Post by Bainespal on Dec 24, 2013 9:48:44 GMT -5
There's no Christmas thread here yet, so I'll start one.
I'd like to give anyone interested a Christmas present -- or rather suggest that you give yourself one by downloading the free and open source fantasy strategy game The Battle for Wesnoth.
The high fantasy environment is strong and traditional, with a long history told through the default campaigns that come with the download. The tactical gameplay is excellent, with a small amount of randomness to introduce an RPG element. All the units get randomly-generated fantasy names, which is cute.
The characters from the campaign scenarios are illustrated in dialog cut-scenes. The quality of the illustrations differs from campaign to campaign, and even within campaigns. Some of them are excellent, some are simple and kind of cheesy. Some of the campaigns use an anime style, others do not. This is a community project, so they weren't all done by the same artist. However, I do think the art is effective and consistent enough in at least a few of the campaigns that I've played. Other campaigns don't use much illustration at all, relying on the tile icons of the units.
But the music is wonderful across the board. Seriously, I've opened the game just for the music, and then switched to a word processor to write.
I can't find confirmation at the moment, but I believe that all the art and music are distributed under Creative Commons licenses, while the program itself is GNU GPL open source. The game is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X -- so it will work on your computer! This game doesn't need particularly good hardware, so it should work even on your old technobeasts!
I love this free game for its high fantasy environment, its soundtrack, and its hybrid strategy-RPG gameplay. I think you guys might like it too.
www.wesnoth.org
And merry Christmas!
I'd like to give anyone interested a Christmas present -- or rather suggest that you give yourself one by downloading the free and open source fantasy strategy game The Battle for Wesnoth.
The high fantasy environment is strong and traditional, with a long history told through the default campaigns that come with the download. The tactical gameplay is excellent, with a small amount of randomness to introduce an RPG element. All the units get randomly-generated fantasy names, which is cute.
The characters from the campaign scenarios are illustrated in dialog cut-scenes. The quality of the illustrations differs from campaign to campaign, and even within campaigns. Some of them are excellent, some are simple and kind of cheesy. Some of the campaigns use an anime style, others do not. This is a community project, so they weren't all done by the same artist. However, I do think the art is effective and consistent enough in at least a few of the campaigns that I've played. Other campaigns don't use much illustration at all, relying on the tile icons of the units.
But the music is wonderful across the board. Seriously, I've opened the game just for the music, and then switched to a word processor to write.
I can't find confirmation at the moment, but I believe that all the art and music are distributed under Creative Commons licenses, while the program itself is GNU GPL open source. The game is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X -- so it will work on your computer! This game doesn't need particularly good hardware, so it should work even on your old technobeasts!
I love this free game for its high fantasy environment, its soundtrack, and its hybrid strategy-RPG gameplay. I think you guys might like it too.
www.wesnoth.org
And merry Christmas!
