The Diligent Circle

Rejected Libre Games

This page lists games that have been rejected for inclusion in our Libre Game Recommendations list, and explains why they have been rejected. Please feel free to contact us if the issues mentioned here have been fixed, or if you disagree with the rejection.

Table of Contents:

• Games Rejected for Lack of Distinction
• Games Rejected for Incompleteness
• Games Rejected for Causing Social Harm
• Games Rejected for Other Reasons

Games Rejected for Lack of Distinction

The following games have been rejected because they fail to sufficiently distinguish themselves from other games that preceded them. This will usually be because they are too generic within their genre, although games that are arguably clones but not fit to be listed in the Clones section of the list may be listed here as well.

Games whose sole purpose for existing is to clone other games (i.e. that make no attempt whatsoever to distinguish themselves, or that even try to explicitly be as similar to the original game as possible) are not listed here.

• Astromenace
• Ceferino
• Chromium B.S.U.
• Fish Fillets NG
• Freedoom
• Garden of Coloured Lights
• GNUjump
• Hexoshi
• Monsterz
• Nikwi Deluxe
• OpenSurge
• Secret Maryo Chronicles
• The Secret Chronicles of Dr. M
• Warmux
• X-Moto

Games Rejected for Incompleteness

The following games have been rejected because they don't feel like finished games, or because they are considered by the developers to be incomplete. If you are a game developer, please consider contributing to these projects to correct this.

• 0 A.D.
• Ardentryst
• FreeOrion
• Hexoshi
• Naev
• OpenSurge
• Plee the Bear
• SuperTux

Games Rejected for Causing Social Harm

The following games have been rejected because they cause some kind of social harm, such as perpetuating any kind of bigotry (including sanism, which is discussed in our article, Sanism in Media and Discourse), or supporting violent ideologies like fascism or Nazism. In most cases, particularly sanist rhetoric, the social harm caused is likely unintentional. If you like any of these games and want them on the list, please consider contributing to these games to fix the problems mentioned if their maintainers are receptive, or if they aren't, forking the project to fix the problems. Alternatively, if the mentioned problems have already been addressed, please let us know!

