Asault Cube, a freeware first-person shooter powered by the Cube Engine, is centered around online and offline multiplayer gaming. It’s essentially a Counter-Strike clone with a greater focus on deathmatch. The game itself won’t turn any heads with fancy visuals, but for an installation that takes up less than 100 MB of hard-drive space, it looks great and runs even better. What’s more, it’s also compatible with Max OS X and Linux.

Gameplay is more or less a blend of Quake and Counter-Strike. There are several weapons on offer, ranging from your standard assault rifle, sub-gun, semi-auto rifles (in scoped and carbine versions), handguns and HE grenades. Weapons have recoil, bullet spread and limited magazine capacities to worry about, and it won’t take more than a few rounds to drop another guy. Unlike CS, however, you’ll also find health, armor and ammunition pick-ups scattered throughout the levels. Map modes are typically deathmatch-oriented, so don’t expect Capture the Flag or CS-style bomb defusals.

The original game weighed in at only 19 MB and was bundled with only 5 maps, but years of updates raised the map count to an impressive 36. Like the rest of the game, the map design is entirely deathmatch-oriented, with random player spawning, equally dispersed item pick-ups, multiple choke points, criss-crossing architecture that makes it possible to ambush other players or be ambushed yourself – all the works. The addition of a fairly intelligent and scalable bot AI means you can get a good feel of the game before venturing in and potentialy embarassing yourself online.