Don't miss Sealed Bite, the Game Off 2019 winner!
| 2:05 PM

By On 2:05 PM

You might remember end of last year's Game Off game jam sponsored by Github. The winners have been annouced a while ago, and while again quite a few submissions were using closed source game engines, the overall winner isn't.

So make sure you don't miss Sealed Bite, a fun little/short jump and run:

Obvious inspiration comes from the very popular Celeste game.

You can find the source code here, and not all that surprising it utilizes everyone's favorite Godot Engine :) Sadly the graphic assets are quite a bit less free (CC-by-NC-ND).

Let us know if you enjoyed this gem of a game on our forums!

Vegan on a Desert Island wants to become an ironic masterpiece
| 11:39 AM

By On 11:39 AM


For the first time I heard of Vegan on a Desert Island I assumed it was some kind of bad joke, and frankly this impression lasted with me for a while. However, through some amazing persistence and determination from the developers, this upcoming title is slowly capturing the hearts of the libre development community through sheer charm and wits.

Determination might really be the key word here; lead developer Alex Gleason claims he's set out to answer one of humanity's most sought after existential questions: "What would a vegan do if stranded on a desert island?"

Taking it from there, the game promises action, puzzle solving, and more drama and plot twists you can (literally) shake a stick at, because everyone knows that the best way of getting answers for some real world problems is through the semblance of a Zelda-like RPG.

Yes, you read it right, this game will be an action RPG at its core, and this should come at no surprise; after all, Vegan on a Desert Island is being developed with the Solarus engine under its hood, meaning we can expect some solid Zelda-like mechanics to go along with the formula.

We have all been there.

The game is also notorious for using a considerable amount of recycled Creative Commons artwork sourced from Open Game Art. Notably its level assets are almost entirely consisting of the Zoria Tileset, which has been ported to Solarus since the last major release. All unique art crafted exclusively for the game will also be licensed under Creative Commons.

While the game hasn't yet seen an initial demo build, it attracted considerable attention (and laughs) after a short presentation by Gleason himself on Libre Planet, last March. The effort and dedication being put forward to sell a seemingly absurd concept have it stand out of the crowd, and for that, it deserves much needed credit. As for the rest of the game, it will remain a mystery for the time being, unless, of course, you wish to go ahead and compile one of their source packages.

A release is estimated for later this year, although no fixed dates have been presented yet. So let's hope this one turns out to be worth the wait, unlike most vegan food.

Code license: GPLv3
Assets license: CC-BY-SA 4.0

Keeping up with KeeperRL: alpha 28 released, improves mod support
| 4:10 AM

By On 4:10 AM


It has been a while since we last spoke of KeeperRL. The hybrid blend of dungeon building sim with roguelike features seems to be doing rather well, with a growing community and regular progress updates. The latest alpha has just been released, and this time it has a flavor for modding.

Aside from the regular bugfixing and gameplay improvements, this build adds upgraded mod support and an in-game downloader for community content. As with most roguelikes, the developers seem to have realized customization is key to maintain community engagement, a very positive assessment in our regard. You can read the full changelog here.

For those who are not reminded, KeeperRL comes in two versions: a gratis package with plain ASCII graphics and no sound, and a commercial package including pixel art graphics and soundtrack, available for 12.99 EUR on a variety of digital stores. The program code is entirely Free Software, licensed under the GPLv3.

Code license: GPLv3
Assets license: Proprietary (commercial version), CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 (gratis version)

Tobu Tobu Girl, the first 100% libre Game Boy game, is getting a new deluxe edition
| 6:22 AM

By On 6:22 AM


I've been holding on for too long to report this one, but now it seems to be the right time. Tobu Tobu Girl is a wonderful thing. Developed by the nice folks at Tangram Games (who previously brought us the equally libre titles Mr. Rescue and Duck Marines), this arcade platformer is very likely the first Game Boy title to be developed in a 100% libre environment, and that goes for both code and assets.

