What Linux games MUST I play?
 

I'll be switching back to Linux as my main OS for a while, I need to know which games I MUST play! For the purposes of this discussion, let's arbitrarily stick to either fully open-source or native, first-party binary releases (no Wine unless it's part of the Linux release, as with Limbo and System Shock 2; no emulators; no after-market engines like Exult, PrBoom, EDuke32, Quakespasm or Scummvm).

I have played:

• Aquaria
• Ur Quan Masters (well, hours of it)
• Katawa Shoujo
• Nethack (although not for long)
• Half Life 1 and 2, including DLC episodes
• Portal 1 and 2
• Alpha Centauri (I own the Loki Games port)
• Unreal Tournament 99 and 2004
• Torchlight

I am in the middle of playing:

• World of Goo
• Bit. Trip Presents Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
• Towerfall Ascension

I am curious about:

• DOTA 2
• Guacamelee
• Mark of the Ninja
• System Shock 2
• Awesomenauts
• Limbo
• Metro Last Light (will wait for the Redux releases)
• Neverwinter Nights
• The Anomaly series
• Juniper's Knot and Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos
• The Cave
• Trine series
• Cave Story +
• Dungeons of Dredmor
• Broken Age
• Leisure Suite Larry: Reloaded
• Steamworld Dig
• Kingdom Rush
• Waking Mars
• Crusader Kings II

Here's my favourites right now;

Red Eclipse! (native/open source)
http://redeclipse.net/

This is really a great game, became my favourite shooter of the open source world.


For closed source (steam games);
I recently played through Metro Last Light, and thought it was a really good game. It has a few knacks on linux though, random crashes and not alot of options to configure in terms of graphics settings. Although, it is very good single player game besides those issues.

Left 4 dead 2 - zombie coop
Legend of Grimrock - tile based dungeon crawler (with modern 3D graphics)
Amnesia (dark descent / a machine for pigs) - horror
Serious Sam 3 - ego shooter with lots of explosions/blood/enemies

Also, Trine, i have played the sequel, it's a pretty game, very nice graphics. Personally i find the gameplay mechanics frustrating (probably just me though).

If you happy paying for a game I used to play quakes wars a few years ago which has a linux patch. I had a lot of fun playing this game.

Check out:
http://www.splashdamage.com/content/...ory-quake-wars

Dota 2 is fantastic, but is NOT an easy game to get into. It takes a bit of learning and skill to play well, but the variety and depth of the game will keep it fresh for a long time. (Plus the community behind it is huge nowadays. It's become a culture of its own.) There are single player and coop modes vs bots, but the main fun of the game comes from multiplayer, of course. Be sure to read this article first, if you plan to play:
http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck
On Linux, it runs well, although with minor bugs on occasion. (The most glaring one at the moment is that after a several games, sound drops out. This is fixed by restarting the game, so it's really not that bad.) Valve does a good job of supporting Linux and fixing the bugs.

Neverwinter Nights is decent single player, but multiplayer can be quite amazing, as it feels like classic pen-and-paper RPG night, especially if you have a skilled DM controlling the session. There are plenty of modules and scripts to give the game variety, and a fairly active community behind the game to this day.

Cave Story is the seminal indie platformer that pretty much inspired all modern indie platformers. This one you really have no excuse not to play. Seriously. Just play it.

I also recommend:
Warsow: If you like classic, hardcore arena FPS style, this follows in the realm of Quake 3's CPM mod. It's kinda like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHTUvz3nqf0

Eversion: A platformer, like Cave Story. It's . . . compelling.

Battle for Wesnoth: The best turn-based strategy game of all time. A FOSS Linux gaming classic.

FTL: A spaceship-based roguelike. Well loved.

Spacechem: An amazing puzzle game that is essentially a programming exercise. (But fun!) One of the few games that Valve has officially reviewed as a game they like.

[EDIT]Quake Wars was glorious too, but sadly, I don't see many people playing anymore. Dirty Bomb might be a decent, but we'll have to see if Splash Damage brings it to Linux.

I'm a big fan of strategy games. How about,
0 AD - Like Age of Empires
Warzone 2100 - It's so hard to win
Battle for Wesnoth - My favorite Linux native strategy game
UFO : Alien Invasion

Thanks for the recommendations, people. I had forgotten about Spacechem and FTL, and I never knew that there was so much love for Battle of Wesnoth!

And I am also curious about:

• Bastion
• Amnesia

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars doesn't seem to be possible to buy new anymore. I passed up a chance to buy a new, in-store copy 3 years ago, and, well, maybe I shouldn't have.

And: I definitely don't mind paying for games. I actually play few enough per year that I can pay for the games I do play. And shopping for games is very economical if you keep track of bundles and sales.

Pro-tip for Amnesia, play it past midnight, no lights, with headphones. :D

i played neverwinter nights 2 thru at windows, i really liked that game.
some ppl whined alot about its ending but i liked even that.

