Developed as a modern reincarnation of the original Master of Orion, the free and open source Remnants of the Precursors is officially out now. It's been in development for somewhere around 6 years, with the big 1.0 landing on December 25.

Master of Orion is an absolute classic, and the sequel is one of the games that firmly cemented my absolute love of video games so seeing the genre live on in such a way is awesome. According to the developer "ROTP takes that original award-winning formula and adds high quality artwork, writing, graphical design and AI development to recreate the authentic experience of the original game. There is arguably more quality artwork and writing in ROTP than in almost any space 4X game currently on the market".

Watch video on YouTube.com

The developer further mentioned that "Each of the ten races has personalized dialogue that aligns with their racial tendencies to bring them to life in a way not possible in MOO1. Which race you choose to play really makes a difference in your tactics, and knowing who your neighbors are and what they care about is an important part of playing well." — and also that — "The technology tree is variable each game and has a real effect on how you design your ships. You can't research every tech, so you will often need to resort to diplomacy, espionage or even war to acquire technologies you desire. Ship combat is turn-based, allowing you to directly command your fleet against the enemy or some of the dangerous space monsters. There is no "blob vs blob" ship combat in ROTP".

Sounds like a huge amount of effort and attention to detail went into this.

Available free / pay what you want from itch.io and the source is up on GitHub . There's a few different licenses depending on the code / artwork but it's looking good.

Punk Wars is combat-heavy turn-based 4x strategy game from Strategy Forge S.A. and Jujubee S.A. and it's out now.

"Punk Wars is a combat and tactics-oriented strategy drawing inspiration from the classic turn-based 4X titles. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, in which the ruins of a once powerful megacity become the arena for a deadly fight between four newly emerged corporations, trying to assert dominance for both their unique technology and philosophy of life.

Become the powerful leader of the mesianic steampunk, tenebrous dieselpunk, militaristic steelpunk or technocratic atompunk; explore the ruins of a bygone civilization, where resources are scarce and the dangers way too common. Develop your infrastructure and technology that will secure your triumph. Create a winning strategy and a playstyle for each faction, utilising their distinctive skills and units."

Watch video on YouTube.com

Features:

• Take control of one of the four powerful corporations - Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Atompunk or Steelpunk - and use its unique skillset to lead it to glory.
• Explore the mysteries of a ruined, post-apocalyptic megacity.
• Level up your units and engage in fierce battles that will challenge your tactical sense.
• Grow your scientific, industrial and military infrastructure, creating advanced supply chains.
• Seek, garner and wisely use scarce resources.
• Unite humanity and lead it to the new era of peace and prosperity!

As much as I love the idea of it, the game needs a lot of attention as it's incredibly unstable. Repeatedly trying to get into it has just left me thoroughly frustrated at the state of it. Crash in the menu, crash in the tutorial and it just continues like that. Even on Windows, players have complained about what looks like thoroughly poor performance too. On top of that, it appears their "campaign" mode is nothing of the sort, just what other games would call a skirmish map. So right now, it looks like one to miss.

Punk Wars is available on Steam . The Linux version is not on the GOG store.

Strategy Forge S.A. and Jujubee S.A. have announced that their 4x strategy game Punk Wars will be releasing with Linux support on November 11.

"Punk Wars tells the story of four new powers emerging from the ashes of a global cataclysm and fighting for domination of the ruins of a once magnificent megacity. Become the powerful leader of the messianic steampunk, tenebrous dieselpunk, militaristic steelpunk, or technocratic atompunk, with each faction holding the key to a different branch of industrial science, with a different set of unique skills. Explore the ruins of a bygone civilization, where resources are scarce and the dangers way too common. Develop your infrastructure and technology that will secure your triumph. Create a winning strategy and a playstyle for each faction, utilising their distinctive skills and units. Become the messiah of the new age and lead humanity towards the era of prosperity and happiness… as you see it."

