New Mistlands Download

What is Mistlands? It's a graphically impressive 3d open source rpg! At the end of July they released Milestone 5, just over a year since their last release. It's online-only, I think, which is a shame. Single player games just aren't the flavour these days.

I feel obliged to mention Gusanos. Thanks to Amos ML for the link and apologies for taking more than a month to post it. Gusanos is a Liero clone for modern operating systems. (Liero requires DOS or DOS emulation.) Whilst the Windows download was easy to get to, I couldn't see an obvious download for non-Windows platforms despite the homepage promise of portability. For those not familiar with the classic Liero, here's some gameplay videos of Gusanos. Think Worms vs Quake.

There was an update to Trackballs, making it more fun for younger kids which is good news for me and my 6 year old.

For the adventurous, there's a 0.2 pre-release of Battles of Antargis which is coming along nicely.

There's two new interesting 2d platformers, both of which are at a very alpha stage of development so don't expect too much: Zelda2D (er, Zelda in 2D), Wasteland (kinda Jazz Jack Rabbit crossed with Mario)

In my enforced abscense there's been a number of updates to a lot of good open source games. Here's a few notable ones: Globulation (notably new AI!), Blob and Conquer (lots of new levels), Sturmbahnfahrer

More Upcoming Releases

There is a release imminent for Mars: Land of No Mercy, which got it's own .org domain name recently. This isometric strategy mech game is developing at a steady pace and sees version 0.1.2 released next week.

New Ecksdee Level

The next version of Ecksdee is shaping up nicely. There's some preview screenshots of a new level for the next version (0.0.9) one of which can be seen here. There's another level in development which is more ambitious and targeted for the 0.1 release of Ecksdee. The Ecksdee developers will be at the Crystal Space conference this weekend in Aachen, Germany. An Ecksdee talk should take place on Sunday at 1pm local time.

There's another stunt-like Free game on the horizon: Sturmbahnfahrer. The game describes itself as, "Simulated obstacle course for automobiles." As such, the gameplay is oriented around using physics to complete the levels rather than racing.

There's a curious new freeware game based on OGRE. The Blob sees the player taking on the role of a blob of paint who must, it seems, paint the city of Utrecht. There are screenshots galore in the OGRE featured projects section. Sadly it seems to be Windows-only and you'll need a 2ghz PC.

Finally I'll round by with the Planeshift release. This iteration on the 0.3 "Crystal Blue" version squashes many bugs, adds optimizations, and introduces features such as improved item crafting, item decay, new spells, and improved character handling. Read the 0.3.015 changelog for more details.