Hedgewars, JCRPG, and 0AD

Hmm, been a while, but since nobody is using my opensourcegames reddit yet, I'd better pitch in a bit here. Qubodup and Julius have been doing a stellar job in the last several months with some great posts.

Hedgewars 0.9.13 is out. It now looks better than the game it is a clone of (Worms 2) which is a pretty significant milestone. They have also started to add some features that were not in the original (also an important step - differentiation). I could reel off a list of new features since 0.9.12 but it's a futile task given there are so many. The standout features for me are the beautiful explosions, the birdy weapon, the generally impressive new graphics themes, and the trailer:

That is about as good a lesson in Internet marketing as you can get. Beautifully timed to the music, based on a very famous song, but in the style of the game characters. I found it to be very impressive and that's a trend since I originally tried out Hedgewars back when looking at all the available Worms/Artillery clones.

JCRPG

The ever-promising JCRPG has been ported from one Java 3D technology (jMonkeyEngine) to another (Ardor3D). The latter is a newer engine from the creators of the former, and seems to have taken several lessons on board with the design. The motivation for the port was difficult to debug crashes, but a number of nice enhancements have been discovered along the way and JCRPG really looks sumptuous.

Hopefully soon the game will start to get a bit of a storyline as well as beautiful scenery!

Finally, a pre-alpha download of 0ad is available. This utterly gorgeous looking historically-based RTS has so much potential. They have struggled to get more developers involved since originally going open source. I have been encouraging them to make a release and follow up with regular releases in order to expand the pool from which they may discover new contributors.

Here is a 2 year old trailer for 0ad.

Maybe they should make a new one, that could also be a marketing boost for the project.