What Red Eclipse 2 is, how its parkour-focused arena shooter and Tesseract engine work, and why the game is completely free and open source.
Red Eclipse 2 is a free, open-source first-person shooter forked from Cube 2: Sauerbraten and developed by a volunteer community rather than a commercial studio. Its first stable release launched in March 2011, and the major 2.0 Jupiter Edition, built on the more advanced Tesseract engine, arrived on Steam in December 2019.
The game is defined by fast, parkour-style movement through vertical multiplayer arenas, along with a built-in real-time level editor that gives players the same map-building tools the developers use themselves.
Red Eclipse 2 runs on the Tesseract engine, adding deferred shading, improved shadow mapping, and reflection and refraction support compared with earlier versions. Gameplay centers on agile, skill-based movement, including running, wall-running, and sliding, layered on top of multiple competitive modes.
The included real-time multiplayer level editor lets players create and modify maps directly inside the game, and the title is fully cross-platform, running natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Red Eclipse 2 is completely free to download and play, with no premium edition, in-game purchases, or subscription of any kind. It is released under the permissive zlib open-source license, so its full source code is publicly available for anyone to inspect, modify, and redistribute.
The game can be downloaded through Steam, itch.io, or directly from the official redeclipse.net website at no cost, and ongoing development is funded and driven entirely by volunteer community contributions rather than commercial revenue.
Yes, Red Eclipse 2 is completely free to download and play, with no in-game purchases or subscription required.
Red Eclipse 2 runs on the Tesseract engine, an open-source fork of the Cube 2 engine written by developer Lee Salzman.
Red Eclipse 2.0, called the Jupiter Edition, was released on Steam on December 19, 2019.
Yes, the game is free and open-source software released under the permissive zlib license.
Red Eclipse 2 runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is available via Steam, itch.io, and direct download.
Yes, it includes a full real-time, in-game multiplayer level editor built on the Tesseract engine.
It is developed by an open community of volunteer contributors, including original developers Quinton Reeves, Lee Salzman, and Slawomir Blauciak.
Red Eclipse was originally forked from Cube 2: Sauerbraten before adopting the Tesseract engine for its 2.0 release.