Originally released in 2017, the game was published as a Game Boy rom made available gratis, and it also got a limited physical cartridge release after a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Now, following yet another Kickstarter, the developers are back with a deluxe version, boasting Gameboy Color and Super Gameboy support, and a previously unincluded survival mode. A new batch of physical copies for the deluxe version are also already available for preorder, and the new rom will be once again distributed gratis to the public sometime in July.

The game's pixel art is simple, yet charming.

As for the game itself, do not be eluded by its cute appearance: Tobu Tobu Girl is not for the faint of heart! The game requires quick thinking and lightning fast reflexes. Players missing a single landing spot will meet immediate failure and taken back to the beginning of the level.

Quality-wise the game's controls are sharp, responsive and intuitive. The graphics are simple, but crafted with love, and the chiptune soundtrack, created by Potato-tan, is delightfully fitting.

So for now, while waiting for the deluxe release, you can still download and enjoy the regular Game Boy version here. As expected, you need a Game Boy emulator to play it. Don't forget to leave a word of appreciation to the creators for loving and supporting Free Software!

Code license: MIT
Assets License: CC-BY 4.0

Let's keep an eye out for Cytopia
| 5:18 PM

By On 5:18 PM



With city builder games climbing back into popularity, it was about time for a serious libre project to tackle the genre once again. After many years of abandoned efforts, it is now the turn of Cytopia to try to scratch that itch.

The project had its inception in 2018, when now lead developer JimmySnails announced in a forum post the intention of creating an engine that could replicate most of the functionalities of the classic SimCity 2000, a game still near and dear to many players up to this day. Ever since then, Cytopia evolved into what appears to a fully-fledged independent game-in-progress, with its own graphics, features, and even an editor planned down the line.

Aside from the obvious SimCity 2000 influences, the game also appears to draw inspiration from the recently released TheoTown, with main graphics artist KingTut101 crafting assets in a very similar style.

Whether Cytopia will deliver where others have failed remains to be seen, but as usual we encourage you to download the initial tech demos and show support for the project.

The developers also have an official Patreon to help support hosting expenses.

Code License: GPLv3
Assets License: Unspecified (reverts to same license as the code, by default)

Solarus 1.6 is out, progress on Ocean's Heart
| 5:35 AM

By On 5:35 AM


Some of you might remember previous coverage of Solarus, the Free Software Zelda-like ARPG engine that comes with its own complete game creation suite and a pretty impressive palette of Zelda fan games already available under its wing. As of last December, version 1.6 has been released, and while the changes under the hood are too many to number (check the full announcement and changelog here), it is worth highlighting the package now includes a more varied amount of libre tilesets, meaning developers now have available a wider choice of default non-proprietary graphics to use on their own creations. While the community is still very much focused around Zelda fan-games and their respective copyrighted graphics, this is an important first step to attract more developers and spark future libre game projects.


The Ocean's Heart tileset, now part of the Solarus package.

One such project is Ocean's Heart, the brainchild of Solarus community member Max Mraz. The game follows a gameplay structure similar to classic Zelda games transported to a Viking age-inspired setting. It features an entirely original story and a beautiful pixelated tileset, which Max was kind enough to license under a Creative Commons license for integration with the Solarus suite. Upon completion it will become the first true libre Solarus-made ARPG in code and assets, which makes for very exciting news.



Stay tuned for further developments on this, and be sure to check the Solarus website for news on their upcoming game projects, along with complete instructions and tutorials on how to create your own game using the development tools.

Code License: GPLv3
Assets License: Mixed  (most sprite packages copyrighted by Nintendo, original Solarus assets under CC-BY-SA)

DevCorner: Exciting news from the Godot Engine project
| 7:34 AM

By On 7:34 AM

The Godot Engine ("the open-source answer to Unity3D") continues to make exciting progress with the recent stable release of version 2.1. Besides lots of small usability improvements to the GUI, the main new feature is a asset sharing store build right into the editor:

This should hopefully result in a lot of extremely easy to use assets, and I am looking forward to seeing a lot high quality assets from OpenGameArt.org transferred into it ;)

In related news, it was recently announced that there is work going on to allow C# (a extremely popular game scripting language also used in Unity3D) scripting in Godot besides the current Python based custom language. So this should lower the entry barrier for indie developers significantly, and maybe we will even see a conversion utility for open-sourcing simple Unity3D games?