• Criticalmass - A simple space shooter game similar in style to games like Galaxian with great production value and balance. The game awards you with more/better weapons for playing at higher difficulty levels. Unfortunately, however, the game's hardest difficulty is called "Insane" difficulty. There are a number of things this difficulty name could refer to, but many reinforce sanist attitudes about mentally ill people. For example: it could mean that playing the difficulty is such a bad idea (implying that mentally ill people are prone to making bad decisions); or it could mean that the difficulty is chaotic or wild or unpredictable (implying that mentally ill people are generally prone to being chaotic or wild or unpredictable). While a non-sanist interpretation for the etymology of the difficulty name is possible, due to the fact that sanist interpretations are possible and the fact that these interpretations have the potential to cause real harm to mentally ill people by quietly reinforcing sanist notions, this game is currently excluded from our list.
• Dopewars - A simple game where you buy drugs for cheap and then sell them to make a profit, avoiding (or fighting) cops along the way. You have one month to make as much money as you possibly can. It is currently rejected because it contains implied misogyny: by default, your drugs are carried by "bitches", and while they can be called something else, they are still referred to with she/her pronouns and put in a passive role where they are treated essentially as objects. This could be fixed by referring to them in a gender-neutral way (e.g. with they/them pronouns) and by changing the default term used for them to something gender-neutral (like "goon" or "asshole").
• Freedroid RPG - This game is also rejected for other reasons, but it's so harmful that it bears mentioning here, too.
  • Freedroid RPG very consistently insists on describing what happened with the robots (which have turned evil) as "going crazy", and many characters describe each other as "stupid" or "dumb". Most of these characters are not meant to be completely sympathetic, but the game makes no commentary of any sort on the constant sanism, and Tux (the main character, who assumes the player's name) participates in it himself. This game needs some serious attention addressing its sanism problem because it's about as bad as it gets.
  • Freedroid RPG treats anti-fascist activism as a joke. A minor character who is imprisoned by the Red Guard refers to the Red Guard, justifiably, as fascists and says he is a political prisoner. The game, however, paints this character in an unsympathetic light, portraying him as unwilling to listen to reason. This effectively serves as an attack on those who oppose fascism in the real world, and therefore a defense of fascism, a violent and dangerous ideology.
• MegaGlest - The more recent continuation of Glest, a classic real-time strategy game centered around a medieval theme. Unfortunately, the game's hardest difficulty is called "Insane" difficulty. There are a number of things this difficulty name could refer to, but many reinforce sanist attitudes about mentally ill people. For example: it could mean that playing the difficulty is such a bad idea (implying that mentally ill people are prone to making bad decisions); or it could mean that the difficulty is chaotic or wild or unpredictable (implying that mentally ill people are generally prone to being chaotic or wild or unpredictable). While a non-sanist interpretation for the etymology of the difficulty name is possible, due to the fact that sanist interpretations are possible and the fact that these interpretations have the potential to cause real harm to mentally ill people by quietly reinforcing sanist notions, this game is currently excluded from our list.
• Noiz2sa - A fun and challenging abstract bullet hell game with nice graphics. Unfortunately, however, the hardest difficulty of the game's Endless mode is called "Insane" difficulty. There are a number of things this difficulty name could refer to, but many reinforce sanist attitudes about mentally ill people. For example: it could mean that playing the difficulty is such a bad idea (implying that mentally ill people are prone to making bad decisions); or it could mean that the difficulty is chaotic or wild or unpredictable (implying that mentally ill people are generally prone to being chaotic or wild or unpredictable). While a non-sanist interpretation for the etymology of the difficulty name is possible, due to the fact that sanist interpretations are possible and the fact that these interpretations have the potential to cause real harm to mentally ill people by quietly reinforcing sanist notions, this game is currently excluded from our list.
• SolarWolf - A simple, but very fun game based on the Atari 2600 game SolarFox, but with much better production value. Centered around collecting cubes as quickly as possible while avoiding gunfire. This is currently rejected because the most recent release describes difficult and/or unpredictable situations as "crazy" in its tutorial, which has the potential to reinforce sanist attitudes against mentally ill people. Pull request #5, which fixes the problem, has been merged into the Git repository, so SolarWolf will be added to the recommendations list when a new release incorporating this fix is made.
• Warzone 2100 - A classic post-apocalyptic real-time strategy game with a massive research tree and a strong focus on artillery. Unfortunately, the game's hardest difficulty is called "Insane" difficulty. There are a number of things this difficulty name could refer to, but many reinforce sanist attitudes about mentally ill people. For example: it could mean that playing the difficulty is such a bad idea (implying that mentally ill people are prone to making bad decisions); or it could mean that the difficulty is chaotic or wild or unpredictable (implying that mentally ill people are generally prone to being chaotic or wild or unpredictable). While a non-sanist interpretation for the etymology of the difficulty name is possible, due to the fact that sanist interpretations are possible and the fact that these interpretations have the potential to cause real harm to mentally ill people by quietly reinforcing sanist notions, this game is currently excluded from our list.
• Xonotic - A highly engaging, fast-paced, and beautiful futuristic multiplayer first-person shooter, featuring several gameplay modes and a nice variety of weapons. It puts a major emphasis on the mechanic of "bunny-hopping", where you move faster by repeatedly jumping in the air. It is currently rejected because at least one voice clip included with the game contains the use of an ableist slur, as documented by Issue #1171 on the xonotic/xonotic-data.pk3dir GitLab page.

