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  Top ten RPGs - I made a video of this. People who love text so much they would marry it, will be delighted to see this concise side-product of that video. A list of sorts. With thoughts that came to me after the fact. Especially nagging thoughts. The bestness of films is determined by their profitability. Which one can claim allows concluding the quality of the product. Maybe the marketing is part of that product. Whatever the case, none of this is applicable to the underground niche pro-tip specialized target audience-seeking open source games, where using the word choice "open source" is valid enough to stop writing and discuss philosophy. Thereby I declare that " best " means " complete-ish, playable, fun " which is 33%-66% objective. I present to you - in order of " not like in the video " - the best eleven minus one* RPGs that ever existed yet. RPG platforming is still a concept to get used to but for some reason It works well. As for...

Some of you might remember previous coverage of Solarus, the Free Software Zelda-like ARPG engine that comes with its own complete game creation suite and a pretty impressive palette of Zelda fan games already available under its wing. As of last December, version 1.6 has been released, and while the changes under the hood are too many to number (check the full announcement and changelog here ), it is worth highlighting the package now includes a more varied amount of libre tilesets, meaning developers now have available a wider choice of default non-proprietary graphics to use on their own creations. While the community is still very much focused around Zelda fan-games and their respective copyrighted graphics, this is an important first step to attract more developers and spark future libre game projects. The Ocean's Heart tileset, now part of the Solarus package. One such project is Ocean's Heart , the brainchild of Solarus community member Max Mraz. The game follows a game...

FreeDink is older than some kids that downloaded open source games on their own by now. The two main cornerstones of the game are: low resolution, twisted humor. One really cool thing about FreeDink is that you can play it in a browser . Anyway, I worked on replacing some sounds years ago and just recently the same bug bit me again and I made replacements for all sounds that didn't have free versions of themselves yet. For creation, I remixed a *lot* of freesound.org sounds and uploaded all the remixes right back there . The attribution feature of Freesound is quite cool, especially if very different sounds are made (see screenshot above). However, I underestimated how much effort it takes to test them and to give some clarity to myself as well as share the process with the world, I made a video showing the steps taken for testing sounds: I could not have done it without the excellent documentation and progress report . I will continue testing and hopefully, soon all the audio wil...

Freeablo engine in its early stages Who doesn't love the original Diablo ? When it was first released in 1996, this game set a notable landmark for making the RPG genre more accessible to a broader audience, while still keeping many gameplay aspects of classic Rogue-derived RPGs, that kept the game fresh and unique even after being completed several times. This bridge between classic and modern aspects combined with an incredible attention to detail, a uniquely crafted atmosphere that still gives me the creeps, and a gameplay pacing and length that is just the right balance between level progression and grinding, has helped making Diablo one of my all time favourite games. Well, that and Battlenet, of course, we can never forget how Diablo was one of the first to make it so easy to just go dungeon crawling with a couple of friends online. There is, however, one thing that I don't like about Diablo. One thing that annoyed me all over these years of repeated runs and occasional m...

Not only from the clutches of Ganondorf, but also from the dominion of proprietary software. All thanks to the magnificent Solarus Engine , a GPLed , SDL-based , 2D action RPG engine. This amazing project aims to provide a stable and easily customizable platform for users to create their own Zelda-like games, and so far, I must say, I am darn impressed by what I've seen. The engine already has two incredible launching titles, named The Legend of Zelda: Mystery of Solarus DX , and a parody of the former, Mystery of Solarus XD . Both are true love letters to the classic SNES RPG, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past , and amazing and enjoyable games on their own. Mystery of Solarus DX But hark, the mere words of a mortal make no justice to the grandiosity of this undertaking. Sheathe thy sword, get thy green cap and ready yourself to adventure! You can start by marching straight to the Solarus download section , or, if your intentions are more creative, you can check the various s...