Furthermore they are also working on a visual scripting system akin to Unreal's Blueprint or what you can use in the Blender Game Engine. Yeah, visual programming systems are usually pretty limited, but they have their use-cases and definitely lower the entry barrier for artists (map events or shader scripting). Or to put it in the Godot Engine developer's words:
To make it clearer, it is not our belief that forcing programmers to write code with visual blocks will result in a more efficient workflow. We know other game engines and solutions try to sell you this point of view, but rest assured that this is not our view or intention. We stand by programming and still believe it's the best.
So then, again, why visual scripting? Our goals with it are the following:
  • Provide a way for non-programmers to experience what developing in Godot feels like, by ensuring they have a way to manipulate their game's logic.
  • Allow programmers to set up their scenes, AI, etc. in a way they can expose the coarse parameters and logic to level designers or game designers. This way, they can do tweaks without bothering programmers.
  • Allow programmers to expose how data is organized in a visual way. Godot's VisualScript has so much flexibility in how the graph flows that it allows creating dialogue trees, coarse game flow, event handling, etc. with small effort.
Please understand it as just an extra tool, not as a replacement to programming. It will be possible to use both GDScript and VisualScript as complementary tool in a same project.
Sounds pretty good doesn't it?

Oh and last but not least, after long waiting the first version of the Godot based point and click adventure framework Escoria has been released. It is based on the work done for the pretty cool commercial game developed by the original team behind the Godot Engine, so it should be quite powerful. You can find the source code here and a nice manual here.

P.S.: There is also work on-going on a higher level networking support for Godot, which should really help with multi-player prototypes.

DevCorner: Superpowers HTML5 collaborative game maker open-sourced!
| 2:59 AM

By On 2:59 AM

Great news for HTML5 game developers: a few days ago Superpowers was released under the ISC license.

What is Superpowers? A game development platform (an integrated editor but you can collaborate in realtime online; how cool is that! :D ) for making HTML5 games using TypeScript (a superset of Javascript). But you will also be able to work with other languages, so far support for the well known LÖVE2D is available.

Learn more in this video:


The source is available here and there is also an repository with a few sample games. If you like what they are doing, please consider becoming a supporter.

Looking forward to your new HTML5 games!

Best Open Source Top-Down Space Shooter : Super Space Invader
| 8:47 PM

By On 8:47 PM


Lasers, rockets, shields, health regeneration, pixels. You know. The good stuff. Just nicely packaged with levels of just the right duration and hardness, persistent upgrades, shaders, reverb...

Two buttons are enough to play, since that was one of the themes of Ludum Dare #34, in which the game came #74 among 1638 jam entries.


Supser Space Invader was made with LÖVE (v0.9) and thus runs on Linux, OS X, Windows.

The source is available on GitHub under zlib/libpng.

Games with G (Gorynlich & Gigalomania)
| 7:58 PM

By On 7:58 PM

Great news for people who like GGGGames ;)

The author of the new action roguelike dungeon crawler kind of darwen mayham game Gorynlich was so kind to inform us his game. It comes with this funny trailer (and some great programmer's art :p ):



The code is licensed under the LGPL, while the assets are only freeware right now. But the author seems to be open to look into replacing the assets with Creative Commons licensed ones if someone is interested in doing so.
Gorynlich is done by the same author as the ASCII game Goblin Hack by the way.

Another nice game starting with G, is the awesome remake of the oldie Megalomania, appropriately called Gigalomania!


The author is still looking for improved art asset contributions, but the game itself is already quite playable (even on mobile devices and a bunch of other rare systems!). Also check out the other two cool games by the same developer: Erebus RPG and Conquests (a Civ like game).

Mini Sci-Fi Open Source Tower Defense Game
| 4:14 PM

By On 4:14 PM

Purely by chance, I found an obviously abandoned but still fun to play mini tower defense with a skippable tutorial level and two playable missions, beautiful graphics and performance settings.

