Axis & Allies

Axis & Allies

• Publisher: Atari
• Developer: TimeGate Studios
• Release Date: November 2, 2004
• Genre: Real-Time Strategy

About This Game:

Strategy game from TimeGate Studios and Atari. Determine the fate of the world as you command the army, navy and air force of one of five world powers in the most dynamic WWII Real Time Strategy experience you’ve ever booted up. The start of the conflict is 1939. The end? Well, that all depends on you.

Experience the entire scope of the war as you command land, air, and sea units across all theaters of the world. Change the course of history through Dynamic Campaigns that never play the same way twice and test your mettle against the greatest generals and leaders from the era, including Rommel, Eisenhower, Yamamoto, Zhukov and Montgomery. Features include unique and authentic weapons and capabilities for each superpower, as well as online multiplayer support.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 1.5 GHz
• Memory: 256 MB
• Hard Drive: 1.4 GB Free
• Video Memory: 64 MB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0
• Keyboard & Mouse
• CD/DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz
• Memory: 512 MB
• Hard Drive: 1.4 GB Free
• Video Memory: 128 MB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0
• Keyboard & Mouse
• CD/DVD Rom Drive

Axis & Allies – Mediafire Links

DOWNLOAD

www.elj-games.blogspot.com

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0 A.D. Now Open Source

Some breaking, amazing news related to one of the most exciting freeware Free game projects on the indie scene:

What is 0 A.D.?

0 A.D. is a free, cross-platform, under-development, 3D, historically-based, real-time strategy game.

What are you doing?

Switching from a closed development process to open source: making the code available as GPL and the art content available as CC-BY-SA, and encouraging external contributions. We've been working on 0 A.D. in our free time for years, and now we want to show what we've achieved and make it easier for more people to get involved.

How can I get started?

See the Getting Started guide to find more information about the game, forums for discussion, instructions for building and running the game, and links to further details.

For the full announcement, see the dedicated page for explaining why they moved to open source from the closed development model. For more media and information on the game, go to the official 0 A.D. website.

This is, of course, an exciting development. This game has been in production of some form for nearly 8 years, has 150k lines of code in the engine, and hundreds of dedicated (and now shared) models. It will be very interesting to gauge the impact this has on the open source game community. The game itself is not yet complete but it's definitely more than a tech demo, so it will also be interesting to see if the move to open source galvanises the project and gives it the push that it needs to get to a more complete/playable state.

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Velvet Assassin

Velvet Assassin

• Publisher: Gamecock
• Developer: Replay Studios
• Release Date: April 28, 2009
• Genre: Action

About This Game:

Inspired by the fascinating story and unbreakable spirit of British secret agent Violette Szabo, players take control of Violette Summer, a beautiful spy deep behind enemy lines during World War II. Intense stealth-action gameplay with a startling real-time lighting system and surreal visuals combine to produce an incredible gaming experience. Through third-person gameplay, sneak up on enemies and pull the pins from their belted grenades. Infiltrate a Gestapo prison and slip cyanide to your own men before the Germans make them talk. Slink through the shadows to finish off your unsuspecting enemies with a single, silent move. Through Violette's fever dreams, experience what she experienced. Walk where she walked. And kill those she killed.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz
• Memory: 512 MB
• Hard Drive: 5+ GB Free
• Video Memory: 256 MB (nVidia GeForce 6800)
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Velvet Assassin  - mediafire Links

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www.elj-games.blogspot.com

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Berusky, Overgod, and Allegro

Berusky

Berusky - Stuck!

Berusky is a "free logic game". It's a puzzle game of Sokoban-like gameplay with a few extra twists. You have control of up to 5 bugs, and you must collect 5 silver keys on each level before you can exit it. You can push explosives into barrels, and destroy boulders with pick axes that you collect. Throw in one-way gates, coloured gates and coloured keys, and gates for specific colour bugs and there's a lot of potential obstacles and some wickedly tricky levels.

The graphics are nice. There's no music. The game has not been fully translated into English, so some of the level hints (well, most of them) are appearing in Czech(?). And it's bloody hard. As hard as Fish Fillets (Free Gamer review), if not harder. (Interestingly, Fish Fillets is also Czech produced.) I couldn't work out how to beat *the first level on intermediate or the 3rd level on easy. The interface outside of the game isn't that great - using passwords for levels which are easy to forget to note down - it could really do with a Fish Fillets style map.

Update: Ok the first level on intermediate wasn't that hard, I was just being a bit daft... I was looking for a complex solution when (if you look at the screenshot) there was a simple way to finish the level.

Gondola looks curious. A PyWeek game, "Gondola is the ultimate shipping, shape sorting, barge unloading game of all time. Get the right shapes to the right places to score. But be warned: there are only a limited number of islands to build on and longer cables are expensive! Sort wisely to minimize loss." It sounds intriguing and original but I couldn't run it due to some idiotic Linux issues.

Overgod

The other day I stumbled across a game I'd previously enjoyed but forgotten, Overgod. It's a good, solid shoot 'em up which plays well and has polished albeit simple abtract graphics.

Digging a bit, I see that Overgod (2008) is an evolution of Lacewing (2006), which features similar gameplay but the enemies and levels tend to be a bit more basic and is not quite as polished.

