend! Used to play it a lot with a friend.

FreeCiv is a classic and still fun. rogue and nethack are good, too.

Haven't played it much but for all fans of Thief games there's foss game called The Dark Mod. And I haven't seen it mentioned here, which is a shame.

That still requires you to own the original Thief Gold though, so I'm not sure it qualifies as truly open source.

The mod is excellent though, played it earlier this year. Thief is still one of the best games out there.

requires you to own the original Thief Gold

Happily, that's no longer the case these days. TDM was originally a mod, but despite keeping the name, it's now a standalone game using the open-sourced Doom 3 engine. The whole game is currently free without any purchases necessary!

Ohhhhh that's news indeed! I played the add-on, didn't know there's another one. Then I guess it's time to replay on the doom engine, thanks a lot!

Edit: Wait, that happened in 2013. The mod I played was only finished in 2023.

Edit 2: So I played "The Black Parade". Guess I must have confused "dark"and "black" somewhere...

  • Endless Sky -- open-source space game. I actually contributed to it back in the day; a date format option and a full-blown storyline about an author. Unfortunately the storyline is in development hell cause I lost motivation to work on it.
  • OpenTTD -- really awesome, with NewGRFs and mods you can have a somewhat "realistic" rail experience (as in, using actual real-life trains. Obviously a pixel game isn't the most "realistic" with graphics)
  • Mindustry
  • Pioneer Space Sim

DCSS, Minetest and Simon Tatham's Puzzles.

Widelands is a great strategy / building game. The gameplay and UI style is a niche - but that's one of the things I like about it. It's doing something different to most games.

(The gameplay is similar to Settlers 2; before that franchise changed direction.)

[edit] But the open-source game I've spent the most time playing would be OpenXcom-extended, with xpiratez. That game is truly huge.

supertuxkart, mindustry, unciv and xonotic are my favorites so far

Xonotic.

Formerly known as Nexuiz, until the lead dev sold the naming rights.

Since no one mentioned yet, Tales of Maj'Eyal deserves some love too. One of the best roguelikes out there..

Is that game open source? That's cool, I love that game

Yes, it is, although they don't seem to take a collaborative development approach, but you can grab the source and create derivative works.

The modding scene is (or, well, was) pretty active though, if you're into that. There are still official te4 forums, but most folks hang out in the discord (yeah, I know.) including a couple old head modders that are pretty familiar with the codebase if you're trying to do something exceptionally interesting with it.

Haven't seen this one mentioned but I have fond memories of Frets on Fire which is a guitar hero clone

I haven't thought about this game since I was in junior high. Wow. I should look into it again since guitar hero and rock band have become so inaccessible. Used guitar controllers going for $150+. Fucking outrageous.

Unciv is pretty cool, it is Civ 5 but you can play on mobile as well. It was great to have the "One more turn" feel while stuck on a train.

Xonotic (quake-esque FPS, IMO its like quake and halo had a FOSS child), Minetest (a voxel game engine, multiple games are available for it), and Mindustry (sandbox tower defense) are the only ones ive tried so far

KeeperFX - an opensource decompilation project and fan expansion of Dungeon Keeper.

VCMI - it's re-written from scratch, open source, multiplatform Heroes 3 engine with many improvements and mods manager. It requires some files from the original game though.

Heroes 3 were the best heroes ever. Followed by Heroes 2 which are covered by fheroes engine too :-)

it's gotta be Xonotic baby, basically a quake clone that is completely free, a decent sized player based and frag loads of fun!

Got it on me Ubuntu desktop starting out for FOSS games.

Taisei and Minetest with VoxelLibre

NodeCore is another great Minetest game. I haven't been able to find a game that matches the feeling of discovery it provides as you learn about the rules of the world.

I didn't see anyone mention Warzone2100 yet. An excellent RTS, with a neat research system and unit customisation, and fun campaign. They've recently added a couple of new campaigns I haven't played yet, and have enough ongoing dev work on skirmish/multiplayer that some AIs are listed as "X% win rate in AI matches".

QuakeWorld and old school Doom for FPS, Beyond All Reason for RTS, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup for roguelikes, Hedgewars for a Worms-like.

