OpenArena is a free and open-source video game. It is a first-person shooter, and a clone of Quake III Arena.

Development

The OpenArena project was established on August 19, 2005, one day after the id Tech 3 source code released under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later license. OpenArena was officially released for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS. Third parties have also ported the game to FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Android and iOS. The game was also unofficially ported to the Raspberry Pi.

Gameplay

OpenArena's gameplay mirrors that of Quake III Arena with some quality of life improvements, such as awarding a character points for pushing another character to their death. The game can be played online (against other human players) or offline (against computer-controlled characters known as bots). "Singleplayer" mode allows players to play a predefined series of deathmatches, unlocking a new "tier" of four maps after completing the previous one, or to create custom matches in any game type through the "skirmish" mode.

Game modes

OpenArena has the following gamemodes:

Reception and impact

The game is one of the most popular open-source first-person shooters, particularly among fans of the original Quake III Arena. However, some others has criticized it as incomplete, saying that this detracts from long term play. The game has been praised for its portability and ability to run on old hardware, as well as creative bot design. OpenArena has been used as a platform for scholarly work in computer science. Some examples include streaming graphics from a central server, and visualizing large amounts of network data.