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Where are the commercial game ports for Linux? No one wants to make them, obviously, save for the FPS crowd (and there's only an Unreal Tournament for Linux because Epic passes the buck to Icculus to get the job done, not because they have the in-house talent to do it themselves). There are a few commercial games for Linux, yes, but only a few, and there's very little variety between them. In the open source world we have a few good games (the majority of them being FPS's, what a surprise), Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games (turn based ones, that is). Then we have the unfortunate, ugly ripoffs like "Secret Maryo Chronicles," and other games that look like they were developed for a C64. Plenty of selection, not a lot of quality.

The following publishers develop comemrcial linux games:

http://www.pompomgames.com/
http://www.garagegames.com/
http://www.introversion.co.uk/
http://frictionalgames.com/
http://sillysoft.net/
http://www.basiliskgames.com/
http://www.guildsoftware.com/
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/
http://www.rune-soft.com/
http://grubbygames.com/
http://www.caravelgames.com/
http://www.planewalkergames.com/
http://www.graalonline.com/

There are also the high profile ones such as neverwinter nights, the doom and quake series, unreal, etc.

There are many high quality independant titles such as neverball, you mentioned wesnoth, crimson fields, flight gear, torcs, the spring project, total annihilation 3d, tecnoballZ, powermanga, tile racer, pingus, clonk, freeciv, ultimate stunts, planeshift, scorched3d, VDrift, silvertree (not complete, but being created by the wesnoth guys so likely will not be vapor), ufo: alien invasion, scourge, etc.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://torcs.sourceforge.net/
http://www.flightgear.org/
https://icculus.org/neverball/
http://ta3d.darkstars.co.uk/
http://linux.tlk.fr/games/
http://tileracer.model-view.com/
http://pingus.seul.org/
http://www.clonk.de/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ultimatestunts.nl/
http://www.planeshift.it/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://vdrift.net/
http://www.silvertreerpg.org/
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://scourge.sourceforge.net/

Many of these are very impressive independently made free games. Perhaps they lack the multi million dollar marketing budget and won't make your geofrce 8800 gtxz 45 x super elite ultra melt, but theya re *fun* games, and they are numerous. Also keep in mind this publisher and free game list is only what I could find in 1 hour of searching.

Then there are freed older commercial games such as warzone 2100, homeworld, descent 1 and 2, doom, quake, etc.

Lets not stop t

Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game; raise armies and fight battles. Play solo campaigns where you can advance your troops' skills, or play short battles against other players online. http://www.wesnoth.org/

Freeciv is a Civilization clone, also single player or multiplayer online. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

And if you're willing to go really old-school, nethack is always available; the annual tournament is ongoing in the month of November. Current standings at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/scoreboard.shtml or enter for free at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/howitworks.shtml ; you can always telnet to nethack.alt.org to play or download from http://www.nethack.org/

There are all kinds of trophies for smaller achievements, so first-time players can hope to get something but it's still competitive for experienced players--I pulled off 6 ascensions in a row at the June tournament and didn't make the top 3 for most consecutive, so the level of play is quite high.

I've been playing a fair bit of OpenArena:

http://openarena.ws/?about

Open sourced Quake III code with new models and textures and whatnot.

Battle for Wesnoth is a good networked turn-based strategy game, my girlfriend likes it too.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Zombies is a fun single player game that's open source (Windows and Mac only):

http://www.codenautics.com/zombies/

For anyone who liked Tron, there's a maddeningly difficult game called Armagetron Advanced that lets you race the bikes:

http://www.armagetronad.net/

There's a good list of open source games for windows here:

http://osswin.sourceforge.net/games.html

And a big list of general open source games over on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games

They're not Flash games, but they're Free.

I'll eventually have to use Vista for gaming purposes,

As others pointed out, it's the issue of not having enough 2D/3D artists and music/sound folk. OSS developers certainly have a whole bunch of good coders - and writers, in a pinch.

