Thanks to Gentleman Squid Studio for letting us know that the Rise of the Ravager is now available for Linux! To celebrate, it can be purchased for 40% off on the Desura platform:
Rise of the Ravager is an arcade-style shooter with color-based combat mechanics (“Guitar Hero meets Missile Command”) and boss fights as you strive to prevent the end of time.
OpenXcom, the effort to create an open-source clone of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown / X-COM: UFO Defense, is now fully playable with the release of version 0.9! You’ll still need the assets from the original game, but those are easy to come by since it’s available on Steam.
Download: [ openxcom.org ]
Linux luminary Ryan “icculus” Gordon has made a public Google Plus post describing his initial experiences with the Oculus Rift VR headset, for which Linux support is forthcoming:
The Oculus Rift is not better than that headset. But truthfully, it’s not really measurably worse, and only costs a few hundred dollars. In that sense, it’s a total game changer, because whether Oculus or a competitor drives VR forward, they’re doing it at consumer prices now.
In that way, it feels a lot like how it felt to put a Voodoo card in your machine in the late 90′s. You immediately understood it was only a simple start to GPU tech–something good enough and cheap enough–but that a lot was going to happen really fast now.
Andrew Henderson’s BeagleSNES emulator appliance now supports the BeagleBone Black in addition to the BeagleBoard XM. The Black is a cheaper alternative to the XM ($45 USD vs $149 USD for the XM) with different specifications and a smaller physical footprint designed to compete with the Raspberry PI.
Version 0.3 of BeagleSNES also resolves a few issues with GUIs and SRAM saves.
Development tools are included in the image if you’d like to modify BeagleSNES.
You can get source, pre-built images ready to place onto an SD card in your BeagleBone Black or XM from BeagleSNES.org
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.
The X3 series of space hustling sims from Egosoft have received updates on Steam to support Linux. Although previous X-titles were brought to Linux by Linux Game Publishing, these releases are now direct from the developer.
You can get each game in the series individually or all together in a temporarily discounted bundle until May 22nd. If you need a reminder of what these games are about, here’s one:
The X games hurl you into the most detailed universe ever created, right into the middle of an epic, intergalactic story filled with twists and turns at every jump gate. Become the hero once more as you TRADE, FIGHT, BUILD, and THINK your way to victory.
Immerse yourself in a living, breathing universe where all your actions have consequences.
TRADE to make money or upgrade your ship, FIGHT epic battles or capture enemy ships, BUILD your own stations and produce goods in your own factories, and of course always THINK about the consequences of your actions in the realistic simulated universe and dynamic real-time economy.
The Humble Bundle folks have announced the Humble Double Fine Bundle. Available right now, this time you’ve got two weeks to pay whatever you want for a bundle containing DRM-free copies of the following:
These games are all pretty great, but Stacking is my personal favorite, it is super charming. If you pay more than the average price which is currently $8.31 USD you’ll also get Brutal Legend. Paying upwards of $35 gets you Double Fine’s upcoming point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age, when it is released.
All games will net you Steam codes if you pay more than $1. As almost always you can choose to give some or all of your payment to the EFF and Child’s Play charities.
The action-strategy game Jack Lumber by Owlchemy Labs has been released for Linux through Steam. Video above is from a live stream of the game.
A tree killed his granny and now he is out for revenge. Meet Jack Lumber, the supernatural lumberjack who hates trees, loves animals, and hates trees. Did we say that twice? The guy really hates trees, and boy does he have an axe to grind.
Use the supernatural powers of Jack Lumber to massacre the forest in this time-warping, line-drawing, log-slicing, pun-filled lumberjacking mashup! Bust out your flannel to muster the strength and burlyness to solve the skill and logic puzzles (flannel not actually required).
Fight the forest and make Granny proud! Eff trees!
Click here if you’re a Lumberjack (or Lumberjill) and that’s OK.
Maple finish!
The Left 4 Dead Blog has updated with the terrifying image of a zombie Tux you see above and word of an upcoming beta for Left 4 Dead 2:
The L4D2 Beta is mutating. Not content to just be the testing ground for the new Extended Mutation System, we will be adding Linux to the Beta. And not content with the number of testers in the Beta, we will also be opening up the Beta to all L4D2 owners.
Huh, what?
The L4D2 Beta build is a separate download from the main game. This is where we are testing new features to the game – currently we are testing EMS. Starting next week, we will be testing Linux there as well.
…
For players, not only is the Linux build new, but the Window and Mac versions are also updated, so we need plenty of non-Linux testing as well.
When the Beta expands next week, we will post on how you can help give feedback and participate in the Beta.
