Warning Forever

"Warning Forever is a shoot 'em up game that pits you against a constant stream of battles against a singular foe that gets stronger as you progress, its evolution steered by how you choose to attack it. Because of its bold central theme and intense gameplay, it's considered to be one of the canonical indie shooters and a great addition to the genre overall."

This game is simple at heart, and executes its sole gameplay mechanic well, worth checking out if your into shmups.

FR:NO BS
Rating:7
Download

Cyclops

Cyclops is a simple defense style game, couldn't find much info, as its all in Japanese.
But check it out!

FR:NO BS
Rating:6
Download

Last Scenario

"Last Scenario is a game made using the popular RPGMaker XP that could possibly rival Aveyond's level of professionalism, perhaps even surpass it. Tiles, music and sound effects are standard material that is included with the package, but most of the character portraits, sprites and backgrounds seen in this release were created by the developer.

The C key is used for most interactions and menu selections. Press the X key to access the inventory screen or to cancel any choices. A medium length RPG with over a thousand rooms, side quests, a unique spellcard system and even a collectible board game, it's quite unlikely that any fan would complete this production in a couple of sittings.

Name: Last Scenario
Developer: SCF
Category: RPG
Type: Freeware
Size: 70MB"

Its a great jRPG, and its worth checking out!
FR:No BS
Rating:8
Download

Rainbow Wars

Yet another Geo Wars clone!

"A side project from Volition designer Luke Schneider, part of the team responsible for the development of the Descent series. The background is practically empty, but destroying enemy ships will cause glowing particles to appear on screen. Bombs only appear as a power-up item, and is activated on the spot when collected. A power-up item will appear for every five thousand points earned which includes a black hole that only sucks in enemy ships.

Your ship is equipped with three layers of shield, and you lose one whenever an enemy ship touches yours. Destroying each wave of enemies will increase the level number by one, also replenishing your shields automatically. Losing all your shields ends the game, but you can continue from the last level attempted by selecting it at the main menu. Note that the easy difficulty will only allow access to the first ten waves.

Your ship also has the ability to warp and charge it's shot. Tap the left shoulder button on your gamepad to teleport, and hold the right shoulder button to prepare for a special attack. It's interesting to note that Rainbow Wars is an effort made with Game Maker in only thirty hours."

FR:NO BS
Rating: 7
Direct Download

Grid Wars 2

Grid Wars 2 is a geometry wars clone.
There is a great descripton of it here
Note that this title infringes on Geometry Wars copyright
FR:No BS
Rating:9
Direct Download

Cube 2: Sauerbraten

Today is part 3 of the Cube series, Cube 2: Sauerbraten

"Free single and multi player 1st person shooter game with some satisfying fast oldskool gameplay. A large variety of gameplay modes from classic SP to fast 1 on 1 MP and objective based teamplay, with a great variety of original maps to play on.


Level editing has never been so much fun: a press of a key allows you to modify the geometry / textures / entities in-game, on the fly. Even more novel, you can make maps together with others online, in the unique "coop edit" mode (!)

The engine, though designed for simplicity and elegance as opposed to feature & eyecandy checklists, still competes nicely thanks to its novel "6-directional heighfield deformable cube octree" world structure that is the basis for its in-game editing. Occlusion culling, pixel & vertex shaders, very accurate lightmapping, robust custom physics system, network system, models, sound, scripting...

Much like the original Cube, the aim of this game is not necessarily to produce the most features & eyecandy possible, but rather to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game, to create fun gameplay and an elegant engine.

The engine supporting the game is entirely original in code & design, and its code is Open Source (ZLIB license, read the docs for more on how you can use the engine).


Oldskool fast & intense gameplay (read: similar to Doom 2 / Quake 1).
Many multiplayer gameplay modes, most in teamplay variants as well: deathmatch, instagib, efficiency, tactics, capture (domination/battlefield style), coop edit (!).
Masterserver & ingame server browser.
Lag-free gameplay experience.
Two singleplayer modes: DMSP (fight a monster invasion on any DM map), classic SP (progression driven SP like other games)
7 weapons tuned for maximum satisfaction: double barrelled shogun, rocket launcher, machine gun, rifle, grenade launcher, pistol, fist.

"

Sauerbraten is a great game, and there is, as always no reason to not check it out.
FR:No BS
Rating:NR
Homepage
No direct download for this software.

AssaultCube

This is part 2 of the "Cubathon". Today is AssaultCube(formerly known as ActionCube).

