Libregamewiki:Featured Articles
Solarus
Solarus is an ARPG engine and game authoring tool. Solarus games are called "quests", and can be made with the Solarus Quest Editor. The project also has in-depth tutorials for using the tool.
Using Solarus, aspiring game developers can make sophisticated Zelda-like games, and other types of games. Virtually every aspect of the game engine is customisable via the Lua API, and the authoring tool has graphical editing of several aspects, such as map making.
The latest version of Solarus is 1.4.5, and was released November 22nd. The Solarus team are currently hard at work with version 1.5, which comes with lots of improvements and bug fixes. For now, you can download version 1.4.5 from the Solarus website. See Solarus for more information about this great engine and authoring tool.
Widelands
Widelands is a real-time strategy game. The object of Widelands is to build the economic infrastructure, and manage the construction of roads in order to expand the settlement and go to war. The economic network is big and complex, and varies slightly in the different playable tribes in the game.
Widelands was initially heavily inspired by Settlers 2, but has since surpassed it in terms of variety and complexity, whilst remaining rather intuitive.
A new version was released Februrary 22nd. It can be downloaded from the Widelands Web site. See Widelands for more information about the game.
Me and My Shadow
Me and My Shadow is a platform and puzzle game in which the player's shadow plays an important role.
The goal of the game is to reach the exit in each level. Certain obstacles and puzzle elements can only be conquered by working together with the player's shadow. Therefore the player can record his movements and let the shadow perform those movements... see Me and My Shadow
Pingus
Pingus is a clone of the proprietary puzzle game Lemmings, using penguins.
This GPL game has a side view of penguins on a snowy world. The aim is to get the penguins from their start point to the end, navigating obstacles. The penguins can be given special jobs like digging or building, or otherwise they'll just keep walking.
The latest release was 0.7.6, on 24 December 2011.
FreeCol
FreeCol is a Turn-based strategy game clone of Sid Meier's Colonization.
To win FreeCol, the player must either defeat all the other players or start a revolution and defend his/her colony against his/her former country.
The player will also need to balance food production, and produce liberty bells, among other factors. If, for example, the player does not have enough food, his/her colonists will starve. Not enough liberty bells will eventually lead to more "tories", which means the player will be further away from his/her goal of independence from their monarch.
Secret Maryo Chronicles
Secret Maryo Chronicles (SMC) is a 2D platform game with a style designed to be similar to classic side-scrolling games. It uses the platform independent library SDL and, since version 0.98, the OpenGL accelerated Graphics Renderer. The game is developed in C++ and is licensed under the GPLv3.
It is heavily inspired by Super Mario Bros. But nowadays it uses original artwork.
Stendhal
Stendhal is a multiplayer online adventure game with retro style graphics, over 250 NPCs and over 100 quests. It is written in Java by the Arianne Project, which was awarded project of the month in March 2010 by SourceForge.[1]
The game's source code and media is licensed under the GPL v2 and contribution is strongly encouraged, assisted by tutorials and other documentation.
After 7 years of development, Stendhal 1.00 was released on May 17th, 2012. The project adopts a "release early, release often" development approach, with new releases every 6-8 weeks.
Unknown Horizon
Unknown Horizons, formerly known as OpenAnno, is a real-time strategy game and economic simulation game loosely based on Sunflower's Anno series.
The game's source code is licensed under the GPL while its own media is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license and some parts under various other licenses.
The latest release is 2009.1. The first public version of Unknown Horizons is version 2008.1 released on October 1st, 2008 when it was called OpenAnno. This was the last release as OpenAnno before the name was changed to Unknown Horizons
Most graphics in Unknown Horizons are 3D model renders.
Transcend
Transcend is an abstract 2D shooter game created by Jason Rohrer. The game's source is licensed mostly under the GPL, but with some public domain code as well.
The latest version is 0.3 released on August 30, 2005. Rohrer was motivated to create the game out of frustration with the game industry's lack of creativity.
Its dynamic graphical engine can smoothly morph from one complex shape to another.
Hero of Allacrost
Hero of Allacrost, or simply Allacrost, is a 2d single-player RPG licensed under the GNU General Public License and was founded by Tyler Olsen in June 2004.
Allacrost's main design goals are:
- Emulate the look and feel of the current generation of games while still being original.
- Create a free role-playing game, which can played by an amount of people as large as possible. This means that it must have low hardware requirements, support Linux, Windows and Mac OSX and be available in multiple languages.
- Focus on gameplay and story, not on graphic effects.
- Dispense with time-wasting gameplay elements (micromanagement) which other RPGs often contain.
- Be intellectually challenging.
Nexuiz
Nexuiz is a multiplayer 3d first person shooter, based on Forest Hale's DarkPlaces engine, currently on release 2.3, released on May 31st 2007. Lee Vermeulen and Forest Hale are the project leaders. The development team is called Alientrap. Source code and content are both licensed under the GPL.
Vermeulen states that he was trying to hype the game in the beginning of the project, but that he then concentrated on finishing it. He also said that his main job was to nag the project's members to do their work.
Phil's pyGame Utilities
Phil's pyGame Utilities, aka PGU is a Pygame library that consists of many high-level modules to provide content for the development of programs - mainly games - in Pygame.
PGU was created and is maintained by Phil Hassey. It is licensed under the LGPL. The latest stable release is pgu-0.10.6 released on 3-25-2007.
Freeciv
Freeciv is a turn-based strategy game, inspired by Sid Meier's Civilization series. Both, code and media are licensed under the GNU General Public License. On November 14, 1995, the project started, to replace the broken Openciv.
Freeciv supports online play for the GGZ Gaming Zone since version 2.1.
Warzone 2100
Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game originally written in C as a closed source project by Pumpkin Studios. It was released (excluding the videos) under the GNU General Public License in late 2004 by Eidos Interactive. Now development is in the hands of the Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project.
The first step made by the development team was the removal of all proprietary dependencies. Now the game uses the SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL and PhysicsFS.
Grumbel
Ingo Ruhnke (born April 7, 1979), also known as Grumbel, is a computer science student at the university of Bielefeld in Germany.
Ruhnke has a strategy for starting free game projects: Know what the aim is before announcing the project, be prepared to do all the work, don't aim too low.
He also recommends continuing existing projects, instead of creating new ones.
Battle for Wesnoth
Battle for Wesnoth or simply Wesnoth is a fantasy themed turn-based strategy game started by David White in June 2003. The game is is coded in C++ and licensed, including the media, under the GPL.
The latest version of Wesnoth is 1.3.7 released on August 26, 2007 while the latest stable release is version 1.2.5 released on June 15, 2007.