FreeCol is an open source clone of the Colonization game. I admit, during college I was a bit addicted to this game, my style of strategy gaming.

For those who are not familiar, this is a strategy game where your objective is to Colonize the entire world with your nationality. So, you build your cities, grow them, build an army and expand your borders. Sounds pretty simple but for people like me, fun stuff to do for hours and hours.

FreeCol isn’t yet on its full release version yet, it is still on 0.7.4 about to release v.0.8. But, from the looks it is working pretty well. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Battle for Wesnoth is a pretty cool game RPG style where you’ll build up and lead an army to conquer the entire map / world. The game has over 200 units in 16 different races so there you’ll not get bored easily.

Being open source any one has the freedom to build other maps and scenarios. You can also do the social gaming thing through its multi-player interaction. I actually enjoyed this while in college, a nice way to kill time and while interacting with other people across the globe.

One of the most active opensource games, it is available in more then 30 different languages and will run on Windows, Max OSX and several Linux distros

Freeciv was inspired by one of my favorite computer games, Civilization.

For those unfamiliar with this game, it is a strategy game where your objective is to manage a civilization from its birth until world domination (through military or cultural advancements). You can play against the computer or multiplayer through the net.

Freeciv has a bunch of maps and scenarios already loaded in it, and dozens of units (some I hadn’t even found on the proprietary Civilization).

This is a pretty active open source project, being translated in well over 20 languages and it runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X.

Let’s heard it from you, does it stand up to the proprietary Civilization?