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. (And the best part: You should be able to play this on any modern computer – like a Pavilion dm1.)
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. Want to play on a Pavilion dm1? No problem. Also, being a relatively early-on RTS game, you'd think that it’d also fun to try playing it on a TouchSmart’s touchscreen. Unfortunately, a lot of these early RTS titles rely upon keyboard commands a whole lot more. (FWIW, I played it on a TouchSmart 520 and while you can draw boxes around units and issue commands via touch, you might still need to keep the keyboard close by. If you're cool with that, give it a shot.)
For more information about the game, it’s history, the add-ons you can plug in – and the latest version of the game – head over to http://wz2100.net.
If you remember this game – or want to share your love of games that have since gone public domain, let’s hear it in the comments!
You must be a registered user to add a comment here. If you've already registered, please log in. If you haven't registered yet, please register and log in.