Linley Henzell, the author of Overgod and Lacewing, has been busy. Other games include White Butterfly and Garden of Coloured Lights which both looked good although are currently only working on Windows.

Another Linley Henzell game which looks intriguing - but is DOS only! - is Captain Pork's Revenge, a Leiro/Teeworlds style 2D deathmatch game.

The Allegro Depot has a lot more entries than I would have thought, including Open Sonic and Worminator 3.

There's Zelda Classic which is a clone of the original Zelda, as well as a platform for building Zelda-like games.

Worms for Linux! is one that I should add to the Open Source Artillery/Worms Clones article.

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Turok

 Turok (2008)

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Developer: Propaganda Games
• Release Date: April 22, 2008
• Genre: First-Person Shooter

About This Game:

Turok is a first-person shooter set on a dark, mysterious planet in the future. Players take on the role of Joseph Turok, a former black ops commando, now part of an elite special forces squad, known as Whiskey Company, which is on a mission to take down a war criminal - Turok's former mentor, Roland Kane. Set on a planet inhabited by Kane and his Mendel-Gruman Corporation soldiers, Turok must use his elite military training to elude Kane's well-trained army and the ravenous, unpredictable dinosaurs, huge insects and other massive creatures that populate the environment.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz or Equivalent
• Memory: 1 GB
• Hard Drive: 18 GB Free
• Video Memory: 128 MB (nVidia GeForce 6600/ATI Radeon x1300)
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive (8X)

Turok – Mediafire Links

DOWNLOAD

www.elj-games.blogspot.com

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Some Puzzle Games

FreeTumble is yet another "destroy adjacent same-color bricks" puzzle game but one of the better-looking and -sounding ones. Three modes of gameplay are provided, they can be seen as variation of the same game for different types of puzzle players or different hardness modes.

FreeTumble - I much like that there is a credits screen

Biniax-2 is an original puzzle game in which colors also play a role and which also is stronger on the visual side than your typical open source Tetris clone. It features a turn-based and continuous mode. The latter can be played with two players in a versus-game.

Biniax-2 (no sound)

Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection will help you if you're bored at the office or similar.

CreepSmash is a java-based multiplayer tower defense game. Have some videos of it too!

26 June 06:09 UTC PS: RubyWeekend #3 with the theme "A Tiny World" started a few hours ago. It's a 3-day open source ruby game programming competition.

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Turn up the juice!

Go Ollie

An open source platformer I missed yesterday is Go Ollie. It's easy to overlook, I mean, worms are not exactly a glamorous topic. Whilst I'm not sure about the license (somebody care to check? I'm busy!) the game itself is polished and fun. The controls are different to your typical platformer, where instead of moving and jumping your character directly, you select where he moves to with the mouse. Places that can be reached are highlighted, so it's about picking the right path and having the reflexes to do it quickly enough, which can be tricky on scrolling levels.

It seems to be a gift to the Linux community from game makers Tweeler. The graphics and presentation look professional. It's a great game for kids as well as a fun time waster for adults.

<update> Actually Go Ollie is by Charlie Dog Games, but Tweeler acts as a download host for the Mac/Linux version. Also, it is definitely open source - code is GPLv3 and artwork CC-by-sa with exceptions for logos. </update>

VDrift

There's a new release of VDrift, the open source drift racing game. Version 2009-06-15 is a significant release for the project which sees it re-emerge from a massive refactor as a better game than before the refactoring began. Here's a list of the major changes since the last release, which was after the refactored code stabilized:

• cars collide with each other in Single Race mode now


• AI is capable of much faster driving now, so added a difficulty slider


• off-road tire spin sound support (thanks to slowdan!)


• support for H-gate shifters


• improved performance


• lots of huge bugs fixed, especially car physics bugs

TORCS

In other racing game news, the TORCS Endurance World Championship 2009 was recently held. The full report found on a participants blog. From what I can gather, it's a long distance race (500km) where people enter their own robot drivers to see how they fare.

Base Command is a fully finished OGRE mini-game. It's a straightforward 3D protect-your-base game, where you shoot down incoming planes. What is interesting is the author has provided an analysis of the game code which would help people who are learning how to program.

Scourge map

My favourite Free software game Scourge enjoys continued progress. There's now an artistic map of the large island that is the game world. There's more information to be found in the 28th "Scourge Weekly" that tracks major developers on an almost-weekly basis. They are still looking for contributors.

There's also more juicy updates on PARPG progress. That project is looking very promising and they are working their way towards their first demo release. Given the coordination and generally high activity of that project, I'm optimistic there'll be something solidly playable before the end of the year. Our own Q put together a video showing where they are currently up to:

Other interesting updates are:

• Lips of Suna's second release, version 0.0.2, which introduces destructible voxel terrain. Lips of Suna aims to be an innovative 3D online dungeon crawl.


• The first beta of Leges Motus, a kind of gravityless 2D multiplayer shoot-em-up.


• A new Palomino release, a lovely looking 3D flight simulator - see this Free Gamer article for more flight sims.

There's probably more... feel free to add updates in the comments below!

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