0AD Alpha 7 Geronium and more

Act 1

In case you've been hiding under a rock or you rely on Free Gamer for your open source game updates (and we love you if you do), there has been another release of 0AD (announcement) the 3D historical RTS game.

Lots of improvements, including an all-new and unique Carthaginian civilization, a new main menu that moves, new music, new sound effects, new maps, and likely (although not mentioned) a lot of development and the fixes and subtle improvements to go with it.

This is going to be one of the marquee open source games soon. It has the potential for mainstream appeal that is missing from a Battle for Wesnoth, no matter how polished it becomes (and it is very, very polished these days).

Since becoming open source to help save the project from an ignominious end, development seems to have gone from strength to strength with a series of alpha releases each bringing the game one step closer to being a playable title.

Act 2

Also big news coming out of the Dungeonhack Godhead project - a new release! This is the first since a tech demo over 2 years ago. This release marks the beginning of a different direction for the project. They now use the Lips of Suna engine. It is early days but the new engine already has a lot of what a now-defunct rewrite was trying to achieve in that it is server-client based, and it is 3D and the world is deformable, and there is now a workflow to get ideas straight in to a game world, giving writers and artists more possibilities to see their work immediately applied. Still, early days, it was just a black screen for me (but this was Windows 7 x64 - boo) so we'll see if this can reverse the fortunes of a project that has struggled to maintain momentum from one release to the next.

Free Gamer approves of inter-project cooperation. Huzzah!

Act 3

Finally, lady and gentlemen, for your entertainment, a fun ninja platformer!

Shinobi Densetsu is created using the OpenSNC engine, proving it is not just limited to hedgehog-based games.

I used to leave a plate of milk out for hedgehogs when I was a kid. I also had to shift through mucky half-rotten piles of leaves to make sure none were hibernating in the base of a bonfire-to-be. True stories! I digress...

Video!

Huzzah!