Ew, not like Fortnite, I mean like indie launchers
Beyond All Reason (BAR) A spiritual successor to supreme commander made by a team of fans. It’s free and had LAN and online multiplayer. Really fun if you enjoyed the source material.
I’m surprised no one mentioned it yet, but Kitten Space Agency
It’s a free spiritual successor to Kerbal Space Program that tries to be everything that KSP2 wasn’t. It’s still in early development by its progressing fast and it already looks great and allows you to do a lot of cool things, and it’s also built using their own engine instead of Unity and has modding support.
And it’s not on steam.
Probably because it’s not really a game yet. You can play it, but there’s really nothing to do at the moment. It’ll be on a list like this when there’s actual gameplay.
However, the studio also make Stationeers, which more people should play. It is on Steam though, so it’s not for this list. I’m a pretty big fan of their studio. They seem to be doing everything right.
Seems to have the things KSP had when I first played it in 2013, before career was added
Not really. I played in the first version that had the Mun, which was just a stationary object straight above the launch site, and it’s missing stuff from that even. It does have more than that too though.
You can build rockets now, as of a very recent update, so it is actually something you can play with. Before then, the only thing you could really do was fly around a premade craft with unlimited fuel, so it’s progress. KSP, before career, had more parts and more mechanics for the parts though. It also had reasons to explore, with secret locations all around the system. KSA is just the Solar system, which is cool but also you know what there is to see.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t play it if they’re interested. It’s free, and it’s a cool look at the tech they’re building. It just isn’t much of a game yet, especially if you already have KSP1. I fully believe it will get there though.
Is stationeers actually done yet? Last time I played the best station was a single cube with as few features as possible.
Done? No. They keep adding content. It may never be “done”. It is feature-rich though.
A cube probably still is the best shape, as it is in real life often. It maximizes the volume-to-suface ratio. However, there’s tons of reasons to build other shapes. Usually you’re expanding organically, so you end up things tacked on all over as you add more features.
You can get to a livable base pretty quickly (especially on the normal start on a planet like Mars), and then just stop playing. The game is mostly about what you do beyond that though. Automating your furnace, backup power, mining, farming, etc. is the real goal. Stopping at just the basics is like stopping Minecraft after you build a farm.
Vintage story. Much grittier minecraft with a larger emphasis on survival
Vintage Story, a Minecraft-like game that focuses on a tough, realistic survival experience. There are climate zones and seasons. Things like smelting ores or growing food are much more involved than they are in Minecraft, which makes for a strong sense of progression when you’ve finally managed to make iron or build a windmill.
I will add that it’s Minecraft-like only graphically. Anyone going into Vintage Story expecting their Minecraft knowledge to carry over is going to have a very bad time because the actual overlap is minimal.
Really, its hard to under state how calling VS “minecraft like” is utter bullshit nonsense. Its like calling borderlands and tarkov the like each other. Its so insanely superficial that its absurd.
I mean both games are blocky, voxel based survival sandbox games where you’re dropped into a world and have to build a base and collect resources for better gear and hide from the monsters that come out at night.
It is very much similar to Minecraft in scope and gameplay loop. It’s just far, far more complex.
It’s more like comparing Tarkov and Arc Raiders.
Vintage Story was originally a mod for Minecraft, so I don’t think the comparison is as superficial as you think.
Hytale too, completely different direction than VS but another fun minecraft-ish game
I second vintage story, such a cool game
Starsector, perhaps the greatest 2D space game of all time.
This isn’t an underrated game, because everyone I’ve ever seen talk about it only praise it. It is an underrecognized game though. It’s sad how few people know about it despite how well it’s received.
This actually looks really good! I’ll have to ask the missus for an advance on my pocket money 😀
I’m genuinely curious about this game but the dev blog goes back to 2010? Is this another star citizen or is it actually a full / good game?
It’s perpetually in progress but what’s there is already pretty much a complete game, dev just can’t stop adding/revamping things. I’ve played it like 5 years ago, spent 50+ hours and had a great time. There’s also an active modding community.
More like Project Zomboid or Warframe. They could be released as version 1.0, but they just always have ideas for more things to add, and they do it in a way that doesn’t make the experience feel incomplete, just that it feels better when there’s new stuff added.
There is a lot of game there. It is like Mount & blade in space so don’t except a story or something like that. You make your own. Totally worth the money.
There is quite a lot of game and there is a solid modding scene as well. It is worth the money.
If you are brave enough there is big list of open source clone games.
Most of them are not on any play store.
This is gold
Dwarf fortress is on steam, humble bundle, itch io and free on their website.
Dwarf fortress is an essential gaming experience.
Should be played until your most common cause of fortress failure is FPS death
And then you should start to experiment with science!
Unciv (https://github.com/yairm210/unciv) is a great low graphics but with nothing to be jealous of Civilization 5 free and open source alternative. It also has a great mod scene with mods that add undead and fantasy armies and so much more.
Freelancer. Basically abandonware at this point, but tons of community support, with some great mods and servers.
I really wanted Freelancer 2. Star Citizen was meant to be it before Chris Roberts did… well I have no idea what he did, what he is doing or the state of Star Citizen any more, its got so out of hand.
Elite Dangerous just wasnt it for me. The ship and space stuff is amazing but the world just isn’t as fun as Freelancer. I know its come a long way after I played it just after release but it doesn’t seem to quite fill the same niche.
Same. And star citizen isn’t necessarily bad. But the scope creep has gotten out of hand. I started playing back in the mid 3.0 releases, back when delamar was still part of Stanton, and I thought the future state of the game was clear and obvious. But man CIG, or Chris, just keeps going bigger and bigger and bigger. A lot of people talk about SC without playing it, and that’s a shame because it has so much going for it. They truly are developing amazing things… But I have to agree. The vision is super muddy. Freelancer 2 it is not. I don’t even think they know what the ultimate goal is. I keep saying its an indefinite test bed for things they want to develop. No end goal in sight. Just play and QC our development sandbox please.
