LINUXGAMES

Anomaly Warzone Earth‘s reverse-tower defense gameplay tasked players with moving their units safely through a barrage of defense towers. Anomaly 2, just released on Steam expands the gameplay with online tower defense vs tower offense multiplayer and other new features.

Anomaly 2 is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Anomaly Warzone Earth. Maintaining the core elements of the original, Anomaly 2 adds new features to the single-player campaign and finally puts your skills to a test in a completely unique experience: the dynamic tower defense vs. tower offense multiplayer mode!

In the years following the invasion of Earth in 2018, the planet is overrun by alien machines. Humankind is on the verge of extinction. Banded together in huge convoys, they search the frozen tundra for food and supplies. Since the war, the roles have been reversed: now our species seems to be the Anomaly on a machine-controlled planet. Your convoy, Commander, is called Yukon.

Anomaly 2 takes the RTS tower-offense concept from Anomaly Warzone Earth to a new level. The core elements of the original – tactical planning and the on-field Commander to support troops in combat – are spiced up by a number of important new features.

Defend yourself.

Thanks to flammybe for letting us know Max Gaming is running a Kickstarter to port the Torque2D engine to Android and Linux.

Torque 2D is an extremely powerful, flexible, and fast open source engine dedicated to 2D game development. The MIT licensed version of Torque 2D is now available on GitHub.

Since the MIT licensing in february 2013, he community has been tirelessly adding new stuff and bugfixes. With Windows, MacOS and iOS versions available, this engine clearly needed some penguin and robot support :-)

If you want to see this extremely capable and polished game engine on Linux, please consider joining the kickstarter campaign and make it happen.

Bad news:

Hi folks, The Linux Game Tome will shut down on April 13. Those of us who have maintained happypenguin.org over the years now lack both the time and the ambition to do what is necessary to keep the site afloat. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed the spam clogging the forums, the lack of updates and the increasing brokenness of the site. The code driving this site, written by a novice web developer in 1999, is sorely out of date. It’s time to put it out of its misery.

If the community misses this resource, I urge it to build The Linux Game Tome v3.0. If such an effort ever came to fruition and publicly pledged to remain free and not for profit, I would be delighted to transfer ownership of the happypenguin.org domain. Sometime soon, I’ll make available a dump of the Game Tome games database (minus user information) that anyone may use for any purpose they’d like, including building a successor site. Before you ask: no, you may not have a copy of the site code. It is not fit for human consumption. Even as a reference, it can only corrupt.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the site over the years, either as moderators, contributors or benefactors.

bobz

The latest Humble Bundle, Humble Bundle with Android 5, has added three games to their collection of DRM free hits available for Linux bringing the total to nine games.

• Crayon Physics Deluxe
• Splice
• Sword & Sworcery EP

Purchasers also get their soundtracks, which is a huge plus when you’ve got a great one in Sword & Sworcery.

If you’ve previously bought this Humble Bundle these games are already available to you through the download page in your receipt e-mail or their app if you’re using Android.

If you haven’t bought it yet you’ll need to pay more than the average price (currently $6.67) in this mostly pay-what-you-will bundled collection of games to get the latest additions.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, the expansion to the original Counter-Strike, was recently made available for Linux on Steam:

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ) is now available for Linux players via Steam. CS:CZ is the fifth Valve title to be released for Linux and, with its release, pushes the total number of Linux games available on Steam to 80.

Launched just three weeks ago, the Steam for Linux client is available for free from the Ubuntu Software Center. More Valve titles are heading to Linux in the coming weeks and months.

Condition Zero is significant due it being the first time you were able to play Counter-Strike in Single Player versus AI competition. I enjoy it because the AI is a little bit easier to kill than the teenagers who can kick my ass and then tea-bag my corpse.

We haven’t posted about FreeOrion since 0.3.8 … in 2008!

I found out about this update via the FreeGamer blog where they’ve also noted this great video tutorial:

There are a few more in that series, you should check them all out.

Here are the big changes in 0.4.2:

• Very much improved, non-cheating AI. Sometimes experienced 4X players loose.
• Many GUI enhancements and shortcuts.
• Galactopedia expanded with game mechanics articles and many cross-links.
• Batch production of ships now possible.
• Improved sitrep notifications
• Reworked stealth and detection
• Almost everything has been enhanced, reworked, and better balanced.

The developer’s notes for this version mention that although the game is still missing some features it has “…reached the point where most 4X players will get enjoyment out of it.”

Ooh I can’t wait to conquer!

Download: [ FreeOrion 0.4.2 ]

King_DuckZ wrote in to let us know about The Hate Combinator:

A game made in 3 days for FuckThisJam, a game development jam where you had to create a game in a genre you hate. Since I hate puzzle games, here is mine, where you have to destroy hateable stuff (from Hitler to Silvio B) to get points and combos.

Download: [ The Hate Combinator ]

This post was submitted by King_DuckZ.

Anodyne, a retro-themed top-down adventure game which received praise from various quarters, including the IGF, has been released:

Anodyne is an adventure game that focuses on immersing the player through a combination of 16-bit era visual and audio aesthetics, Zelda-esque action/adventure gameplay mechanics, and exploration of the human Young’s dream world, which contains urban, natural, and abstract themed areas.

