When comparing 0 A.D. vs Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the Slant community recommends 0 A.D. for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” 0 A.D. is ranked 6th while Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose 0 A.D. is:
Still currently in development, 0 A.D. is currently in Alpha stages and completely free. For those willing to wade through the multiple bugs, essentially testing the title, this game will scratch the itch of any RTS fan on a shoestring budget.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Free, Real-Time Strategy title actively being developed
Still currently in development, 0 A.D. is currently in Alpha stages and completely free. For those willing to wade through the multiple bugs, essentially testing the title, this game will scratch the itch of any RTS fan on a shoestring budget.
Pro Multi-platform support
The game will run on any Operating System, whether it be Linux, OSX, or Windows, which is great for people who dual-boot or use multiple OS's across their devices. No matter the OS used, one can install and play this game.
Pro Addictive Age of Empires style gameplay
This game can be seen as a spiritual successor to Age of Empires, thus it will provide similar gameplay to those who are familiar with the AoE series.
Pro Straightforward RTS gameplay
0 A.D. brings recognizable, straightforward, Real-Time Strategy gameplay to the players. With a mini-map in the bottom corner, resources shown in a bar at the bottom, and unit selection through double clicking, all of the major elements found in most RTS games is here, making for a very familiar game for those that are used to the genre.
Pro Code is open-source
Even if the current developer team chooses to no longer work on the game, others can keep contributing to the source code and modify it.
Pro Active development
By being in active development the game allows for frequent bug fixes as well as frequent new content. While it is still in alpha, the state of the game playability is pretty good with new features being added all the time.
Pro Simple character creation with different classes
There are a few different classes available at character creation, each one has it's own abilities that are different from the others. Creating one is quite simple, which makes for a fast way to get into the game and start playing.
Pro Gold Standard for roguelikes
The controls and replayability have been refined over the years. Whether the player chooses to play with Tiles (graphics) or console (ASCII) the game works well even when choosing online or offline play. Either way there is just enough interface to play the game.
Cons
Con Currently in alpha
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature complete.
Con Slow development
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature incomplete. This game is still in Alpha version 23 Ken Wood as of September 2020.
Con Have to fiddle with controls
Being that the game uses an emulated keyboard on screen it works best on tablet, though is not really the preferred method (but is the only one) since it takes up screen space.