Saturday, February 18, 2012

Kid-friendly, Open Source, Multi-Player/LAN games

I was looking for some kid-friendly, free, open source, multi-player/LAN oriented games that will work on Windows and Linux boxes.  Kept having my kids friends show up after school to play online games.  Hopefully, this will spark some interest in “how” the games were made.  My main criteria were: support multi-player; multi-computer - prefer LAN server over Internet server;  and most-important a low initial learning curve.  I wanted a mix of: real-time and turn-based; 2D and 3D.
Here’s a few that I’ve installed.  I still have to see how the group responds  to the games :
  • Armagetron – real-time Tron light-cycle arena clone in 3D.
  • Bitfighter –  real-time 2D space combat game with dual-axes controls.
  • BZFlag – real-time 3D tank battle game.  This one can be a bit frantic.
  • Domination – turn-based 2D “risk” like strategy game that supports alternative world maps.
  • Hedgewars -  turn-based 2.5D strategy, artillery, action and comedy game.
  • Scorcehed3D -  turn-based 3D artillery game.
  • WarMUX -  turn-based 2D Worms-like game.
Here are some that I might try.  Depends on how the games above work out:
  • Aeron – a combat flight simulator.
  • Freeciv -  turn-based civilization like game.
  • FreeCol – turn-based strategy game like civilization.
  • JSettlers2 – web-based version of Settlers of Catan.
  • SuperTuxKart – a kart racing game that supports up to four players on one PC. Unfortunately, no LAN play at this time.
If you are looking for a streamlined way to find and install other open source games check out the games available via PortableApps.com and the Game Downloader.

1 comment:

Mark Vejvoda said...

How about megaglest.org (a free open source RTS)