For example, take a look at the Irrlicht or OGRE screenie galleries - you see the technology is definitely getting there. You can get ye trimesh to ye rendering device, and by golly does it ever look shiny and, with a bit of work, not that bad. (More bloom! More! More!) But we'd definitely need folks creating those models for the display first! The tech is there, but the art lags a bit.

If you want to see a project where the art and tech goes well hand in hand, try Battle for Wesnoth - top notch graphics (albeit in 2D pixel-art), sound effects and music. We can do this.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

I know, I have been looking into Linux games recently as well (been loving the old-school feel of Battle for Wesnoth) but sometimes I just want to play games my friends are playing. When Starcraft 2 comes out later this year (personal guess), they're releasing it for PC and Mac but not Linux. Unfortunately, I don't love Linux enough to boycott games in protest.

Also, I bought the x1950 before I installed Ubuntu and started using it on a daily basis. In the future I will be buying nvidia though unless AMD's influence can substantially improve ATI's drivers.

It's funny, you have Playstation 3 syndrome. It is not enough that the game be fun and the art be well designed, but must also utilize UBER RAY TRACED PARALLAX SHADER MAPPING and other "next gen" techniques.

There is a lot more complicated about linux instead of windows. Some of them are due to things like directx and the microsoft monopoly, but some things are just not. For example, look at the FOSS game "The battle for Wesnoth". Their install instructions for linux are quite long and complex. On the other hand, installing the game for windows is as simple as running the .exe. http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/WesnothBinariesLinux

If you like turn based games you've probably already heard of it, but in case you haven't check out: Battle of Wesnoth Lots of fun, and it's free.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Try "The Battle for Wesnoth" http://www.wesnoth.org/ . It's GPL Free software too.

The game I've been spending too much time on recently is Battle For Wesnoth which is an open-source game that runs on Linux, OSX and Windows. Not surprisingly, it's on this list...

Battle of Wesnoth
* http://wesnoth.org/

SuperTux
* http://supertux.berlios.de/

Frozen Bubble
* http://www.frozen-bubble.org/

> Does anybody else have any recommendations for good FOSS games ?

I still get fun out of Battle of Wesnoth when I have time.

FYI 1.2 just came out; their page warns to uninstall your old version before installing it.

If you're willing, would you be willing to list them?

DOOM III (with linux binary download),
Castle Wolfenstein (with linux binary download).

The others I bought from tuxgames http://www.tuxgames.com/. They are more expensive and they take a week to deliver to the USA. I'm hoping they open a USA shop soon. I bought from them this year:

Heretic II,
Rune,
Soul Ride (my kids say it sucks),
Airport tycoon,
Myth II,
Heavy Gear,

I plan on buying a few more after Christmas. Wine works well for me for two out of three legacy Windows games.
I enjoy Starcraft and Warcraft II, but Diablo II doesn't work under my Wine config. All my DOS games work fine under DOSBOX http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

My laptop can't handle extreme graphic requirements and I can play only so much mahjong :).

When I'm on the road with my laptop (P3, neo-magic chipset), I play Heroes III (loki games, discontinued), Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/, and the stock KDE/Gnome games. Try here for some addition freeware games: http://liflg.org/?catid=6. I enjoy Glest and Warzone 2100.

Of course when I'm on the road I'm supposed to be working, but thats why I refused a company laptop and use my own :)

Enjoy,

GameHippo seems like a neat idea, but their coverage seems too spotty to rely on. How can any free game site that doesnt have Battle for Wesnoth on its list, and has a years-outdated description of Neverball, be taken seriously?

That sounds so very, very pathetic.
How can people waste so much of their time playing a pointless game?
Now, if you'll excuse me, Battle for Wesnoth is waiting.

The Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/) is an open source, turn based strategy game with binaries available for linux, windows, mac and more. It has a nice wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Wesnoth, if you'd like to have a look-see. It addresses each of your three points nicely I think.

It is pretty much the ONLY game I have been playing since I discovered it seven months ago. It is easy to jump into and VERY HARD to master. The multiplayer community is vibrant, and international.

See for yourself!