"AssaultCube is probably the best Cube "mod" ever created. It comes with all new content and is playable as a standalone game. The gameplay provides a more "realistic" gameplay experience than Cube, featuring more modern weaponry and environments. Many gameplay modes are provided including CTF."

"19mb AssaultCube is provided as a 19mb package of pure fun."


"56k Thanks to the efficient networking code, AssaultCube requires very little bandwith, you can play it with a 56k modem internet connection. "


"OSS Like its origin Cube, AssaultCube comes with full source code, available under a zlib like OpenSource license. "


"SDL Because AssaultCube uses the SDL library, it can be used on multiple platforms. The officially supported platforms are Windows, Linux and Mac OS. "


"old AssaultCube runs on old hardware, with the correct settings you can run it on a P3 800Mhz gf2. "

"edit Create new maps (virtual worlds) together with other people online. The cooperative editmode makes it possible.."

All in all the mod is much better than the original and tons of fun!


FR:No BS
R:NR
Homepage
No direct download yet. Sorry.

Cube

The original cube is without a doubt a fun game. Though out-dated, it still is damn fun.

"Cube is the original game that started it all. Though it has been surpassed in almost every way by Cube 2, it is a game in its own right. Most importantly, it comes with over 100 (!) maps, most of which are not available in Cube 2, with extensive single and multi player content.

Cube is also smaller in every way, in download, in hardware requirements (runs well on older video cards!), and in source code (the absolutely tiny code base is a very easy start for those wishing to experiment).



It also has some unique engine features such as the high precision dynamic occlusion culling, and its heighfield based level format."

"Cube is an open source multiplayer and singleplayer first person shooter game built on an entirely new and very unconventional engine. Cube is a landscape-style engine that pretends to be an indoor FPS engine, which combines very high precision dynamic occlusion culling with a form of geometric mipmapping on the whole world for dynamic LOD for configurable fps & graphic detail on most machines. Uses OpenGL & SDL.



Allows in-engine editing of geometry in full 3D (you fly around the map, point / drag stuff to select it / modify it), which can even be done simultaneously with others in multiplayer (a first!). Has simplistic but effective fine grain vertex lighting that looks like lightmapping and can do dynamic lights & shadows. Doesn't need any kind of map precompilation, even lighting is done on the fly. Has very simplistic quad-tree world structure that can do slopes (heightfields with caps) and slants, water, does decent collision detection & physics, has client/server networking that goes a long way in giving a lag-free game experience, and features a Doom/Quake-style singleplayer (2 game modes, savegames) and multiplayer (12 game modes, master server / server browser, demo recording) game with some uncompromising brutal oldskool gameplay.


Most of the engine design is targeted at reaching feature richness through simplicity of structure and brute force, rather than finely tuned complexity."

Cube is a must download for everyone, even if you soon switch to the better cube 2.
FR:NO BS
Rating:NR
Homepage

Frets on Fire

Frets on Fire is a GH-esque music rythm game, which is totally open source

"Frets on Fire is a game of musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible.
Features
Unique inverted keyboard gameplay style
Support for guitar controllers and generic joysticks
Includes a song editor for making your own tunes
Compete with others on the World Charts
Hundreds of songs composed by the community
Supports importing Guitar Hero™ I and Guitar Hero™ II songs
Multiplatform; runs on Windows™, Linux®, Mac OS X™ and FreeBSD®
Open source, full Python source code available"

The idea behind the game is the same as that of Guitar Hero, hit the notes get multiplier, score points, be awesome.
The difficulties have different names, but are essentially the same.

The songs are all made by the community, the game only comes with two songs.
But community sites have thousands of downloadable songs that fall into three categories
Legal songs and notes(with artist permission)
Legal tracks(no song included due to copyright infringement)
Illegal songs and tracks available via direct download or large torrent pack
By track I refer to the notes you hit along to the song.
Songs are available from these locations:
Keyboards on Fire
FoF Spain
Final Fret
And many, many, more sites most of which can be found via the allmighty google.

The best part is this game is easily modded, and so you can customize it to your liking add features etc. The base game is minimal but once modded, can do awesome things, and just look sick.



Other than the occasional performance issues, FoF is a solid, awesome game that kept my attention for many hours, so go on and check it out.
FR(Freeware Rating):No BS
Rating:8
Homepage
Direct Download to come later. Sorry.

A quick note

In my quest to find freeware/open source games/software I have come to the desision that I am not going to review everything. There are many thousands of games and software, so I will review as much as I can, but will sometimes defer to my own analysis of other reviews/information
In other news, I'm scheduling a bunch of stuff for the rest of the week, as I have AP's so all my posts for this week will likely be premade.