Colony building sim Mountaincore is now free to play and open source

A complicated history for this one, with the developer Rocket Jump Technology no longer existing as a business. The previous iteration of the game named King under the Mountain went open source back in January 2024, and now what was to be the big revamp is also open source.

Still a shame what happened. In short: the developer made King under the Mountain, then an unnamed "well-known" publisher came in with funding to greatly improve and expand it but they had to re-launch it under a new name (Mountaincore). The publisher eventually backed out, but allowed the developer to continue with the funded work and still release it. Early Access wasn't enough to keep Mountaincore going, so they eventually shut the studio.

Having both versions of the game now open source is a great outcome though, another big project for people to learn from and perhaps continue elsewhere.

Features:

• Start with 7 dwarves but you can build and support a population of hundreds.
• A simulated world with changing weather and seasons that have a big impact on gameplay.
• Every one of your settlers has their own needs and desires to fulfil as they work together for the common good.
• A deep crafting tree that leaves no natural resource unused, tied together into satisfying production chains.
• Progress through skill tiers to craft better tools and weapons.
• Trade with merchants to increase your wealth even further.
• Form up and train your military to battle monsters and invaders...
• ...or play in Peaceful Mode to chill out with a relaxing city-builder experience.
• Twitch integration (using viewer names for settlers) to encourage stream audience interaction.
• Built "Mod-first" so that everything is moddable.

The source code is up on GitHub. Since it's under the MIT license, you can do pretty much anything with it.