Warzone-2100 posts

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

There's just something about designing your own goodies that no strategy fan can resist. Games like Sword of the Stars or Galactic Civilizations 2 let you design your own spaceships for use in combat, but spaceship design is a common feature in space 4X games. It's not seen often in real-time strategy games, but unit design is definitely there, and the case-in-point for this loveable feature is Warzone 2100. One of the earliest RTS games to support the custom units feature, Warzone 2100 is a blast from the past, and best of all, free and open-source. With a double whammy of free and retro, you can't really go wrong.

It seems weird to think of a mere ten years as being a long time, historically, but in the world of video games, it certainly can be. Some of you will remember Warzone 2100, some will not, as having been released as both a PlayStation One and PC game in 1999. Five years later, it became a free game under the GNU General Public License, and has finally made its way to the Mac. After all these years, and a torrent of water under the RTS bridge, does it still hold up against some of the better-known classics? Read on to find out.