You can also vote for the game’s inclusion on Steam at Greenlight.

Good morning! Let’s to it:

• If you had told me 15, nay, 10 years ago that in 2013 the stars of CES would be a viable Linux game console and a VR headset… well, that’s the position we’re in. The Verge has posted their best of show awards, and Valve walked away with “Biggest Story” honors for their “Steam Box” efforts:
  

  With nary an announcement (and more of a fortuitous run-in with Gabe Newell), Valve laid out its vision to us for gaming hardware — its own Linux-powered box, a range of branded partner devices, and some rumination on multiple new methods of interaction (e.g. biometrics). It’s a new way of thinking about gaming platforms, and it’s one that Valve really has the leverage to pull off.

  But the strongest praise was reserved for the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset, which won their “Best Gaming” and “Best in Show” honors:

  My childhood (at least the formative years) was spent reading novels like Neuromancer and Snow Crash, and poring over stories about a future promised by Mondo 2000 and Wired. Virtual reality has long been the ultimate promise of technology — the magic mandala, a doorway to the infinite. But the thing is: it never happened. We got touchscreens, motion sensors, the tablet revolution, body-hacking… but we never got our cyberdecks. Until now. The Oculus Rift actually delivers on the promise, and then some. It’s really, really amazing. Truly and honestly a revelation, a trip, a rabbit hole. And I’m going in. Forever. Goodbye universe. Hello universe.

  One note: while the initial Kickstarter effort mentioned Linux support (complete with Tux logo), it appears at least the initial SDK will be Windows-only. In any case, I’m sure it won’t be long before we can go FULL GARGOYLE:

  

  Also, for an in-depth discussion of the challenges of presenting “realistic” VR, Valve’s Michael Abrash (who has had a long, illustrious career) has a great blog entry here.

• It still feels weird writing this, but Team Fortress 2 received an update last week to add promo items and bugfixes.
• A new version of FTL was made available prior to the start of the new year with a colorblind mode, new hotkeys, and various fixes. The patch is available from the Humble Store (via http://www.ftlgame.com/) or Steam. The game’s complete soundtrack is also available for listening online or purchase now.
• Phoronix pointed out that there’s a few Linux gaming sessions planned for the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting, or FOSDEM, which takes place February 2nd and 3rd in Brussels, Belgium.
• Marlon Drescher mentioned that his indie MMORPG, Forgotten Elements, can now be played, which he created as a single developer (!).
• Special Unit, a Stargate-themed total conversion (I haven’t typed those words in a while) for Unreal Tournament 2004 (those either) was released.
• Ensign-1 is a space combat sim (is it just me or are those kinda rare these days?) being updated iteratively on Desura (the price rises as they grow closer to completing the game ).

Valve Software has a presence at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show, during which founder Gabe Newell gave an extensive interview to The Verge about Steam, Steam Box (the term being given to Valve’s living room PC project), and more. Money quote:

So are most of these going to be Linux-based Steam Boxes?

We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination. We also think that a controller that has higher precision and lower latency is another interesting thing to have.

Newell also states:

• Beside’s Valve’s own Linux-based box, there will be other “Steam Boxes” from various hardware manufacture partners which may or may not run Linux as sold (but nothing would be stopping you from installing it yourself).
• Valve is interested in new/alternate methods of game input, like biometrics.
• Steam may eventually become an umbrella platform for myriad user-created “stores”.
• Windows 8 doesn’t impress him.
• A single Steam Box could potentially power several games across many rooms and televisions in one abode.

It’s going to be a wild year for sure.

The esteemed Rock, Paper, Shotgun (also, Kieron Gillen’s recent run on “Journey into Mystery” was a.m.a.z.i.n.g) has a fun article about coding in Minecraft using the ComputerCraft mod:

It’s the creation of a very smart chap called Dan200, and it adds in-game computers with a full OS, filesystem, and a selection of built-in programs. Over the course of a short series of articles, I’m going to teach you how to write software that can password doors, automatically mine, make a big digital clock for your base, and even send chat messages to other players’ in-game computers.

Eurogamer has word that PC manufacturer Xi3 is showcasing a mini-modular computer (and I mean mini; you can grip it in one hand) codenamed (unknown if it’ll eventually be marketed as such) “Piston” at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. While based on an existing PC, the Kickstarter-funded X7a, specs for Piston haven’t been released yet, just that it’ll have Steam integration and is intended to support the distribution platform’s “Big Picture” mode on televisions, as Valve is a backer of the project. However, while Xi3 offers Linux as an install option for their other systems, it’s not explicitly stated that Piston is intended only as a Linux PC (at least at this time).