Super Tux Kart (I play it on Android) is NOT one of them. The physics system is bad at some moments, the items aren't fun to use and some of them ruin the game. The overall game feels amateurish (in a bad way), but one thing that I like is the Windows Car and the drifting. Those are awesome.

  • Super Tux (i played this since i'm three)
  • osu!lazer (rythm game)
  • shattered pixel dungeon

Pioneer, a remake of the original Elite, with Neutonian physics.

This looks cool! Gonna try it but I will probably be hella overwhelmed by the complexity :3

Armagetron Advanced - a Tron light cycles clone that was a blast for a long time. They even released for free on steam. I've not played in a long time, but now want to jump back on

It's definitely a work-in-progress title, but I have really enjoyed SuperTux Advance (AGPL-3.0 according to their github page). It's like SuperTux but with sliding, more playable characters, and more power ups. As of now it's probably my favorite OS game at the moment. -Ace

Reading SuperTux Advance made me imagine a Game Boy Advance demake of SuperTux, that would actually be so cool.

Edit: Oh, it seems I was half correct. It appears to be a re-imagining of the original game in a GBA art style.

I don't know if it counts, but I think the source code of Freespace 2 was released eventually und a non-profit license. The community did some great things with it, especially the Blue Planet campaign.

God, I loved this game.

Gauguin - Sudoku-like game for Android (on F-Droid)

The instructions are not clear at first so it's better to start the game a new with lower difficulty.

Teeworlds/DDNet. It has a very simple movement mechanic that is difficult but so satisfying to master, and the skill cap on community maps is crazy

minetest is a rather neat game engine, good bit of gameplay there, even more with the mods and other games you can play.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

It's a time machine that teleports you to 3am the next day.

Sanmill

Basically nine man's morris, it's pretty fun trying to beat progressively harder AI. Each difficulty requires a different (better) strategy. It's like unlocking levels in a puzzle game.

I'm a simple girl:

  • LTris
  • LBreakoutHD
  • Gweled
  • Frozen Bubble
  • Gnome Mahjongg
  • Gnome Tetravex

Too bad there isn't a single good linux pacman around...

If you bother to write a response, then please at least write what genre of game it is.

You can easily look them up using a search engine of your choice. But I understand the lazyness.

Andor's Trail - RPG where you search for your missing brother. Still under development, but there's a lot of content. It's convenient to fill a few spare minutes or waste hours.

Apotris is an excellent famous-block-stacking-game clone for the GBA (and other platforms), it has a version for Portmaster that will run on many if not all Linux handhelds like the RG35XX and similar, but will also run in any GBA emulator.

Technically Urban Terror isn't open source, but the Quake3 engine it runs on is.

CrossCode is really good, but it isn't free. I need to look through my Steam library to see which other games might be open source too. This is the only one I'm aware of, really. ProtonDB might have a list of games that are open source. It's a great resource for checking compatibility if you're playing on Linux.

CrossCode is fantastic. But it is not an open source game.

Oh, I always thought it was open source for some reason.

Cyberpunk 2077

It's funny because it's true. And it's funny because people think you're trolling.

But you're wrong.

Open source is not the same as source available. I'm not going to do a deep dive on definitions and licensing, but open source generally means that you are allowed to do what you want with it. It also usually implies that if the creator updates it, that updated code will also be shared.

The leaked Cyberpunk 2077 source code is from 2022 at the absolute latest (released 2024 from a hack done in 2022), is not open source licensed for re-use (meaning any use of it by people outside of CDPR is illegal), and they have released numerous patches, updates, and an entire DLC since.

I know that. It's not entirely true that it's open-source, since it does not actually have an open-source license, but it's true to an extent that the source code is technically out there and anyone who doesn't work for CDPR can (illegally) use it. The comment was only meant as a joke, I wasn't trying to be real serious about it.

Only AAA games on these premises, cause I ain’t no stingy bitch

Bro what are you smoking, AAA games are largely shit and the devs who create FOSS games have more soul and better creativity lmao

Oh right, I might have confused some stuff there