Recommend FLOSS games
I'd like to ask for recommendations for FLOSS (Free/Libre, Open-Source Software) games, playable on Linux or Android. I saw an old thread on this topic, but it's over a year old, so I thought it'd be okay to ask this year. Genre-wise, I'm pretty open. RPG, adventure, FPS, RTS, TBS, 4x, puzzle, sidescroller, platformer, single-player, multi-player, online, offline... whatever. I would prefer not needing to have original (commercial) game assets.
Fine print: I do like a good FPS, but, having played commercial titles on PS3 and PS4, I've found that the FLOSS FPSes I've tried just don't hold a candle to them. Also, I prefer having a short TTK (think: hardcore mode, R6S, BFV), and every FLOSS FPS I've tried has had a long TTK.
I've already played:
Linux:
- Wesnoth
- 0 A.D.
- roguelikes (currently have an active character in Angband)
- Ur Quan Masters
- Minetest
- bzflag (long ago)
Android:
- SuperTuxKart
- Pixel Dungeon
- Andor's Trail
- Mindustry
- Pixel Wheels
- Vector Pinball
- Minetest
- Wesnoth
- HyperRogue
What I haven't played, but might check out:
- FreeOrion
- Endless Sky
- Glest, MegaGlest
- Warzone 2100
- Zero-K
- KeeperRL
- OpenRCT2
- Oolite
Lexica (Android) - A Boggle-like game. It's a nice relaxing word game.
UnCiv (Android/Desktop) - A FLOSS reimplementation of Sid Meier's Civilization V. While it doesn't have all of the win conditions or DLC gameplay implemented, it is surprisingly playable and similarly addicting to the original!
Freeciv (Desktop) - Again, a FLOSS reimplementation of Civ, though this is a much older project. It has a lot of the comlexity that UnCiv lacks, but its UX can be a bit of a barrier for a new player.
MegaGlest (Desktop) - A Medieval RTS game. It reminded me a lot of Star Wars: Empire at War, from the days I played that. MegaGlest is missing some polish, but I definitely found it fun as well.
Endless Sky (Desktop) - I definitely also have to echo @The-Toon's suggestion of Endless Sky! It's fun, can be played real-time or not. Has an optional plot. All-in-all, a lot of player choice and pretty graphics.
Bonus points - Wikipedia maintains a list of open source video games, but it's not easy to determine quality from it, and it seems to mostly target desktop software.
Endless Sky is pretty good.
OpenTTD if you like Chris Sawyer games. It gets surprisingly deep really fast.
Try Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein:_Enemy_Territory). It was published in 2003 by Activision and the entire source code was released under GPL in 2010. There's still quite a few active servers, 68.232.172.16 for example.
TTK can be pretty long if you aren't getting headshots, however.
EDIT: I didn't read the OP like an idiot, please mark this "offtopic". I'm leaving it just in hopes that someone who is interested comes along :P
My current obsession is Xonotic, a quake-like arena shooter that's quickly become my favorite of the genre, maybe my favorite multiplayer shooter ever. It's so smooth and fast and even polished, being the most satisfying version of a formula that's already perfect in my eyes.
I've always been able to find a game, too! That's a HUGE plus for these, this game has had a small but thriving community for a long time. I don't feel like I'm ever in danger of not getting to play this beautiful game.
If any of you would like to play, I'd love to see you on there. We can set up duels (haven't had a chance to play one yet, I've only been playing for a couple weeks) or whatever else you're interested in. You'll usually find me hanging out on Tiomano's server with @Cleb just doing normal DMs.
God damn Xonotic is amazing! A friend and I were only recently lamenting the fact that the concept of a pure arena shooter seems to dead forever. This ticks all the boxes!
I'm so glad you're liking it! Where have you been playing?
I played a bit last night on a server called "Boner's Overclocked Votable @Sydney, Australia"
? It's not off topic... Xonotic is FLOSS. I'll check it out, even if it has high TTK.
I remember playing a heck of a lot of Sauerbraten back in the day. It's a very fast paced arena shooter, kinda like Quake. It still seems to be alive with somewhat active community.
I also adore Neverball it's a clone of a Super Monkey Ball. I also secretly dream that someone will port it to Switch with gyroscope controls.
Ahh, Sauerbraten! Ha, back then I remember thinking "wow, these graphics seem advanced!" All it took was some shiny water and bloom. Well, looking at certain screenshots, I still think it looks pretty damn decent. Seems like the engine would be a cool choice for a first-person RPG of some sort.
I also wanted to mention Urban Terror since I vividly remembered it being open source, but it turns out it's just the engine that's open source, not the game itself. Still, I've put a lot of hours into that game
Better yet: it's perfectly moddable! And there's an community doing the efforts, too, including yours truly.
I played a shitload of Spring engine games throughout the last decade, including Zero-K most recently. The Spring engine is one of the more impressive open-source software projects that I'm aware of. It's the only RTS engine that I've encountered that includes simulated projectiles, uncapped unit counts (other than hardware caps of course) and real-time modifiable terrain. Because of the simulated projectiles, terrain plays a significant role but it doesn't have to be some stapled-on feature like a damage bonus for high-ground (as in Age of Empires) or low-high ground miss chance (as in WC3). Projectile weapons can actually reach further from higher ground as a direct consequence of their simulated motion. Different vehicles have different movement constraints based on the steepness of the terrain; It's possible to terraform the ground so that light vehicles can't drive on it anymore. There are robots that can walk on any steepness, medium steepness, amphibious units, etc.
There were many mods/game variants that utilized the engine, Zero-K is one of the latest and (I think) the most popular. It is probably the best balanced in my experience but they are all fairly similar in game play as "spiritual successors" to the Total Annihilation games. Only two come to mind that were wildly different from the rest: Spring 1944 and Kernel Panic. The former was a WWII-style RTS mod and the other was sort of a retro computer-land themed (I can't think of a way of describing that better) RTS.
Zero-K:
Shadowfury333 is a streamer who casts tournaments and other random games. Mostly 1v1. I don't know how entertaining any of these videos are if you aren't familiar with the game. I watch them before I go to sleep sometimes. I think he posted one of my games a year or so ago.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Shadowfury333
Spring 1944:
There's a now defunct YouTube channel that was run by the designers. Some of the games on there are pretty interesting to watch if you want to get a sense of how the economies work and an overview of the strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfVewBTrca4
There's a video on this channel of a different Spring mod that I don't know much about which was based in the MechCommander universe.
Kernel Panic:
I never really played this very much, there aren't very many game play videos and everybody seems to be trying it for the first time in the ones that I've found.
Promo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAZQhRlt5bU
Others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn6qsu5hFD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8is0K7T3XL8
Anodyne on Steam is newly source-available.
In a similar vein, VVVVV was open sourced a while back if I'm remembering right.
VVVVVV also went source-available, not open source
Games I've played for at least an hour that aren't on your list:
Assorted games I know of:
Mindustry is pretty fun. It's like a stripped down factorio meets tower defense. It's available on mobile as well, though I've only tried the desktop version.
EDIT: Backup recommendation since I apparently can't read: Oolite. It's an open source remaster of Elite, with boatloads of mods. Elite, if you're not familiar, is like the original space exploration sandbox, with a focus on combat and trading.
It's in OP's "already played" list, though
Oh whoops. Looked for it in the Linux section rather than the android section. At least it was a good recommendation!
If you're a fan of Roguelikes, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is a great one.
Brogue is pretty fantastic as well!
Sure, it's a legit recommendation (for others to see) but I'd rather not need to pay for original game assets.
You can just grab the RCT2 demo and ORCT2 will run the full game, I think.