FOSS Games are actually pretty good!

rldane.space R.L. Dane - FOSS Games are actually pretty good!

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/6819337

Mon 04 December 2023 by R.L. Dane
There's a lot of talk about gaming in Linux these days, and that's exciting, because it's drawing attention to Linux's capabilities. While the games being spoken of are mostly proprietary (and pretty awful, from a software-freedom perspective), it's good to see people getting interested in Linux, even when for only pragmatic reasons.
But beyond the attention-grabbing AAA titles, there are many FOSS games worth checking out.
Admittedly, I am not much of a gamer, and never have been. I'm hoping to draw attention to the possibilities of FOSS gaming, but what will follow is hardly exhaustive. But I have tried to gather the names a few FOSS games on Android I've enjoyed burning time with, and a few desktop games I've heard of or played with occasionally that are worthy of more attention from the gaming community:
https://rldane.space/foss-games-are-actually-pretty-good.html

32 comments

Good on android are also unciv, feudal tactics, beat feat and flowit!
~~Not Foss, but free without ads or trackers~~ FOSS and my all-time favorite is "Simon Tatham's Puzzles". This is so addicting I go through a cycle of playing it obsessively until I have to delete it and wait a few months until installing it again xD
ETA: thanks for providing the sources. Couldn't find it on fdroid because of the different name :)
- Source code 1, source code 2, f-droid link
  
  Thanks! Ever tried it out yourself?

Missed out OpenTTD, that's my go-to game these days.

missed a lot of good games, like:
Freeciv
Battle for Wesnoth
all id Doom and Quake games up to Doom 3
- I played so much Wesnoth when I was young and broke
  
  Wesnoth was the shit back in the day.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a great game. I lost hundreds of hours trying to beat it, and the achievements are a great way to track progress

Endless Sky is amazing and under continuous, active development.
You can build your fleet as large as you want too, which can get insane. There's no cap hard coded in the source - one player I talked to built his fleet with thousands of freighters until his computer started lagging.
Veloren is amazing too. I love collecting lanterns, and taming animals and mounts is great gameplay.

These are all great games. I'm surprised not to see some of the heaviest hitters, like 0 A.D., Beyond All Reason, Xonotic, or Veloren.
- I guess because the author is actually mostly playing small games on android: "Admittedly, I am not much of a gamer, and never have been."
- agree. every time Linux games are mentioned in a thread, i always bring up 0AD. great design and soundtrack.
  
  There are some really awesome mods for it, too. It def sets a high bar for FOSS game quality.
- Xonotic ftw.

I got so stuck on Fruity Game for over an hour, before I could even get up off toilet. :'-)
- I've just installed this from your recommendation and it's brilliant. I love the amateur graphics, it just adds to the charm.
  
  Yes, lovely game design. Need to dig into the latest update, as the patch notes state - Improved Mango
  
  Lost over an hour of my life because of Fruity Game. Amazing game :D
- Yep just can't stop once you start, but find it dad you get an end game while the fruits are still moving. I think I did ok as a first time.
  
  Yeah, it has its flaws, yet it is still under development. I'm not sure what to think of the idea of renaming the game though, Fruity Game is such a wonderful name!

yes and no
FOSS games are good and fun, but to deliver a AAA game with a near-realistic 3D Graphics and a good several hour-lasting story, you kinda need some funding. I would be all for a concept where a game is open source, but you need to pay for the textures, meshes, voiceovers, in game dialog strings and similar stuff that is not code.

https://nobsgames.stavros.io

How has CDDA not been mentioned?

Falling Lightblocks is a brilliant open-source Tetris clone for Android, with different gamemodes, multiplayer, leaderboards and a "campaign" mode. definitely worth your time
- Clever avoidance of potential trademark dispute with the name.

As a student I'm very glad that super tux cart exists. This helped me so much to get through free lessons. It takes a bit of time to get a feeling for the controls, but once you figured it out its great.
Another game worth mentioning is Unciv. A beautiful 2D turn based strategy civilisation development strategy game.
- Unciv is so good

I don't see how anyone could play a game like Minetest on their phone. I have tried before and struggle like hell when compared to playing on desktop.
It's definitely not a maintained or worked on game anymore, but I really like Me And My Shadow (MAMS). It's just a 2D platformer, but the twist is that you get to record movements for a shadow version of yourself to follow to try and help either you or it reach the end of the level. I don't recall if there's anything other than the windows version.
I also would like to throw in HyperRouge (which took me forever to find because I couldn't remember the name). Something, something, traverse top down isometric hexagon world fighting enemies, collecting things, unlocking new areas, something, something. It's been a few months since I last played, so my memory is a little fuzzy.
- Hyperrogue is not quite a top down hexagon world, it's a top down heptagon world. The premise is that it is a roguelike set in a hyperbolic world, and different regions teach you different weird properties of a hyperbolic space. For example, the crossroads feature an infinite amount of parallel lines and yet there are still forks in the pathway.
  Even though it's foss, it is also for sale on steam if you want to support the dev

I really enjoy AAAAXY (even tho I can't finish it), (f-droid, flathub, source)

32 comments