S2 Games announced their 2003 FPS/RTS action game Savage: The Battle for Newerth is now available for download, free of charge. The game takes place in the far future, where man has rebuilt society but is now threatened by beasts. Savage is primarily an online game, and features two teams, Men and Beasts, with goal of destroying your enemy’s stronghold/lair. The RTS aspect of the game comes in the form of a team’s commander, who researches weapons, places buildings and commands the players on his/her team. The FPS aspects of the game revolve around combat as soldiers. The gamealso features resources which must be gathered and building construction. Soldiers can gain experience and new ranks by killing enemies or helping their commanders, which leads to better abilities and combat skills.
Since its release, the community has constructed a mod for the game, the Savage Enhancement Project. It improves the net code, the GUI, and adds more gameplay features, including 3-team game play, duel maps, and capture the flag mode. Links to the Savage download, along with the mods, can be found on the Savage downloads page.
S2 Games is paving the way for Savage’s sequel, Savage 2: A Tortured Soul, set for release by the end of this year. It’ll feature game play like its predecessor, along with a fully-enabled LAN and single player portion of the game free for download. But in order to play the game online, players will have to purchase an account.
