Free RTS: Open Source Gamer's Guide to Free Real Time Strategy Games

Real Time Strategy (RTS) gaming as a genre was made popular by the original Command & Conquer, Dune 2, and of course Blizzard's mega popular WarCraft & StarCraft series. Typical mouse centric game play is based on trying to balance available resources, unit management, construction, and combat. RTS games usually are at their best when played across the internet or home network against a friend, some even offer a compelling single player experience.

Since this series deals exclusively with open source games. Here are the contenders for best open and free RTS. Lets get clicking.

Dark Oberon

Claymation RTS, need I say more? In Dark Oberon, adorably cute hand crafted units follow the standard RTS conventions in a surprisingly enjoyable game. The game could use a few more units, but is great fun to play. The sound effects are witty, and the beautiful music is non intrusive. Download Dark Oberon for windows here. Linux users can download an older binary version or compile from the source code.

Glest

Magic vs Technology 3d RTS, Teams can choose to be tech based or magic based. Play against humans or AI. Glest has a nice soundtrack and voice sound effects. Unique units with multiple attacks makes battles interesting to be a part of. All in all, Glest is a very polished game that gets better with every release. Grab a copy of latest Glest here.

Globulation 2

Using simple and cute units, Globulation boils all of the real time strategy down to a simpler control system. Globulation tries to ease the pain of ordering unit to do resource gathering. As a matter of fact, they have eliminated giving orders completely. Placement of buildings and flags control the blob's actions. This tweak in RTS gameplay mechanics is frustrating until you understand how it works. Units eat when they are hungry, which is often. (You will almost certainly find yourself calling the globs disparaging names your overweight aunt sometimes hears at the lunch counter.) Globulation isn't what I'd call graphically impressive, despite this it is worth a look for any RTS fan.

BOS Wars

BOS Wars began as a replacement engine (Stratagus) for the Warcraft RTS series. Stratagus has since merged with its biggest mod BOS wars. BOS stands for Battle Of Survival, which is a perfectly apt name. Survival is your goal. Using engineers and an array of vehicles, you must stomp out your opponent or find yourself ground into the dirt by them. Notable for its missle launchers and unique economy BOS Wars is definitely worth a download, grab the latest release from here.

Warzone 2100

Real Time warfare with a challenging and fun single-player experience. WarZone started life as a proprietary game released in 1999. Freed by by Pumpkin Studios in 2004, it has been enhanced and updated by the community. I cannot stress how important research is in this game. Starting from scratch, after successfully getting past the first 4 missions only to find you will never be able to defeat level 5 because you didn't do enough research, is a bummer. The only thing missing in this game are the original Full Motion Video cut-scenes, you won't even miss them. Download Warzone2100 here.

Spring

Some time in the life of a video game, a publisher decides they are no longer going to support a title with updates and enhancements. One such game, Total Annihilation(TA), had an active modding user base which led the community to start the Spring project. Spring is an open source engine designed to replace the aging TA engine. Spring features full 3d camera movement , deformable terrain, 3d air combat, full mod support, and much more. Many original TA mods work with Spring, as well as a few designed for Spring. Especially noteworthy are the Star Wars mod and Kernel Panic. Give Spring a try by downloading it here.

Command & Conquer

While not open source, it should be noted that in celebration of Command & Conquer's 12^th anniversary, EA Studios has released Command & Conquer Gold as freeware, You will need to download and burn the 2 iso files to cds. C&C was one of the games that help defined the genre, so download iso1 GDI here, iso2 NOD here and see what all the fuss was about. For you Open Source purist out there, the FreeCnC engine can take away your guilt.

Next time on Open Source Gamer's Guide to free PC Games, Platformers, Run and Jump for joy. See you then.

If you missed part 1 in our series, The Quakers: games based on the GPL'd Quake Engines, you can find it here.