AssaultCube is a first-person shooter game based on the Cube engine with support for online multiplayer and single player games, with a fast-pace gameplay and entertaining gaming modes. The latest version was released on November 14, 2010 and brings several bug fixes and tweaks.
AssaultCube takes place on realistic maps and includes 12 multiplayer game modes, including the classic DM, TDM, CTF or Survival, 24 maps (and more available to download), 8 weapons to choose from and various pickup items. The game doesn’t offer a storyline (and I believe most multiplayer shooter don’t even need one), and it offers two different teams, the so-called Cubers Liberations Army (CLA) and the Rabid Viper Special Forces (RVSF).
The interface of the game is a little unintuitive and it lacks several features which would be more user-friendly (e.g. menus accessible only from the keyboard, or the online server which can drive away a first-time player until he can actually select a game to play on). But once the settings are applied and you’re connected to the game, the fun begins.
AssaultCube offers a fast-paced experience at a low amount of resources (as low as Pentium III and above according to the homepage) and there are enough busy servers to choose from online.
The weapon range varies from the classical knife (and by the way, a knife kill counts two frags) to sniper rifle, shotgun, pistol or grenade. The recoil for all the guns is pretty high, so short, controlled bursts is the way to go. Just as with the knife, a headshot from the sniper rifle will also count two frangs instead of one.
There are 12 multiplayer game modes. Here is a brief description for each of them:
- Deathmatch – the classic FFA (free for all)
- Survivor – round-based FFA
- Pistol Frenzy – FFA mode with only pistols, knifes and grenades
- Last Swiss Standing – round-based FFA with only knifes and grenades
- One Shot, One Kill – as the name suggests, one shot is enough to kill the opponent; FFA with 1 HP for each player, a sniper rifle, knife and no pickups
- Team Deathmatch – two teams which fight each other, the winning team is the one with most frags at the end of the game
- Team Survivor – just like TDM, only round-based
- Team One Shot, One Kill – two teams, each player starts with 1 HP, sniper rifle, knife and no pickups
- Hunt the Flag – two flag bearers, the team which frags the enemy flag bearer and collects the flag scores, your own flag must have a bearer
- Team Keep the Flag – one flag, grab and keep the flag for 15 seconds for your team to score
- Keep the Flag – one flag, FFA, grab and keep the flag for 15 seconds to score
- Capture the Flag – the classic CTF, collect the enemy flag and bring it to your base to score; your own flag must be in your base
Except for these, there is one multiplayer cooperative mode and three singleplayer modes against the AI (Bot Team Deathmatch, Bot Deathmatch and Bot One Shot, One Kill).
AssaultCube is a great game, and very addictive. Its strengths are the vast amount of gaming modes and the fast-paced rhythm. The only problem I could find annoying was navigating through menus and the server browser, which makes it very hard to choose a game due to a pretty uninspired color scheme.
To install, you will need SDL 1.2, SDL_image 1.2, OpenAL, SDL_ttf 2.0. On a Debian/Ubuntu system, these should be fetched by issuing the following command in a terminal:
apt-get install libsdl1.2debian libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 libopenal1
