A growing, laudable trend in games development recently has been for older studios to release the source-code and (sometimes) the actual media resources of their older games to their respective communities, effectively giving the fans the opportunity to adopt the game, and expand, improve and refine on the original commercial release under a freeware banner. Warzone 2100 is one such game.

Developed by now-defunct Pumpkin Studios, Warzone 2100 was a post-apocalyptic RTS ahead of its time. First released in 1999 for PC and PS1, it offered customizable units and a clever campaign structure, where you constantly expand a central base over the course of multiple missions, sending units out via dropships to handle distant encounters. It had remarkably flexible AI, too, allowing you to set standing orders for your units, like ‘retreat to repair at half health’, which went a long way to keeping favourites alive so that they might acquire veteran status.

The modernized, fan-run version is updated to run on any modern Windows PC and sports enhanced graphics, a tuned UI, refined game-balance, full online play via a master server and even has remarkably intelligent bots for skirmish play along with full support for mods and plugins. While updated, the game might look a little primitive at first, but a shockingly solid and innovative RTS lurks just under the simplistic polygon models for anyone willing to give it a shot. It was a personal favourite back in the day, and it’s great to see it updated and still playable even now.