Watch video on YouTube.com

Features:

• Take control of one of the four powerful corporations - Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Atompunk or Steelpunk - and use its unique skillset to lead it to glory. - Explore the mysteries of a ruined, post-apocalyptic megacity.
• Level up your units and engage in battles that will challenge your tactical sense. - Grow your scientific, industrial and military infrastructure, creating advanced supply chains.
• Seek, garner and wisely use scarce resources.
• Unite humanity and lead it to the new era of peace and prosperity!

About the developer: Strategy Forge is a development studio located in Katowice, Poland consisting of a group of experienced developers and creative minds. They focus on creating unique, immersive and well researched strategy games based on bold and unrestricted ideas, touching upon meaningful, contemporary topics with Punk Wars being their first title.

You can follow Punk Wars on Steam .

Proxy Studios, developer of Warhammer 40,000: Gladius and Pandora: First Contact have just recently announced their brand new upcoming 4x strategy game ZEPHON.

Coming along with Linux support ( confirmed ) just like their previous games, it looks like another enhancement on their existing engine setup used with their previous games with a brand new setting. ZEPHON is a post-apocalyptic 4X strategy game, where you guide survivors through a grim-dark future, navigating unexpected disasters, eldritch horror and cyberpunk monstrosities.

Humanity emerges, hesitantly, into ruination. Almost nothing is left of the world as we knew it—settlements, forests, seas, mountains—all have been blasted into unfamiliarity. Horribly mutated animals hunt in packs through deformed woodland. Decrepit military robots stumble unknowingly through the ruins, sensors and logic centres blown. Alien soldiers, once impossibly powerful, cower in the wrecks of their ships, praying to heedless gods for rescue.

On the planet Earth, that was once a cradle of life, the extinction of humanity is at hand.

What will you do to survive?

No trailer yet but they do have some fancy looking early W.I.P shots of it (click each to enlarge):

Features:

You can follow ZEPHON on Steam .

Pulling in some much requested features by users, the upcoming free December update for Civilization VI sounds like it's going to be quite nice. This might not be as big as some of the previous updates but still  some very useful additions coming.

One major addition is the City State Picker, allowing you to go that little bit further with your game customization by letting you hand pick what City States you want to be in your game. You can switch between the default random, or sort your own custom list.

There's also going to be the usual assorted balancing changes, with Firaxis mentioning a "significant" balancing pass on social policies and the tech and civic boosts. In addition they've done a few AI tweaks like them not making so many demands if you're clearly stronger than them or if they're doing badly in a war, plus there's finally a Stop Asking button if a particular civ is pestering you.

Here's the full video of what's to come:

Watch video on YouTube.com

What's really interesting though is that with the New Frontier Pass, that is coming to an end after the January and March 2021 content packs. However, as something of a hint the end of the video above has the team give a quick cheers to "one more year" after mentioning details of stuff to come in January. That could just be a celebratory 2020 being almost over, and only meaning they will give details on the last two packs or it could be a hint that more is planned.

The free December 2020 update arrives on December 17.

You can buy Civilization VI with Linux support from Humble Store and Steam .

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Craftworld Aeldari is the latest expansion to the first turn-based 4x strategy game in the Warhammer universe. As the name suggests, the Craftworld Aeldari expansion brings in another new race that you can control or fight again.

"In the base game, the player could face the conquest and the exploration of Gladius with the heroic Space Marines, the brutal Orks, the brave Imperium and the relentless Necrons. With the additional DLCs, the player can lead the new factions such as the ravenous Tyranids, the corrupted Chaos Space Marines and the ambitious T’au. Now another faction join the fight with the swift and deadly Craftworld Aeldari, one of the most ancient races in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, having turned war into a fine art."

