If you’re like me, Caesar III, alongside the aforementioned Age of Empires, made it way more interesting to study history at school. (Windows, Android) There used to be a time when your average ambitious teenager preferred to build an efficient roman sewage network instead of becoming a hit YouTuber. And to top it all off, it’s gorgeous, as if to prove that free games can also be incredibly awesome. It’s actually hard to highlight anything in particular given the colossal amount of content contained in this project, with its dozen factions and hundreds of buildings and units for each-not to mention the number of settings, custom campaigns based on real historic events, and both single- and multi-player game modes. (Windows, Linux) This isn’t the first time we mention this doozie of a game that’s openly inspired on the Age of Empires saga. Interesting tidbit: its engine is a highly modified version of the one used by id Software for Quake II. Having chalked up more than 15 years of history, this free open-source project allows you to play in planetary defense mode as well as manage your operations base, with fixed campaigns and sequential missions. UFO Alien Invasion is a turn-based strategy game inspired on the popular saga of strategy battles against alien invaders. (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android) This one’s still fresh in our collective memory thanks to the remake by the studio Firaxis. It’s high time to heed that famous military march all over again. From the game client itself you can freely download the sources to play the campaigns from those games, on top of being able to play online. It also has graphics adapted to the high resolutions of Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and Dune 2000, no joke. (Windows) A spin-off that can run an improved version of the popular Westwood Studios saga and that allows team play. PC strategy games, given their demanding nature, are timeless for most fans of the genre, thus we dedicate to all you aficionados out there this collection of freeware game inspired or directly adapted from some of the most iconic games in the genre. Fangames tend to flourish like wildflowers in hayfields, above all when they involve games that teeter dangerously close to becoming abandonware.

Download colonization abandonware