Mindustry, one of the best open source games around has a huge upgrade in testing

Mindustry, a game that mixes in Factorio with Tower Defence and then goes wild from there is a fantastic example of how good a free and open source game can be. So good in fact, I wrote an article about my love of it and spoke in a video about it on Linux For Everyone.

I'm not here to gush about it all over again though, well not quite anyway. Mindustry is going through something of an evolution right now. They've been working on a massive upgrade to all parts of the game including a brand new campaign, new units you can take direct command of, building individual units will be combined into a few factories rather than each unit needing dedicated blocks, carrier units to pick up and drop off others, new point defence turrets to deal with rockets, a new basic AI that can build, naval units and the list goes on for a while.

Direct unit control

A new unit upgrade system sounds very interesting too. With units now being made in factories split across their type (land, air etc), they can also be upgraded multiple times into much more powerful units. You do this through the new Reconstructor buildings. So you can build a small Dagger units, then send it through Reconstructors to end up as a Fortress. Even more exciting is the addition of huge boss units and special walker-types. 

Reading over all their plans was exciting enough, I had it all ready to write about and then…they went ahead and released an Alpha build of Mindustry 6.0 with all these goodies to see for yourself:

• A new unit production system, with incremental upgrades
• Direct unit and turret control
• Renamed and re-sprited units
• New blocks and units
• Naval and insect-like units
• Programmable logic systems
• Weather
• New campaign system (unfinished, barely functional)
• New tech tree system
• Many QoL changes
• Balancing

Keeping in mind all of the above is current unfinished. It all seems like it's going to be be awesome. The new campaign system especially looks fantastic with the new planet screen, and the way you progress through it sounds like it will provide more of a challenge too.

When to expect the full 6.0 release? They're setting a tentative date for December 2020. It's seriously exciting as this is a absolutely huge expansion to an already awesome free and open source game.

You can find Mindustry free on itch.io, GitHub or buy it on Steam for extra platform integrations.