Here are the ones I recommend:
Warzone 2100 (use cheats)
Battle for Wesnoth (use cheats)
Red Eclipse (don't cheat, but others do)
Tremulous/Unvanquished - depends entirely on the people playing
Astromenace
Hurrican (set lives to 99) http://sourceforge.net/projects/hurrican/?source=navbar
Cave Story (use cheats) http://nxengine.sourceforge.net/
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (use Minotaur Necromancer, it's like cheating)

EDIT: I've found that Wesnoth is much more fun to play if you add on your own story. "Just as the overwhelmingly outnumbered and outmatched heroes were about to be crushed mercilessly by the forces of evil, a level 4 Red Dragon appears and allies itself with the heroes ... as does a Yeti, a Bone Dragon, a Lich, etc."

Dungeons of Dredmor is awesome, especially if you like rougelikes. I dig just about everything Arcen Games put out (older ones run flawlessly with WINE, two newest have Linux native ports. Didn't like Shattered Haven or Tidalis, but I gather I'm weird. AI War is hands-down one of the best strategy games out there.) Civ V has a Linux native version, which I'm told is a departure from Civ IV. (Last version of I played before this one was Civ II.)

I played the hell out of Neverwinter Nights, but its real strength is the player-created content. (Check out Stefan Gagne's series. Also the Shadowlords/dreamcatcher one is pretty decent.)

Like old school RPG's? Spiderweb's stuff has a couple Linux ports and also works via WINE. (There's a text bug with Geneforge 1 and 2, and the oldest Avernum games have wonky controls with modern hardware. Those are being remade, however, and you can get the story via Avernum: Escape from the Pit. The second one is being made, I believe.)

Knights of Pen and Paper is hysterical.

Papers, Please is chilling, but excellent.

Just heard the good news that XCOM: Enemy Unknown (with add-on Enemy Within) was released for Linux today, definitely a game that I can recommend

Link for the lazy: http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/200510/

Just got it myself!

maybe not technically a game, but gone home is excellent.

For anyone concerned about that, it is confirmed that XCOM is a native port, not ported with a wrapper: http://steamcommunity.com/app/200510...30535890616807

You should have waited a bit, it is now on the Steam Summer Sale for $7.49.

I just noticed that Desura has Linux (and Mac) ports of both Freespace games.

Have you tried http://openarena.ws/smfnews.php?.

I have. It's excellent, certainly better than Quake 3.

I'm really looking more for single player games though.

Necropost: After all of these long years I am still playing Descent 2 in the form of D2x-Rebirth. I know you are a Slackware user so here it is:

d2x-rebirth (0.58.1)
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...s/d2x-rebirth/

:)

I actually never finished Morrowind, so I took the release of OpenMW 0.37 as a sign to go for that and it works really fine.

Tetrobot and Co. Great puzzle game to occupy your mind

I only finished by cheating. Bloodmoon was the only one I could finish without cheating.

System Shock 2 was fun, glad to see it here. I've been getting back in to the older Command and Conquer's lately (Tiberian Sun is one of my favorites) 0 A.D. is a good one too. Could add feed back for games here:to keep them coming? :)

I haven't played it, but I kinda expected someone to have said Pillars of Eternity by now.

It's nice, I have played through it and when I have some spare money intend to buy the add-ons.

I started playing the Shadowgate remake, and I'm very impressed. It's everything a remake should be, keeping the powerful score from the NES version and adding great high-resolution art, a modern UI that's designed to work with both touch screens and mouse, and fixing all the frustrations that plagued the original.

I went through the Gabriel Knight remake earlier. And although the Gabriel Knight remake had the benefit of being by the game's original designer, Shadowgate is the better remake by far.

Borderlands 2 and -Pre Sequel.

If you like Survival Games: SOMA (from the same people as Amnesia).

If you like puzzle games: The Swapper, Cubot, Antichamber, Mousecraft, Life Goes On, The Talos Principle.

Simulator: Kerbal Space Program.

Hack & Slash: Victor Vran.

Long time lurker, first time poster, so decided to hop on this thread first.

Two recent games I've really enjoyed are both available on Steam (both ~$20), NeonXSZ and SuperHot.

NeonXSZ is a space-FPS, marrying Descent with modern-day Tron-esque graphics. While being developed by a indy one-man-shop (I believe?) it has a very polished feel to it. There's no PvP but the gameplay is good even without human opponents. The dev lurks at least on Reddit, so nice to have somewhat direct comms with a developer.

I picked up SuperHot just a few days ago, and man has it been a fun game to play! Another FPS, yet one where the dynamics of regular gameplay have been reversed: time only moves when you move, similar to a Matrix movie shooting scene. Graphics are simplified, but beautiful, and there's an overall creepiness that keeps on building as you move along with the levels. Once you play the game through (only few hours in all, which could be viewed as a negative), you unlock timed runs, endless enemies etc. There's a dedicated website (killstagram.com) where players can upload their best kills, but it seems it's still a WIP. I game on Arch Linux with Nvidia drivers, and SuperHot has been only so-so on stability. But it's an actively developed beta release so I expect bugs being tracked and fixed quickly.