The Craftworld Aeldari bring 19 highly versatile new units with options for long and close range, along with their own fresh gameplay mechanics. Check out the release trailer below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Feature Highlight:

• Webway Gate - Exploit your knowledge of webway gates to activate them and move swiftly across the battlefield.
• Webway Redoubt - Found a city on top of an activated webway gate to fortify Craftworld Aeldari’s presence on Gladius.
• Remnants of the Fall - Reduced city growth rate. The last remnants of a people whose mere dreams once overturned worlds and quenched suns.
• Asuryani Arrivals - Call upon offworld Asuryani to join you and temporarily boost your growth rate.
• Transcendent Bliss - Focus the Aeldari’s spiritual consciousness to experience a period of increased loyalty towards your cause.
• Spirit Preservation - Gain energy for every fallen Aeldari unit.
• Battle Focus - Many Craftworld Aeldari units can move after using their actions.
• Ancient Doom - The Aeldari loathe and fear She Who Thirsts above all else, increasing their accuracy, but also the damage taken when fighting the forces of Chaos.

On top of all the new bits for the DLC, Gladius version 1.7 was also released which pulls in plenty new and improved for all players of the game regardless of buying the DLC or not. Free updates include:

• Improved performance
• Improved sound effects.
• 7 new colours.
• New neutral unit: Umbra (terrifying flying monstrous creature that is vulnerable to light).
• 32 new Steam achievements.
• Transports can now carry allied units.
• Units in transports can now be selected to inspect their status such as ability cooldowns.
• Added details tab to the stats panel, listing the resources accumulated, units created, units lost, units killed, damage dealt, damage taken and buildings constructed for each player.
• Cross-play with Epic Games Store

You can buy Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War from Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

Top marks for ambition on this one, as Antimatter from developer Geoffroy Pirard is planned to be a 4x city-builder where you can explore space and colonize many other planets.

It doesn't seem to really fit into a few standard genres. Is it a city-builder? Yes. Is it a game of space exploration? Seemingly also yes. The developer explains how each planet can be explored and built up with different biomes, native cities, hidden structures, forgotten civilisations and more surprises to find. Not always peaceful either, some planets as expected are quite dangerous places to be exploring.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Not only is it a galaxy-spanning exploration city-builder, there's also elements of a management game here too. You deal with industry, policies, taxes and trade as well. There's even a crafting system, and you will be building all sorts of rockets and space stations - it's got a small bit of everything it appears.

What's just as impressive is the destruction system - as the developer explained that it's all fully simulated. Every pixel can be destroyed or altered on planets, while you dig for ruins or destroy them with big weapons the choice is yours. To go along with that there's some physics systems too, like water and lava flows and there's even a planetary weather system.

It's currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter , after a brief first failed attempt under the name of War Industry - it seems they decided on a different direction with it. Their tiny goal of €2,500 has been reached so it's already funded with 21 days left to go - so we've added it to our dedicated Crowdfunding Page .

Find it on Kickstarter here .

Inspired originally by Master of Orion, the free and open source FreeOrion project has a brand new release.

For the FreeOrion, this was a reasonably quick release considering they had another release back in February and they don't usually update too often. For a good reason this time though, as they've managed to do a major tech move from Python 2 to 3 to enable FreeOrion to stay up to date with modern code. That wasn't the only big change though.

Some highlights:

• The Arc Disruptor weapon part and techs have been added, which are useful with bad pilots, against large numbers of cheap targets, and against ships without shields
• The possible targets for each weapon type has been limited, making weapon types useful in different situations
• Fighters have been rebalanced and the Heavy Bomber fighter type was added
• Added happiness requirements for normal planet resource meter growth
• Added team-based player homeworld placement for multiplayer games
• Added separate empire affiliation for peace, distinct from allied
• Rebalanced some bonuses from techs and specials to make high population less important and mitigate runaway empire growth "snowballing"

Outside of their highlights, there's of course plenty more changed you can see in the full log . More AI improvements, quite a lot of bug fixes, scripting optimizations, improved online multiplayer, translation updates and so on.

For Linux specifically, they also now supply a FreeDesktop.org AppStream metainfo file to help integrations.

You can check out more on the official site and install it as a Snap .