No, not entirely. It's the PC gaming business that they say is suffering, not PC gaming. There are plenty of games that are free from the onset that are fun. http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
http://asteroids3d.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lynn
http://toppler.sourceforge.net/
http://blockattack.sourceforge.net/
http://source.bungie.org/
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
http://www.classicgaming.com/worminator/
http://www.nexuiz.com/
http://www.armagetronad.net/
http://www.meatfighter.com/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://wesnoth.org/
http://cubeengine.com/

Actually, the sad thing is that although there are many great turn-based strategy games, most of them just don't get much respect. The shining counterexample I can think of right now is Civ 4, but there are plenty of others. There are some great open-source TBS games, such as Battle for Wesnoth, most of wich focus largely on great AI (a few Civilization clones fall into this category). There are also plenty of low-cost commercial ones that on't get widely advertised (a personal favorite is the Space Empires series, which has acceptable AI and is highly moddable).

I still play Alpha Centauri (Civilization on an alien planet, for those wo don't know) and Heros of Might and Magic III (haven't tried IV yet). Both AC and HoMaM3 are well over 5 years old, but both have: decent AI, great map generators, ability to play anything from a 30-min to a 6-hour game (not counting campaigns), tons of replayability, and enough strategic aspects to work on that there's always more thinking to do. Neither has fantastic graphics or a sophisticated game engine by today's standards; they win on good design. There's litte aside from cutscene movies that cannot easily be written, even improved on by OSS developers (Wesnoth, it's hats off to you). While I agree that RTS games get far more attention than most TBS, don't discount the greatness of TBS; they're not only still there, most of them are far easier on the pocketbook.

Oh my oh my, why isn't wesnoth listed here ? It's a kickass game for being opensource portable etc.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

I like it, only wish that the online games would last a bit longer ;)

As a close second for me, come torcs http://torcs.sourceforge.net/ and danger from the deep http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/

Linux is quite playable today, if you're just into fps shooters, go for q3 or enemy territory :)

No, but I have tried getting some artwork into a minor project. http://www.wesnoth.org/

In the end, I decided the time would be better spent working on my own project rather than trying to live up to the high standards that someone else has set. There is alot of free software not out there that needs to be writen and/or dead projects that need to be resurected.

That still does not make the source code only read only, since you can always modify the code and use your newly created version instead of what is distributed. If you think other people would prefer your version you can fork the project.

Personally, I'm glad windows Vista is doomed to failure. I wouldn't want anyone using it.

OpenFrag doesn't seem to be from the ugliest end (though it definitely isn't from the prettiest end, either, far from it).

If you want to see hilariously, sacrilegiously ugly stuff, check out the old FreeCraft Media Project (I don't know if it still works in Stratagus though). I really need to thank those people - I'm a big fan of Warcraft II, yet found the whole thing pretty amusing in so-bad-it's-so-good way, also because this thing is a perfect slap on the face of Vivendi and Blizzard for the whole bnetd deal =)

But there have been some very pretty and nice-sounding open source games... Battle for Wesnoth springs in mind.

Too bad there's that many competent graphicians working on these things. I mean, I suspect this is the flaw of the open source crowd: They can work on the code, create really cool 3D engines for example, but can't really do the artwork to go with it.

I could help with the game projects - too bad everyone values a good programmer but can't find a good use for a designer or a writer, both things which I think I could do better than programming...

The GBA has strategy games and business sims. Advance Wars and Jurassic Park - Park Builder (a Theme Park clone) are ones I've personally played.
And, like I said, you don't have to play the games in a handheld format - see the gameboy player, or you can buy the games, download the ROMs, and play on an emulator on your PC/Mac. I recommend the emulator - nothing like playing games designed for handheld speakers with a subwoofer :)

Of course, if you're primarily interested in PC games then why pay at all? Plenty of fine open source or otherwise freeware games. I suspect you'd like "Battle for Wesnoth" a lot - a high quality 2D strategy game.