To be a master is to spam en mass

So you place towers and the shoot enemies that move towards your base. I know this! Being an impatient player type, I skipped past the tutorial and was annihilated in level 1.

Short enough messages in a hard enough tutorial level

The degree of my destruction was such, that I was thankful for the tutorial being there at all. Even though I did die in it, it taught me enough about the all-or-nothing early game (which some might refer as to "unbalanced") to get my strategy right.

Turn off for speed. Turn on for awesome!

You get 3 towers: that allows you to build more tower, one that allows you to shoot more and one that shoots. You can block paths and create mazes. There are no tower upgrades and that's okay.

All the plot. Space to continue. Take that non-skip-able intro video AAA games!

Mission #3 is not possible to win (prove me wrong) but it was a great experience to find that I was able to beat the tutorial mission after all. By deviating from the given instructions! If that's not freedom (besides being open source) then I don't know what is!

Yeah right...

Come to think of it, the ridiculousness of level 3 practically speaks "dear player, you should totally fork and make new levels!"

Made with love2d

The last commit to Turres Monacorum was in May 2014 and the game was made at a game jam. My experience dictates that this won't be picked up by the original developers any more but to any player with love2d installed, it will come as a wonderful, visually polished snack!

Download the mini tower defense game from the github release page and enjoy!

Godot Winter Game Jam
| 9:13 AM

By On 9:13 AM

Godot winter icon

A game dev jam to create a winter-themed open source game was community-initiated at the Godot forums. The (vote-determined) winner will get a budget of USD 50 to have donated to an open source project of their choice.

What is Godot?

Godot editor

Godot is a game engine. No wait, it's actually a game development IDE with its own Lua-based scripting language.

As far as I can tell, it's a promising project that is a bit buggy, especially when it comes to mobile exports. It has some UI flaws (subjectivity warning) but still, open source Godot is more appealing than proprietary Unity 3D.

If you want to try making a game in Godot, I recommend this official tutorial as a starting point. Good luck & great success to you!

What else?

Another way to support Godot: "like" it as a Unity 3D alternative on alternativeTo.

Duck Marines, FOSS remake of ChuChu Rocket
| 10:46 AM

By On 10:46 AM

Thanks to Tangram Games for pointing out to us that they just released version 1.0 of their local multiplayer game Duck Marines.

They describe it as:

Duck Marines is a cross-platform free software PC remake of Sonic Team’s ChuChu Rocket.
Duck Marines attempts to recreate the magic from the local multiplayer of ChuChu Rocket while adding new elements like mini games, a level editor, colorful pixel art and more.
But see for yourself:



For those not familiar with the original on the Dreamcast here is a small description of the gameplay:
The goal of the game is to get as many ducks into the submarine of your color. Gray ducks give you one point, gold ducks give multiple points and pink ducks will trigger an event or mini game.
Guide the ducks towards your submarine by placing arrows on the ground. When walking over an arrow ducks will instead walk in the direction the arrow is pointing.
Beware of the blue predators. Predators love to eat ducks and will kill a large number of your ducks if they reach your submarine. Try instead to guide the predators to the other players’ submarines using your arrows.
Source-code (zlib) can be found here, assets are licensed under the CC-by-NC-SA/ND. Build with the great Lua 2D game framework LÖVE by the way.

KeeperRL and OpenIG
| 7:00 AM

By On 7:00 AM

Two interesting projects I recently came across:

1. KeeperRL:



Description from the author:

KeeperRL is a Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress inspired dungeon simulator built on top of roguelike mechanics. My vision is that you are a Sauron-like character, searching for ultimate knowledge of destruction. What makes the game different from other RTS is that you can, and are encouraged to, control your main character and lead your minions to an open war. The characters use equipment, scrolls, potions, spells, and other things you would expect in a roguelike. Combat is turn-based and very tactical. The whole world is procedurally generated, and there is adventure mode too.
See a video of the (still in ASCII graphics) action here and the GPL licensed code here. Latest development release can be downloaded here (Win&Linux).