The artsy-looking adventure game, Kairo, is now available on Steam. Here’s the developer’s description:
Enter the lost world of Kairo. Explore vast abandoned monuments. Bring strange and ancient machinery back to life. Slowly uncover the true purpose of Kairo and fulfil a great destiny.
Kairo is an atmospheric 3D exploration and puzzle solving game. Developed by Richard Perrin the creator of the white chamber with music by Wounds (Bartosz Szturgiewicz).
It’s on sale on Steam for $6.39 (US) until the 1st of May, at which point the price goes back to eight bucks.
Surgeon Simulator 2013, the Bossa Studios developed “darkly humorous” sim has released the full version of what was once a prototype developed for a 48 hour game jam. Video of yours truly playing that prototype with poor audio mixing up above.
The originally limited to a heart transplant in a standard surgery. At-home doctors can now do kidney and brain transplants in the extra-difficult Ambulance mode. Dr. Nick would be proud.
Hi hi; here’s a scatter gun spray’s worth of news items:
I have a few thoughts about some of the trends in the items above (less emphasis on being DRM-free in favor of Steam, the rise of Kickstarter) that I still need to gather into something coherent, but feel free to add your own comments below!
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.
Andrew Henderson’s BeagleSNES project to create an embedded SNES emulating Linux appliance for BeagleBoard-xM hardware has been released as source packages and a downloadable SD card image.
A new development release of Wine has been announced. This version contains the following new items:
Download: [ Wine 1.5.27 ]
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
Reader Mikael wrote in and directed us to the Age of Wonders 3 Facebook page where developer Triumph Studios have asked to hear from Linux users so that they can gauge support for a port. The game is described as:
Age of Wonders 3 marks a modern remaining of the series, where players join a clash of kings, queens and dark lords for the spoils of an ancient paradise. By introducing unique RPG-inspired classes and specializations, players are able to craft empires of their own design, developing unique strategies and play styles. The world-changing conflict plays out on sweeping landscapes, loaded with mythical locations waiting to be uncovered, conquered and exploited.
Age of Wonders 3 is still in development and scheduled to be released this fall. Here’s some gameplay footage released during GDC:
Ryan “teh gordon” Gordon announced on twitter two of his latest are now available on Steam:
Dungeon Defenders/linux and a heavily-upgraded Postal 1 are now on Steam! Current mood: twitter.com/icculus/status…
— Ryan C. Gordon (@icculus) March 28, 2013
Postal is a controversial, humorous, isometric action game. Originally ported to Linux by Loki, this is the first time I’m aware of that a Loki game has reappeared on Steam. Though I believe this port is brand new. Postal is controversial due to the civilian targets in the game.
Dungeon Defenders is a tower defense action-RPG with customizable characters, online co-op, and lots of content. Recommended!
Updated: Ryan left a note in the comments with more detail about his changes to Postal:
We redid the port from the original Windows code, because we didn’t have Loki’s fork. We re-ported the game many years ago, to get it back on Linux and Mac OS X. Before the Steam work, my latest commit was from 2006.
Here’s some things we added for Steam:
– Lots of bug fixes.
– Achievements! http://steamcommunity.com/stats/POSTAL/achievements
– Steam Cloud support: your save games follow you when you change computers or operating systems.
– We respect XDG_DATA_PATH instead of clogging your home directory up.
– We threw out all the Windows and Mac code and use the SDL-based Unix port on all platforms now.
– The game renders through OpenGL now. It’s still software-rendered to a 640×480 texture, but this lets us get a few goodies:
– The Steam Overlay works (which it wouldn’t if you launched the Loki version from Steam…the Overlay can’t function in software-rendered games).
– We scale up the game with GL_LINEAR filtering, so the Steam Overlay isn’t limited to a 640×480 viewport, fullscreen mode uses the native resolution of your desktop, and windowed mode doesn’t look like a postage stamp on your gigantic monitor.
– We sync to vblank to make the game run consistently and not tear, which you can’t do without OpenGL.We have other improvements on the way: widescreen support, porting to SDL2, proper game controller support for Steam Big Picture mode, etc.
–ryan.
Match-three JRPG battler, Dungeon Hearts, has been released today.
Developed by Cube Roots, the game has an interesting story behind it. Dungeon Hearts was initially pitched to Devolver Digital at last year’s Game Developer’s Conference, and is being released during this year’s GDC.
The game’s battle system involves matching three gems to make your attacks on the enemy, video of such:
You can get Dungeon Hearts on Steam.
Double Fine’s Kickstarter-funded adventure game now has a name, Broken Age, and a trailer: