Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It seems like the correct time of day to lift spirits with a free, open source economic simulation game that takes place in a randomly generated archipelago. Thankfully, Unknown Horizons is just such a thing and it’s a damn fine one as well. The project was originally intended to be an Anno clone but it has evolved from those beginnings to become its own master. With economics, diplomacy and combat already handled well, it’s already a tiny slice of delicious isometric cake and regular updates along with its open source nature mean all manner of fancy ingredients should be added. Download here or watch a video showing the latest features below.

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A rifle amongst the oily rags, Toblerone wrappers and bat skulls that litter the floor of the RPS engine room reveals we’ve never posted about open source Civilization clone FreeCiv before. By turn, that means we’ve never written about its newish browser-based offshot FreeCiv.net either. This is exactly the kind of site that should be telling you it’s possible to play one of the most important names in PC gaming history in your browser, for free. Unfortunately, we’ve been washing our hair since December 13th, so we didn’t. Now we all look like Jennifer Aniston circa 1995 (Jim looks especially glamorous), we have time to tell you.
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Myst-MMO, Uru Live, is to go fully open source. The MMO has had a troubled existence, managing the impressive feat of being axed twice, and yet still existing. Having been published by Ubisoft, then picked up by Gametap, Eurogamer report that the third attempt to revive it, developer Cyan World’s Myst Online Restoration Experiment (MORE), has also gone titsup. Their response is a rather exciting one – they’re turning the game over to the public.

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The peerless TIGSource led me to this wondrous discovery: an open-source (and freeware, natch) XCOM variant of considerable ambition. UFO: Alien Invasion, for that is the name of this beast, has taken a rather more serious approach to the subject matter of alien invasion than one might expect, with a purported ‘hard science’ fiction and a whiff of the dreaded realism to authenticate the extra-terrestrial shootings. Needless to say, it still delivers the kind of turn-based agonising, base-building, and team-equipping fiddliness we’ve come to love. I’ve not had a chance to play more much – had a few other distractions today – but I expect I’ll post something a little more detailed later this month. As I understand it there’s a new version due soon and they’ll need beta-testers.

The downloads page is here, and you’ll need to select the operating system from the funny drop-down menus. It’s 261mb big, which is the equivalent some amount of freeware games… I don’t know. I’m so tired.