Wayback gaming today... Warzone 2100 (free, cross platform and OSS too)

The Next Bench Blog - Freeware Friday: Warzone 2100

I love freeware games – especially once store-bought titles gone public domain. That is, you once had to shell out money for ‘em. Now, gratis. Well, if you’re any kind of fan of strategy, I have a pretty good pick for this week – Warzone 2100. Rebuild civilization and design your own weapons of mass destruction along the way. ...

Real-time strategy games have been kicking around for well over a while now and this lesser known title had some unique stuff going for it back in the day. This game was kind of a builder’s paradise – with a focus on finding ancient relics, researching them and using the design pieces to mix-and-match and create a mobile machine gun turret tank….or whatever else you can dream up. With over 400 technologies you can develop and the unit design system, there’s a surprisingly vast choice of units and tactics you can try.

I actually remember playing the original game when it came out in 1999 – yep, I feel old. ANYhow, the game went public domain around 2004 and since then, it’s been an on again, off again labor of love to update the open code.

One of the nice benefits of how it worked out: You get a full retail game – granted, it’s over 12 years old – but that just means you can play it on just about any computer out there, without a problem. ...

Warzone 2100

In Warzone 2100, you command the forces of The Project in a battle to rebuild the world after mankind has almost been destroyed by nuclear missiles.

The game offers campaign, multi-player, and single-player skirmish modes. An extensive tech tree with over 400 different technologies, combined with the unit design system, allows for a wide variety of possible units and tactics.

Not something I expected to see in a HP blog post, but still cool none-the-less. And the best is that the game isn't just free, but it's open source too (active open source too... the latest beta was release on February 8th, 2012! :)