The source code for Descent 3 has been released and is available for download on Github.

The code, discovered in Mastodon by Linux programmer Daniel Gibson, was released earlier this week by Descent 3 programmer Kevin Bentley; Bentley describes it as the "latest version" of the code, which was released several years ago by It includes an unreleased "1.5" patch that was coded by Bentley and another Descent 3 designer, Kevin Slutter, several years ago.

"The first thing we want to do is redo all the compilations. Then we need to clean up the code a bit to remove the old version control comments." He states, "A lot of this code was written by a really great team, but you have to remember that we were much younger and less experienced at the time."

Dissent 3 was released in 1999 and was the last in the series, known for its "6 degrees of freedom" shooter, in all three games in the series, players pilot a spaceship through a labyrinthine space-themed interior (including an asteroid mine and space station), blasting enemies as they go The first two films in the series, "Return of the Jedi. If you can imagine the scene in Return of the Jedi where the Millennium Falcon runs through the Death Star's substructure, that's basically how you play "Descent".

Descent 3 introduced a larger outdoor environment in addition to the winding maze and was generally well received. However, sales were poor, signaling the end of the series. A spiritual successor, "Overlord," directed by the creators of Descent, was released in 2018. It, too, was quite brilliant, but failed to find a large audience.

The game is available on Steam, but as user reviews reveal, it is a coin toss as to whether the game will work. With the source code now available, the community could work together to create a more compatible version of the game on modern machines. There is one drawback, however. Bentley notes that "some of Interplay's own sound and video libraries have been removed. Therefore, to do a truly "complete" rebuild, they would need to be sorted out.

It is also unclear under which license the code is being released. In his Mastodon post, Gibson initially stated that the code was released under the MIT license, but this turned out to be the default license file that Github added. Updating his post, Gibson said, "The actual license of the code is currently unknown."

Nonetheless, Bentley's release of the source code seems to have caused a bit of a stir; in an update to his initial announcement post, Bentley wrote that he was "pleased with the level of interest and participation here," and invited other interested parties on the Descent Developer Discord to the Discord; in a separate update, Bentley said that the immediate roadmap is focused on "code cleanup" with the goal of reaching "a good baseline 'vanilla' source."