Love this game.
Hytale, Tibia, Escape from Tarkov, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Brogue
Voices of the Void
Absolute peak game that doesn’t really have any contemporaries.
A game with base management, fully open map, random events ranging from spooky to hilarious, minigames to fix equipment, little robot helpers, big robot helpers that require some assembly, but don’t need charging thanks to running on nuclear power, and a quadbike you can backflip.
And the Christmas gun.
I’ve probably played a few hundred hours of SuperTuxKart. It’s a mario kart clone except i like it way better than the mario karts I’ve played.
Mindustry is fun, it’s like a space factory builder thing.
I was going to say the powder toy but it turns out its on steam now
So is Mindustry. And it costs $10 on there for some reason…
It’s a way for the devs to get some revenue. Doesn’t mean that you have to buy it. Same with Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Super Tux is also on Steam but not paid.
And yet I’ve already found multiple reviews stating that they bought it on Steam before knowing the game was free elsewhere. So it seems to me that by not mentioning anywhere on the Steam page that this is a donation to the dev, that’s a little shady.
Steam’s terms of service mean devs/publishers can’t promote a game as being free elsewhere. It’s likely directed at preventing redirecting people to Epic or a sale at another store, but also by effect includes games like this. Either they put it for free on Steam or they sell it on Steam and can’t mention free downloads from their website, and it’s up to users to “shop around”.
I get what you’re saying, but I think if spending $10 on a game is something that would give someone pause, then the onus really is on them to search around first to see what the best deal is? People act like steam is a monopoly, but there is a lot of choice out there.
If you have it on steam then you can use the workshop for schematics and maps too
You can also get those from either the ingame mod downloader or from the mod “mindustry tool”
I bought it on steam and it was worth the money for the game. If I was willing to pay what I did for it then I don’t have any issues with the costs elsewhere. There is also the convenience of it auto updating.
Most of the time the steam version acts as the “donation button” for many small indie and f2p open source games. It exists for no other reason then to cost money so you CAN buy the dev a beer if you want. Steam is easier, more likely to get people to actually donate, supports more countries, has less restrictions, has less taxes and fees in many cases even with steams cut.
Like its amazingly hard to actually monitize something globally in a reasonable, fair and efficent way. Fucking half the time you spend more money even attempting to do it then it would cost to just let steam handle it. As much as people bitch, moan, cry and whine about various store fronts taking a huge cut it SERIOUSLY is a fucking life saver and EXTREMELY fucking worth it in almost every case ever with basically zero expections.
Sure it would be nice to have it be smaller. But like FUCK man. Iv tried to do it my self. IT SUCKS. I would gladdly pay someone half the fucking profits to deal with all the bullshit for me if i wasnt trying to sell a product to make a living on in. Even then… i would be damn well fucking tempted.
It’s worth giving the guy ten bucks imo.
Oh what, that’s very weird
StarSector
Bought it myself. On my 5th playthrough and its such a blast still. Mods keep the game fresh. All ya gotta do is.download a folder from the game’s forums and put it in the right place. If thats to much work, there is always TriOS mod manager
Starsectors website: https://fractalsoftworks.com/
Battle for Wesnoth, very good high fantasy strategy game. Lots of player created campaigns, and tons of mods
Edit: looking at their website, it is available through steam, but it is also available in a variety of other places.
Yeah, it’s available on Steam (for free) but I think it still fits this thread nicely.
It’s impressive that they’re still actively developing it after 20 years. For anyone else like me who used to play Wesnoth a lot but hasn’t touched it in a couple of years, I just noticed that they have added a new mainline campaign fairly recently.
I love that it continues to be worked on too. I remember playing it well over a decade ago.
Love this game! It still holds up pretty well
I focus on non commercial free games that are also (for the most part) Open Source too.
- Luanti: Website | Flathub | PCGamingWiki | Video | Very close Minecraft like clone (note its old name was Minetest for the longest time). Each downloadable subgame requires extremely low space, in the MBytes range! No account or any online servers are needed (edit: off course its needed to download, but not otherwise). Open Source.
- osu!: Website | Flathub | PCGamingWiki | Video | Rhythm style game where you use the mouse. I think the code is Open Source, but not the assets? I’m not sure.
- Taisei Project: Website | Flathub | PCGamingWiki | Video | Fan project in the Touhou Project series. Old school bullet hell shmup from top down perspective. Open Source.
Note Flathub is a repository for Linux. If you are on Windows, go to their website and look for downloads.
For Luanti I want to especially recommend the Game “Glitch” which is not minecraft like at all, but surprisingly great.
Regarding osu’s source code, I think the original osu (osu!stable) is closed-source, and I think the servers might be closed-source, but I believe osu!lazer, the new reimplementation in C#, is fully opensource. It’s an ongoing effort and a long-term migration it’s in the middle of, but lazer looks great and I think it’s already meant to be the main version now.
Stable is also dead, thats part of the reason its closed source and staying that way. He doesn’t want people using it and it will be retired entirely at some point. Its basically a unsaveable pile of pasta.
Funny enough, moving to Linux meant I discovered a lot of cool tools and games that I wouldn’t have otherwise…and then eventually learned they had Windows releases anyway, so it wasn’t strictly necessary to ditch MS for them. But beneficial anyway.
One of the reasons why you find so many interesting tools on Linux is, that you are new and need to setup your environment. Maybe even searching for alternatives. That will make you discover lot of stuff by nature.