My good friend Zakk/TimeDoctor let me know that ioquake3 has some changes in store for the new year:

This August will be the 7th Anniversary of ioquake3!
Time flies when you’re fragging fools and breaking builds.
We still haven’t had a release since 2009. Don’t worry, we still have another 365 days to go until it has been 5 years since a release!
The real reason for this post is that I wanted to tell you all that we’re moving the project to github.
There is a new organization there, called ioquake.
But most importantly there is a project there that you can clone, fork, and send pull requests.
Bugzilla and other things hosted on icculus.org will keep going, but the SVN repository is now deprecated and I don’t know if it will remain online or not. If possible, we may set up a thing to automatically slurp in changes from the github project.
ioquake3.org itself is not going anywhere
Thank you to everyone who has contributed and played ioquake3 since the project started on August 20th, 2005!

The latest development release of Wine has been announced. Changes in this release include:

• Sub-pixel font anti-aliasing in the DIB engine.
• Support for automatic installation of ActiveX controls.
• Automatic fallback to TLS 1.0 for secure connections.
• Beginnings of the DirectWrite text analyzer.
• Better handling of font outlines in OpenGL.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [ Wine 1.5.17 ]

• Hereos of Newerth is up to version 2.6.26.1.
• Introversion’s next title Prison Architect is in an alpha testing stage; while there’s not a Linux client yet, pre-purchasing will get you access to it once it arrives.
• Minecraft had a Pretty Scary Update recently which includes a new boss, Wither. More details here.

Joyride Labs announced the release of “Nikki and the Robots Story Episodes”.

Nikki and the Robots Story Episode 1 screenshots (more)

Join Nikki on a secret mission to fight the evil Dr. Lacroix. Test your skills in stunning platformer action and exciting puzzles — with the help of a variety of futuristic robots.

You can get the free part of the game (version 1.0) from the download page. For purchasing the Story Episodes visit:

buy.joyridelabs.de

For a limited amount of time the price for the Story Episodes will be pay what you want.

Video: Nikki and the Robots Release Trailer (Story Episode 1)

Joyride Labs prepared a press kit. (Thanks to Rami for presskit()!) Also available in German language.

This post was submitted by Iwan Gabovitch.

We received the following information about a game called AloneStory++

ALoneStory++ is a game created by the indie developers MemoryLeek. It is the successor to ALoneStory and features improved graphics, gameplay and new levels.

AloneStory++ is an addicting speed run platformer. Your objective is to reach the goal of each level before you get caught by the darkness chasing you.

AloneStory++ features 3 different difficulty levels to make the game attractive for both new players and hardcore platformer gamers.

Download: [ ALoneStory++ x32 ALoneStory++ x64) ]

This post was submitted by esdf.

The latest development release of Wine has been announced. This release, 1.5.13, has the following new items included in it:

• Client-side window rendering using the DIB engine.
• Raw input support for keyboard and mouse.
• Support for transparent window areas using color keying.
• Proper C++ RTTI support on 64-bit.
• Implementation of logical processor information.
• Support for fonts with localized names.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [ Wine 1.5.13 ]

• Obsidian Entertainment, a relatively large AAA RPG developer, has a Kickstarter project to develop a new title (which aims to be similar to games like Planescape: Torment) which just added Linux support as a stretch funding goal (2.2 million), as the project’s already raised 1.4 million in a few days.
• Wolfire Games’ rabbit combat game Overgrowth has a new alpha video changelog.
• For those that would like to play the various Windows-focused DLC packs for Gratuitous Space Battles (which was released for Linux in a Humble Indie Bundle a while back), I noticed this script was posted on the game’s forum to install them under Linux.

Ok, I think I’ve found my game of the year. It may be premature to say that given there’s still an entire season left, but hey.

So, FTL. As you should already know, the acronym stands for Faster Than Light – in this context, FTL is a sci-fi “roguelike” (in that your crew will die, a lot) inspired by many of the major science fiction space series of the past few decades:

-Star Trek (overall technology, aliens, RE-ROUTE THE POWER!!!)
-Battlestar Galactica (running from an implacable enemy, constantly low on supplies)
-Firefly (overall scale of the ship/crew)

The premise: you and your crew are fleeing an advancing Rebel (!) armada, carrying vital information that must reach the remnants of your Federation’s fleet. Along the way you’ll be waylaid by rebels, hostile alien powers, pirates, and save (or not, you’re usually given a choice in the matter) friendly or neutral ships and colonists.

The experience ends up being a familiar yet thrilling one; it’s the sort of game with enough variety per run despite the single interface to generate the kinds of stories that only games that eschew cutscenes and rails can foster:

01:21 < Crusader> warped into an area of space where there was this insect race marauder ship attacking a space station
01:21 < Crusader> I intervened, but they beamed two troopers on board
01:21 < Crusader> they start rampaging through the ship so I open bulkheads to try and suffocate them while still trying to fight off their ship
01:22 < Crusader> finally destroy their ship but their soldiers are still destroying systems and crewmembers
01:22 < Crusader> finally end up with one person left who asphyxiates

It’s not just a great indie game, it’s a great game period, and I hope the developers continue to add content to it (or open it up to modding) for a while to come. I rarely personally recommend games, especially these days (due to lack of time to play anything, not because of some drop in quality), but I think you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you skip this one.

FTL is available for purchase from the game’s website (facilitated by the Humble Bundle folks it seems).