rank of "Officer" by their commander, which allows them to issue similar orders to other players on the team. Officers also grant a passive healing bonus to teammates around them. When a field player is killed, they are presented with the option to purchase units and weapons before spawning. The units and weapons that are available are determined by the commander's development of the technology tree and the amount of gold the player has (although players can request items from the commander if they don't have enough gold). Gold is obtained by killing Players, NPCs, and damaging enemy buildings. Release The game was released in 2003, was turned freeware on September 1, 2006, and its source code was made available to the public. S2 Games have discontinued the game since, but its community continued developing it. Developed by a team at Newerth.com with S2 Games' support, XR was the most widely used continuation of Savage. It includes all improvements contributed by the Savage Full Enhancement mod, and adds better player models, new animations, new music, an additional 500 props for map designers, a reworked GUI and better support for mods, among other features. Unlike the original Savage, XR is not open-source due to concerns about cheating, which has been a problem in the past for open-sourced versions of the game. The official Savage XR website, Newerth.com, was closed down in 2022 but the community continues developing the game. Reception Eurogamer awarded Savage 8 out of 10, criticizing technical glitches and the lack of any introductory tutorials, but highlighting the RTS-style gameplay aspects, accommodation for a wide range of player styles and good looking graphics. It won the 2004 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for best indie game. See also Savage 2: A Tortured Soul Heroes of Newerth References External links official Savage XR website 2003 video games Commercial video games with freely available source code First-person shooters First-person strategy video games Linux games MacOS games Real-time strategy video games S2 Games Seumas McNally Grand Prize winners Video games developed in the United States Windows games Multiplayer video games