2. OpenIG:



A real classic is being reimplemented as OpenIG (follow the development blog here). Interestingly the original developers have granted the rights to all the game's data to be freely (as in beer I assume) distributed with the new Java based engine.
Time to jump into the 4X games again ;)

Code Combat: Open Source Javascript Tutorial Gamification (In A Good Way)
| 10:03 PM

By On 10:03 PM




Code Combat is a javascript programming learning IDE wrapped in a delicious cute RPG/2D RTS packaging that runs in the browser without any plugins. They recently announced their open source/free art release.

The current set of Code Combat tutorials starts with directional movement and activation of pre-programmed behavior, continues with coordinate movement and targeting and conditional behavior and continues towards prediction calculations.

Editor GUI


There is an editor, officially described as "broken". I can confirm that the text editor was slow when I tried using it. :)

All in all, a very exciting project. I have noticed a few possible drawbacks so far:
  • It's not yet clear which parts will not remain proprietary. It looks like the excellent humor (writing) unfortunately will do so (legal page).
  • The music tends to be too exciting to code to.
  • There's a CLA requirement for contributing.
What do you think? Persuaded to work on a HTML5 game yourself perhaps, seeing that this performs okay? :)

December RTS updates
| 4:06 AM

By On 4:06 AM

Merry Christmas from FreeGamer!

As a nice present from the 0 A.D. team, the new Alpha 15 Osiris was released today:



Lots of great new features and especially multiplayer games should be now much easier to do with hosting improvements and a lobby for browsing available games.

Another open-source RTS engine (using Mono/C# though) has also released a new version: OpenRA. Currently it is still geared toward running an assortment of older Command & Conquer based games, so you need to own these for the data. But this release adds lua scripting for the creation of custom missions, so maybe someone will come up with a libre game to run on this engine.

Last but not least, a new version of Warzone2100 was released about a week ago. This one actually includes some higher resolution textures, which is hopefully the first step to officially integrate all the awesome new art assets from the art revolution project.
Speaking of WZ mods: There is also an interesting new tower-defense mod currently being developed.

Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME) version 1.1.0 and Steam edition
| 4:12 AM

By On 4:12 AM

The great roguelike RPG Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME) is available as a new version (1.1.0) nicknamed "Full Steam Ahead". Here is a slightly older trailer for version 1.0.5.:



Release highlights:

  • New necromancer tree: Animus
  • All achievements now feature beautiful 128x128 images
  • Improved Alchemist interaction with its golem
  • Tons of fixes and balance adjustements
  • Many improvements for addon creators, including a way to enable debug mode and a tool (inthe debug menu) to register and upload addons to te4.org directly from the game.
  • Includes a Fez. Fezzes are cool!
Interestingly it has also been "greenlit" on the popular game distribution channel Steam, so if you want to donate to the developers you can also do it by buying ToME through this channel. The currently discounted version includes a DLC with an updated UI (and the hint for a Steampunk themed extension) which seems to me like a planned way of funding the development of the game in the future.

Frogatto & Friends looking to be "greenlit" on Steam
| 6:05 AM

By On 6:05 AM

We have mentioned in the past a few times that it is a common misconception that FOSS games need to be also "freeware", and in fact the opposite can be quite beneficial to the overall development of a game or the engine it is build on.

The 2D jump & run  Frogatto & Friends has been for sale on mobile platforms for a while now, and its really high quality game-play and graphics are definitely a notch above most other open-source games:



All of it is possible through the use of their awesome open-source engine Anura.

Now they are looking to sell their game also on desktop computers through the very popular Steam digital distribution platform. You can vote for inclusion here.

As far as I am aware this is the first open-source game that actually aims to be sold through this channel, but recently another one, Warsow, was actually approved for inclusion as a freeware title.

As a launch of their "greenlight" campaign, the creators of Frogatto & Friends have started a Q&A session on reddit, where you can learn more about them and their awesome game(s).

Unrelated to that: please also check out our own "sub-reddit" about open-source gaming :)