Games Rejected for Other Reasons

• Abuse - The sounds and music of this game are proprietary, meaning that we have to judge it as a game with no sound support. It's a type of game whose production value suffers from a lack of sound, so we reject it for reasons of quality. If someone were to make a variant replacing the proprietary sounds with libre sounds, we will consider listing it.
• Astromenace - This is a run-of-the-mill scrolling shooter with an unnecessary "ship outfitting" mechanic and a 3-D perspective. It looks fine, but the sound isn't that great, it's much more confusing and complicated than it needs to be, and the gameplay isn't anything special. Games like Garden of Coloured Lights and Chromium B.S.U. are far better scrolling shooters.
• Beneath a Steel Sky - This game fails to distinguish itself from other point-and-click adventure games in any meaningful way, and it's not especially fun.
• Extreme Tux Racer - This game is really not a very well-designed game, and it has poor production quality. It's certainly an interesting part of libre gaming history, having been one of the earliest libre 3-D games made, but not fit for this list.
• Fish Fillets NG - This is a pretty run-of-the-mill Sokoban-style puzzle game. It isn't particularly distinct and its quality is somewhat poor.
• Flight of of the Amazon Queen - This game really isn't all that special. Like Beneath a Steel Sky, it's really just another point-and-click adventure game. It's also very misogynistic (with the protagonist being a misogynist as a "joke") and very sanist (literally calling the main villain "insane" on multiple occasions and otherwise recklessly throwing around sanist terminology), so it's disqualified on that basis as well.
• Freeciv - While Freeciv has evolved far beyond the original Civilization, more recent games in the Civilization franchise clearly outclass it, especially in terms of production value, and Freeciv fails to be distinct enough to stand on its own merits despite this. It would be helped massively by a default ruleset that does something fundamentally differently from the Civilization series.
• Freedink - A number of people seem to like this game, but when we played this game a few years ago we found the production value to be lacking and the game to be generally indistinct. It seems to really just be a parody of RPGs without much substance beyond that. I'm sure there are good reasons for people enjoying this game, but it's not fit for a recommendation on this list.
• Freedroid RPG - In addition to being very bad when it comes to spreading sanist rhetoric and tacitly supporting fascism (as discussed above), Freedroid RPG is somewhat lacking as a game. It is essentially a variant of the Diablo series with some interesting twists, but it fails to meet its full potential as a game and is badly balanced. Click here for details.

  • Upgrading the main character is overly complex and it's not obvious at all how or why to upgrade. Many special upgrades require use of unspent training points (which you get five of every time you level up, and which nominally are for increasing your character's stats). You can only spend training points in this way by finding special characters, and there's no way to know how many training points will be needed overall (since you can only see the cost of the next level and training point costs increase for each level of the special upgrade). What this effectively does is encourage you to never upgrade the stats training points are nominally for, and to punish you if you do by forcing you to grind more. It's also impossible to even know what exactly these upgrades do before learning them, and it may even be unclear after the fact.
  • The nominally normal way to make money is by fighting robots, but this is so inefficient that the easiest way to get lots of money is by a very boring gambling mini-game. Since the game allows you to save or not save as you please, you can just save, gamble, and either save if you win, or load if you lose. Repeat. This effectively makes money a pointless feature of the game and causes players to be incentivized to do something that is incredibly dull.
  • Upgrading "programs" (this game's version of spells) involves "reading" (consuming) books which increase the level of the respective "program". This is a problem because the easiest way to do this is by buying books from a library, which has an infinite stock of all possible books. This means that the effective thing to do isn't to gain experience by actually progressing; rather, the effective thing to do is to gamble over and over again (see above) and then revisit the library over and over again to buy the "programs" you need, without making any actual progress in the game. This effectively makes "program" upgrades a pointless and tedious gimmick. In addition, books randomly drop as well, and the game makes no effort to avoid giving you books for "programs" you have already upgraded to maximum level, causing you to get many objectively useless items.
  • The takeover mechanic (which is implemented as a "program", this game's version of spells), despite being the star of the game, does not integrate into the game very well and takes a lot of effort to make truly useful. You have to spend dozens of training points upgrading the "program" for it to be effective against anything but the weakest robots (see above), and even when you do, the time limit imposed for actually completing the minigame is so short that it becomes essentially impossible to play it in a measured way. This is exacerbated by the controls, which require you to spend a large amount of time even selecting the node you want to send a charge on. The overall result is that at the highest levels of the "hacking" program, there is only barely enough time to even theoretically use all takeover charges, assuming perfect reflexes. Overall, it's not a very good experience, and the reward of gaining one robotic ally each time is usually not worth it when you have the option to destroy the robots instead.
  • Ranged weapons are very badly balanced. Guns inflict a flat amount of damage, not influenced by the player character's stats. This makes sense, but it means that once you can wield the strongest guns in the game, your effective power plateaus very quickly. This also means that weaker weapons become completely obsolete and useless despite being readily available all over long after that point. You also get a special laser gun for free just by answering a dialog choice correctly; this gun is the second strongest weapon in the game and so dwarfs the rest of the game's guns that they all become essentially useless. All of this isn't even mentioning the tedious "reload" mechanic, which serves no real purpose except to force you to walk around doing nothing for a bit while the gun reloads, and then re-aim at your target.
  • Most of the game consists of very large, confusing, and boring mazes with more or less pointless rooms occupied by robots and occasional massive, tedious to open and collect groups of crates containing goodies. There is essentially no imagination or sense of purpose to how the various areas are designed, with some long twisting passages literally leading to dead ends or walking around in circles. Terminals are the game's form of important access points, but the game also insists on having a massive number of useless, purely decorative terminals that all give the same message about having a screensaver. The overall experience is that exploration is a tedious chore characterized by walking, walking, and more walking until you finally figure out where you're supposed to go.
• GHextrix - An interesting concept, but very bad production quality.
• glTron - It's very nice, but Armagetron (which is very similar) is better in most ways.
• Gravitation - This game is designed to be artistic more so than fun to play. While it's certainly interesting, it doesn't really belong in a list of game recommendations.
• Lugaru - We found this game to have a nice engine, decent production value, and a very interesting combat system. Unfortunately, though, it leans far too heavily on its combat system, with gameplay that essentially just boils down to "fight, now fight some more". It could really benefit from use of more dynamic gameplay and level design.
• Minetest - The default game is uninspired and really designed to be a base for a modding template, which makes getting something fun up and running a somewhat tedious chore even though there's fun to be had once you do so. Would be much better if it defaulted to one of the "games" designed to be fun, rather than just being designed as a modding template, or at least recommended a very good Minetest "game" with a focus on gameplay that could serve as a good introduction to the experience.
• Netrek - It seems like a nice old game, but it's multiplayer-only and I found all servers available to be empty.
• Njam - A highly extended variant of Pac-Man, but the extra features and gameplay changes don't make for a particularly good game and the production quality is a bit lacking. The biggest thing that's a strike, in my opinion, is the change to the ghosts; the original Pac-Man had consistent, but sophisticated A.I. behaviors for each ghost which led to a more engaging experience, while Njam trades this for random movements combined with simplistic behaviors, a substantial downgrade.
• Passage - This game is designed to be artistic more so than fun to play. While it's certainly interesting, it doesn't really belong in a list of game recommendations.
• Pink Pony - A very interesting variant on something like Armagetron, but unfortunately suffers from production and interface issues. In particular: it is often very hard to see the trails left behind by the ponies; there are no sound effects; and the main menu is ugly. This could all be fixed with some polishing.
• Ryzom - This game has a whole host of problems, including being difficult to actually run on Linux. However, the most glaring issue for me is that it's not a good game. Development is stagnant, the learning curve is steep, and the design feels like a shovelware title, with a tedious leveling up system, bare minimum quests that basically just amount to "kill this many creatures of this kind and I'll give you this much money", and not much else to speak of. Sadly there is no other libre open source 3-D MMORPG we are aware of, and maybe some day someone could take the nice-looking models and textures of Ryzom to make a truly good MMO, but Ryzom itself isn't fit for this list.
• Sopwith - This game is nothing special gameplay-wise, something I would consider to be an old shovelware title (and the history of the game suggests that too, given that it was developed solely to show the capabilities of some hardware). It also has confusing controls, segfaults (crashes) any time I try to go into "single player" mode, and has a non-functioning window close button (can only be closed with Ctrl+C).
• SuperTux - I think it's rather unfair when people call SuperTux a Mario clone, because while this might have been a fair comparison with Milestone 1 (version 0.1.x), SuperTux is really nothing like the Mario games today. Unfortunately, though, it's not very well-designed. SuperTux has felt more or less like a feature techdemo first and a game second ever since Milestone 1.9 (version 0.3.x), but even now that the game itself is making some sort of progress, it's still not good. The game tries to be both a Mario-esque action platformer and some kind of puzzle platformer and the end result, at least as of version 0.6.2, just ends up being clunky and annoying to play, plagued both by required pixel-perfect jumps and tedious backtracking to find a switch somewhere. The production value of SuperTux has also taken a nose-dive recently with the introduction of some very bad music tracks that crowd out all the great music the game has to offer. Overall, we cannot recommmend this game as it currently stands.