Both games have mos def been worth my $20/each.

I just found Chrome can run some games. :) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/app/3-games

:eek: Where have you been for the last six years? :p

IMHO Nexuiz is fun, especially local multiplayer. That, and the Jedi Knight games.

If I can get a N64 emulator running well, maybe I'll try Star Wars Rogue Squadron and NFS V.

:D I never got back into gaming since I kicked it for school... my nephew has to twist my arm to play with him on my PS3, for him, (movies for me. ;))

I've been trying hard to narrow down my "Linux games I must play" queue to something I can realistically get through this year, and I've gotten it down to:

• DOOM 3: BFG Edition (I have never played DOOM 3)
• Day of the Tentacle (the upcoming remake)

And Torchlight II if I have time before or after those two.

DOOM 3 was okay but don't expect much more than DOOM with better graphics... ;)

i'm just a casual game player and have an intense dislike for FPS or actually most shooting games, but i do enjoy riding my supertuxkarts every now and then (don't laugh, it's a good game).
thing is, i'm growing weary of it, but i find it very hard to find something similar.
there's some native car (racing) games, but none that have that particular quality with simplified physics, powerups, offline multiplayer, and - well - fun.
it doen't necessarily have to be car(t)s.
any ideas?

I always thought Doom 3 was an amazing game. In my opinion though if you haven't already bought it don't bother with the BFG edition. Get the original edition. You can use various texture packs out there that look way better than the BFG edition, The BFG edition uses a different file type structure than the original that doesn't work with the best existing texture packs. You do get the resurrection of evil expansion pack with the BFG edition but you can buy doom 3 and ROE expansion cheaper than the BFG on steam, $12.99 for both as of this writing.

Vroom... Vroom... :DNot sure if theses are the "native" ones but I like them:

• Stunt Rally
• TORCS
• Xmoto
• VDrift
• Racer

As I google around, looks like a lot more racing games to pick from now a days... ;)

I've been enjoying Factorio lately. If you like Minecraft (or at least the farming/redstone/automation aspects of it) and RTS games, then I think you will like Factorio. Another little indie strategy game I had some fun with is Sol 0: Mars Colonization.

And if you like city builders/sim games then give Cities: Skylines a try. I normally don't care for that type of game but I had a blast with it.

Teeworlds

I would say:

Dwarf Fortress
Minecraft
Stardew Valley
Starbound
Terraria
Alien Isolation
Cities Skylines
Cave Story
The Talos Principle
Factorio
Stellaris
Super Meat Boy
Binding of Isaac (remastered)
Epistory (typing training, and a good one)
Goat Simulator

My favourite games (they are all open source, in fact):

• Sauerbraten
• Red Eclipse
• Assault Cube
• 0 A.D.
• SuperTuxKart (v. < 0.9)
• OpenArena
• PCSX (PSX emulator)

The fore runner to Doom, Wolfenstein 3D is avaiable as a linux only port. The Level data for level 1 was available on some form of freeware license. A full windows licinsed game can be bought for a few dollars, just create a wolf3d directory in /usr/share/games copy all *.wl6 files and wolf.ico there. It's a bit of trouble because you have to convert all file names to lowercase.

Also this is only just a game openBVE. It's a rail simulator excelent fun if you are a trains and transport fan.

Mounting the directory using ciopfs is usually another option.

I recently went through this, and I need to gush that this absolutely is a game that everyone must play. The Linux port is perfect too.

I did a ctrl+F on this thread and didn't see freeorion mentioned. It's in the Debian repos, it's a pretty good Galactic Civilizations type of game, if you're into those. If I had paid $50 for it in 2005 I wouldn't have been disappointed.

I also enjoy messing around with Pioneer, but there's only a few hours worth of gameplay before your average person would get bored.

The Mana World was a fun, mindless, time waster, but the developers are busy porting it to a new server so it's going to be dead until that's done.

Tales of Maj'Eyal was worth a play through as well, but isn't capable of consuming years of your life the way Dwarf Fortress and DCSS are.

If someone else asked this, I would probably say:

• Undertale
• Axiom Verge
• Shovel Knight
• Blue Revolver
• Pillars of Eternity

Those are all modern love letters to their respective genres, and among the best examples of them.

Great suggestions overall. Most id games have gotten excellent Linux ports recently, which are a joy to play. Doom with full 3D and modern OpenGL lighting tricks, etc was a pleasant surprise for me, since I only ever played the original previously.

I'll agree with above posters that Doom 3 runs better on my machine than the BFG version, which seems to have a few problems, and suffers in performance presently. According to internet comments, the gameplay isn't really an improvement over the original either.

If you are into the olden days of FPSs, and/or played the originals when they were around, I'd highly suggest eduke32 as well. Just pure awesome.

If that's my criteria, then I should probably add Legend of Grimrock and Torchlight II to the list.

supertux
supertuxkart
cube
sauerbraten (cube 2)
and if you run wine, you can use GTA VC on most debian's.


CUBE is also pretty cool and holds on less than 100Mb.
I install it directly from console.