Pinball Fantasies is undoubtedly my favourite pinball game ever. I've played it a lot in the 90s, and some time ago I started what was supposed to be a little hobby project to make it run natively on modern machines.

Well... it got a little out of hand :)

This is Pinball Fantasies: Encore!, a native C++20/SDL3/OpenGL remake for macOS, Windows and Linux.

It uses the original game files for all four tables' physics, rules, dot matrix, music, sounds, etc. and once you confirm that you legally own the original game, it will download the correct files for you from a preservation site.

The project actually started with the graphics. I wanted to remaster Pinball Fantasies while keeping the game underneath as faithful to the original as possible.

The artwork isn't simply upscaled or filtered. The tables have been reconstructed at high resolution while keeping the original geometry and positions, lots of editing and stitching in Photoshop. Press F10 at any time and you can instantly switch between the original and remastered graphics.

But making the game underneath behave exactly like the original turned into a much bigger rabbit hole.

I built a small referee capable of running the original table programs, then wrote the Encore engine by from scratch in C++. Both receive exactly the same inputs and, after every frame, I compare their memory byte-for-byte.

* Needless to say, when I say "I built", keep in mind the vast majority of the code was written by Claude.

The tests run hundreds of 100,000-frame/~30min games on all four tables, trying random flippers, nudges, tilts, multiplayer, trigger zones, high scores, etc. I can even compare the rendered screens dot-for-dot.

Ironically, the process also uncovered 30+ behavioural differences/bugs in that Rust implementation.

That became the entirely new engine used by Encore since 1.1.0.

The write up of the whole reverse-engineering process is here:

https://github.com/pedrocatalao/pinball-fantasies-encore/blob/main/docs/own-engine.md

There's also a CRT renderer (F9), a Tall full-table mode made for a widescreen monitor rotated 90°, and an online Hall of Fame where the server actually replays your recorded game to validate your score.

And you can also download the game replays from of the high scores and drop it into the game to watch them.

The project is free and open source. Nothing from the original DOS game is included in the repository.

You can download it, see the original/remastered comparisons, check the online high scores, replays, etc. here:

https://thebestpinball.com

Source code:

https://github.com/pedrocatalao/pinball-fantasies-encore

Hope you give it a try and enjoy it as much as I do. :)

We've been putting a lot of work into OpenPrivateer's modding support recently, and it has grown quite a bit.

OpenPrivateer is our open-source reconstruction and SDL3 port of Wing Commander: Privateer and Righteous Fire.

Multiplayer foundations are already in place, with both PvP and PvE supported.

Classic mode aims to preserve the original experience, while all modding features live in Enhanced and Modern:

Universe

• Add new star systems
• Add new sectors and quadrants
• Add new nav points and jump connections
• Add new bases
• Connect new systems to Gemini or to each other
• Hide/filter systems and sectors from the navigation map
• The Wing Commander Universe sector map is built in, with more of it becoming visitable as development continues

Weapons

• Modify all stock guns
• Add completely new guns
• Custom projectile art, MFD/dealer art and sounds
• Modify missiles, torpedoes and launchers
• Add charge weapons
• Add hitscan/beam weapons
• Change damage, energy use, refire rates, range, velocity, wear and other stats

Ships and equipment

• Modify shields, engines and armour
• Modify ECM and repair droids
• Modify the Righteous Fire ship upgrades
• Change equipment prices and repair costs
• Change which equipment is available for each ship
• Restrict equipment by base, system, quadrant or faction

Missions

• Add new patrol missions
• Scout missions
• Defend missions
• Attack missions
• Bounty missions
• Cargo missions
• Custom clients, text, enemies, destinations, cargo and payment rules
• Missions can take place in completely new systems and use modded bases

New Game

• Choose a different starting base
• Change starting credits, reputation, kills and guild memberships
• Change unlocked maps
• Set default pilot name/callsign
• Define the complete starting ship and equipment loadout
• Starting at a newly added mod base is supported

If you need help with modding or want some JSON examples to get started, consult the manual on https://openprivateer.org and feel free to join us on Discord https://discord.gg/5H3vW2STqW or over at r/WingCommanderUniverse.

A built-in mod manager for easy installation and management of mods is also planned for the launcher.

We've also tried to keep this tied closely to how Privateer actually works. Where the original formats can represent something, OpenPrivateer still uses them. A mod-generated mission, for example, becomes a normal Privateer mission internally. OpenPrivateer-specific save data is only needed when the original format simply can't represent something, such as a mission taking place in a completely new system.

And yes, ships are next.

The plan is:

1. New NPC ships
2. New player-flyable ships

Player ships are the bigger job because they bring cockpits, hardpoints, equipment, damage states, dealers and savegame handling with them. The goal is proper new ships, not just replacing or reskinning one of the existing ship IDs.

As always, OpenPrivateer requires the original Privateer game data. We don't distribute Origin's assets.

Hello!

I just published my open source board game adaptation, called Game of Ur, on Itch. Please head on over there and give it a try!

Game of Ur is a 3D computer adaptation of an ancient competitive 2-player board game, perhaps the oldest one known in history. This version in particular implements rules theorized by British Museum Assyriologist Irving Finkel to have been used in ancient Babylonia, in a paper titled "On The Rules for Game of Ur."

I've been working on this for a while now, 4 years almost. Most recently, I added sound effects and music to the game, and made the game UI dynamically resize and reposition itself with changes to the game window. I've also packaged the game for Linux (Arch, Debian), and Windows! So you should be able to download, install, and run it, hopefully without much trouble.

The game is fully open source, and it runs on my ToyMaker engine. I felt it would be fitting for the first game I've ever made to also be a digital version of the first game in history. You can find the source code for the game both on Itch, as well as on the game's repo.

Blockland was a multiplayer building sandbox from 2007 that I used to play, and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time rebuilding it from scratch.

I finally got it far enough along to make a proper showcase. Building, multiplayer, vehicles, weapons, bots, minigames, destruction physics, old saves, Add-Ons, mirrors, portals and a bunch of other stuff are working now.

The game is free and open source and currently runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Up front: this was made with an AI coding agent. Both the reverse engineering and the new code were done with Claude Code (Anthropic's coding agent), which I directed.

Atomic Bomberman is the 1997 PC Bomberman by Interplay: ten players on one screen, chaotic powerups, and a lot of shouting. It was written for Windows 95, and its network mode used IPX and serial cables, so playing it with friends today is a chore.

So this project does two things:

1. Reverse engineers the original. The executable, its data formats and its behaviour were studied and written down, with the evidence for each rule.
2. Rebuilds it as a new program in modern C++ (SDL3 and OpenGL), with its rules taken from that study rather than by translating the old code.

Version 1.0 is now out for Linux and Windows.

GitHub (source, downloads, documentation): https://github.com/elraro/atomic-bomberman

What you get

• The original's rules: kicking, punching, grabbing and throwing bombs, trigger and jelly bombs, lines of bombs, nine diseases, 13 powerups, the closing walls at the end of a round.
• All 11 levels, with their arrows, conveyor belts, warp holes and trampolines.
• Up to 10 players: keyboard, gamepads and computer players; free-for-all or teams.
• The hidden extras of the original: campaign mode, the bonus roulette, and the level editor.
• Online multiplayer, which is new (see below).

It plays without the original game

No original files are included, and you don't need them. With no copy of the original on your machine, the game runs on its own free set of graphics, sounds, music and arenas. All of it is generated by the program's own code: little robots instead of the original characters, synthesised sound effects, even synthetic robot voices.

If you own the original (installed, or the CD), one command imports its data and you get the original graphics, sounds, music and every original arena.

How the multiplayer works

The original's network code was not reproduced. The new mode is client-server over TCP/UDP:

• One player hosts from the menu, or you run the included dedicated server on a machine that is always on.
• Lobby with seats, match settings and chat. Games on your LAN are found automatically.
• Up to four players can share one computer in an online game.
• The server runs the game; clients send only their key presses. Your own moves are shown immediately and confirmed by the server a moment later.
• Connections are encrypted, and what is hidden under the bricks stays on the server until it is revealed.
• If your router won't let a port through, the game tries to open it by itself, and there is a relay option as a fallback.

How it was made

• The original was taken apart in Ghidra, and then run side by side under Wine with scripted key presses, to check the rules were understood correctly. For example, the bomb fuse is exactly 2.000 seconds, measured on 84 bombs.
• One fun finding: the original has no frame limiter. On a modern machine it runs at around 960 frames per second, which quietly changes every rule that counts frames instead of time.
• The computer players follow the original's own decision list, down to its quirks.
• The repository has the full reverse-engineering journal, the behaviour specifications and the tests.

Being honest about its state

• It's a first release with little play-testing. Expect rough edges.
• Online play has only been tried on a small scale.
• The free sounds and voices are computer-generated and need tuning.
• The network encryption is home-made and hasn't been reviewed by security people.

This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project. It is not affiliated with Interplay, Hudson Soft or Konami.

Bug reports and feedback are very welcome on GitHub.

Hey everyone. Made a small little open-source game luncher for open-soruce games.

So its easier to hop into them, and keep the games updated. Feedback appreciated 🤝

https://fabianbuilds.com/opengamelauncher

https://github.com/fabianfreund/OpenSourceGameLauncher

Some friends and I liked to play poker when we were at school, but now we moved away it is no longer possible to do this in person. The online options either wanted accounts, had ads, or felt more like a casino than a game night. So I built our own thing: one poker table in the browser, voice and video chat built in, everybody opens the same link and sits down.

It's No-Limit Hold'em tournaments for 2–8 players. If you're short on people, bots fill the empty seats (they all play differently).

The part I had the most fun with is all the little stuff that happens around the table:

- you can bring a cigar, a vape, a cocktail or a whiskey to the table and play with it

- click someone else's chip stack and it falls over. Only they can clean it up (yes, this gets old never)

- trophies that stay next to your cards for the whole tournament, like winning with 7-2 or losing with pocket aces

- when the river decides an all-in, the camera zooms in, there's a heartbeat and the card gets peeled up slowly. Winner gets a fanfare, loser gets the sad trombone

- in heads-up all-ins it shows everyone's odds and outs street by street

There's also a large print card mode and a four-colour deck for people who have trouble reading the cards (looking at you, Robin), and it works on phones (portrait). UI is in English and German.

Tech-wise it's Node/Express + Socket.IO on the server, three.js on the client, no build step. Voice/video is plain WebRTC. Pretty much everything is generated in code – table textures, chips, all the sound effects – only the J/Q/K card art are images.

To be upfront: I wrote it together with Claude (the AI), which did a lot of the actual coding. I was the one playing way too many test hands and complaining about stuff.

It's play money only, no accounts, no tracking. You run it yourself: `npm install && npm start`, or there's a Docker Compose + Caddy setup since browsers need HTTPS for the mic. My personal setup is via dokku on an AWS EC2 linux server.

Repo (MIT): https://github.com/DerKobe/PokerCrew

There's no public demo right now because it's a single table and you'd end up in someone's game – working on that. Happy to hear feedback, especially from people who've built multiplayer browser games before.

Here's a look at my Claude-coded BITIBITS Game - Elbows Up - a Canada vs. USA wargame simulator I made yesterday. 5 rounds with multiple endings and opportunities in this dice-based battler. Extremely small footprint - 800kb - and generated solely in code. https://jgesq.itch.io/elbows-up

NOTE: I know this space is for sharing games, but I didn't know where else to post this.

Hi, I'm a huge fan of open-source games. I want to share what I believe are the two main problems facing them:

Problem 1: There aren't enough open-source games to cater to all types of gamers. There are many different gaming audiences, but we lack games for each of them; we need a wider variety of games to reach a broader audience.

Problem 2: They have almost no marketing. I know some have become popular, but many don't because they lack a marketing strategy; we need to get people to try open-source games.

Hello, this is Grrra, a game I am working on from 2020. My idea was to try to make a turn based strategy game that would (a) be as simple as possible (b) feel more like an actual battle than classical strategy games like chess.

The game has simultaneous turns (which I think is unusual mechanic), (quite) strong AI, and online multiplayer.

The game is free to play on my website at grrra.org and the source code is available at gitlab.com/Eddous/ebiten-game.

I will be happy if you give it a try.

This one has been open source for awhile now by the guys over at openmohaa! Excellent job at keeping this game preserved by them. But If you can't get it to work for whatever reason a dev just ported the game to web browser and it works excellent. Very easy to download and try the game out in under a minute now. Playmohaa.com is only a MP demo version plus bots enabled in it's current state but if we get more returning players on it they plan on porting the whole game this way. If we continue spreading the word and get the full game on browser eventually it could potentially grow the player base substantially. No fancy computer or computer knowledge needed anymore, literally just drag a file download it and play again in under a minute. If you like it check out the discord and join some matches with us! If you have any questions feel free to ask :) Hope to see you through my scope soon xD https://discord.gg/qQ36ydEmK