Glest - Review of free 3D real time strategy game

Glest Introduction

Glest is a 3D realtime strategy game (or RTS) set in a sort of pseudo medieval Europe. The game, as of version 2, features two factions, Tech and Magic. Each faction also has their own unit types, buildings and tech tree (ie more stuff to do later). As typical with RTS games there are resources to gather and mine. The main currency in Glest is gold whilst currently the other resources are rock and wood.

On starting up the game you are presented with a menu with the world of Glest moving in the background. Although the game is on version 2, soon 2.1, the presentation is a bit sparse. I suppose for a free game you could forgive this. As when you get into the game itself you will be quite pleasantly suprised. It's not what you could call an AAA game but the graphics and gameplay are good enough nonetheless, in fact pretty good for an open source game.

If you are familiar with RTS games then you will probably feel right at home here.. At the start of the game you have a handful of units and one main building. The magic faction starts with mage tower whilst the the tech faction has a castle. This is where your basic units are created.

The interface is quite clutter free with just the essentials on screen and the rest for the game. At the top of the screen is a bar at showing your resources available, gold, stone and wood, on the right is your faction management options. It's here where you get to build, upgrade and research new stuff. Rolling over each option tells you what it is and what resources are required.

Both factions have a tech tree to traverse to get more units and abilities. There arn't that many buildings, units, spells, etc to research but what is there is pretty good. The magic faction get to summon dragons and demon giants to fight their cause whilst the tech faction can build devastating catapaults and strange medieval battle walkers. There are also various flying units such as the air balloon. This makes it great fun to look forward to getting those units out to fight.

The magic faction has some great effects when casting spells which to the atmosphere. Summoners can, funnily enough, summon creatures to battle. Instead of building factories build a summoner. The summoner can bring in demons, Magic Armour (a walking battle suit) and dragons. The opposite to this for the Tech faction is to build a Blacksmith to produce fighters. The mix is great and seems to be well balanced.

You've got the look
Glest's theme is mainly a forest. This can be changed to a winter look when setting up the game. Although samey it looks like a forest and is pleasant enough. Each unit has it's own animations rendered in 3D. The ogre giant and battle walkers dwarf the other units.

Sound
Sound is probably one of the most underused element in many open source projects but Glest's effects really boost the games appeal. The music is well composed and quite pleasant to. Each unit has their own response when you click on them or send them to do a task. The stone golem and magic armour are paricularly good with gravely hollow voices.

Conculsion
There aren't many games these days, commercial or otherwise, that keep me playing for as long as I did so the gameplay is definitely spot on.

Although I have been engrossed by this game there are few little niggles. Unfortunately as open source games rely on volunteers and hobbyists things will get overlooked. After all they are not being paid, would you work for free? So as a result of this Glest lacks some niceties.

There is no easy setup option so you can tweak graphics resolutions, although it does use an auto setting. The game start page is just a case of choosing your map, faction and players. There currently seem to be no campaigns or set missions so there isn't really a need to want to play this game which is a shame as there s a written background to the game world. There is also no way to save a game which makes it difficult to play for short bursts to come back to. Finally there is no multiplayer option. I believe this is being worked on at the moment.

So aside from these few things the game makes up for it in it's gameplay, sounds and looks. Glest is also a very active project with a very active community producing mods. There are various mods from maps, units and graphics. So future versions of the game may well be a lot more polished.

I am not going to give the game a numeric rating as it would mean bugger all. All I would say is download it give it a go and you might be pleasantly suprised.


Glest Website