Flare: a free open source RPG with tons of potential

Fans of action RPGs have been spoiled silly over the last couple of weeks, but if you have any free time between Torchlight II and Borderlands 2 sessions – I mean, you are wasting around eight hours on sleep – you might want to keep an eye on Flare . The 0.16 alpha version of the ambitious open source RPG has just been added to Desura , with number 0.17 expected on the morrow.

Either one will grant you hours of isometric exploration and monster-stabbing, for the low, low price of absolutely nothing. The game is expected to move into beta in 2013, but there's already a lot of bang for your no bucks, even if Flare is a little rough around the edges.

The game's built on its own open source engine, so there's a hell of a lot of potential here when it comes to the art of modding – in fact, there's already one total conversion in the works. You can get Flare through Desura or the official website , and see a video of the game in action below.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.