Some Open Source Games

1. Lincity-NG
2. Globulations 2
3. Abuse-SDL
4. The Battle for Wesnoth
5. Solar Wolf
6. Boson
7. FreeCiv

However, there are some good GPLed 2d games. Battle for Wesnoth is one. Another one that is good is crossfire

The only good games are free software. That way, if the game is buggy or does not do what you want, you can get the source code to change it until it does what you want. You can also change the graphics and sound files. The whole problem with the game industry, is you do not get the source code with those games and they often do not run on a free operating system. This makes it very difficult to fix the bugs yourself after the game has come out. The other reason games cost so much to make is because they do not share the source code with each other like they should. They are being too competitive to their collective detriment. Here is a good game. http://www.wesnoth.org/

What's better than an indy game? A free, open source and cross platform indy game with easily downloadable user created content.

I just found a great game. It's free too. http://wesnoth.org/

Another great open-source game is Battle for Wesnoth, a role-playing, turn-based strategy game. It's available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD - even AmigaOS.

Apparently non-profit FLOSS games such as Battle for Wesnoth (released their 1.0 last year) aren't independent enough...

Same here, I love playing games, but am done with purchasing games from people who treat me like a thief. Each time I see a new pc game I would really like, I make a donation to a free software project. Thanks for the Free software games guys.

Think of all those years of "F/OSS" effort put into re-implementing someone else's game and putting new features on it, when that energy could have just been put toward creating an original franchise to showcase the power of OSS development.

You mean like http://www.wesnoth.org/?

Battle for Wesnoth has lots of subtance. They released 1.0 a few days ago, but the /. editors don't think that the first stable (as in unchanging) release of the highest rated Linux game deserves a story...

I don't think it is this nice the have the 100th clone of C&C in a long review. What about opensource games like Battle for Wesnoth. They just released version 1.0. Maybe a review of that one would be nice? I think it is really a good one and it is rated with an average of 5 stars at the linux game tome. That game really is worth a trie...

Ok, I'll bite...

[...] for some reason they still haven't managed to come up with anything more exciting than Tux Racer.

From the top of my head:

• Battle for Wesnoth
• Nexuiz
• UFO: Alien Invasion
• Boson

... and there are plenty more.

It's plain BS stating that the indie games are easier to make on Windows... Why? Have you tried? (I haven't!) I hope you can see why your argument seems stupid, if I say "Open ... Source ...". And WTF do you mean by indie games? Games produced by an independent company? Or just not-so-commercial games?

Looks like list auther is not very well versed in PC gaming. A lot of old/mediocre games in the list but not best free or free open sourced games like
wesnoth
Steel Panthers:World At War
Steel Panthers:Main Battle Tank
FreeCiv

ET is not Free/Open source. However there are tons of fun Open Source multiplayer games that you can use.

I don't have the time (anymore) to read up on games or even go out to the store to pick up a copy of something that looks interesting. I don't have the inclination (anymore) to download pirated games. It wouldn't do much good if I did, as I'm most interested in playing games like the original Myst or Warcraft. Some open-source games (The Battle for Wesnoth comes to mind) temporarily satisfy my need.

I'm lucky to have an hour a week to play games, and there are precious few games that seem to interest me anymore. I tend to lurk on Freshmeat, waiting for something nice and new, or (as I did this afternoon), spend far too much time just looking for old demos to download (no luck finding Black & White, which looks interesting; only Myst III---we'll see how that is).

When more of my time is spent looking for a game than actually playing it, I think less of my money will end up going to the gaming companies. My guess, though, is that they don't really care, since one "hardcore" gamer will make up for the loss of about 20 people like me.

We need new games that don't suck.

Take a look at the top-rated games on happypenguin.org recently? They still generally don't have the visual flair of a typical commercial product, but the games there have gotten pretty decent, without the incredibly steep learning curve that has generally associated the better open-source games in the past (like nethack). Try Battle for Wesnoth, for instance.

For those that are interested, here are my prized OSS Windows applications and their links. Sorry for such a long post, but hopefully this'll be interesting to someone.
Entertainment:
Audacity
Version: 1.2.3
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/
A fast multitrack audio editor and recorder for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Supports WAV, AIFF, Ogg, and MP3 formats. Features include envelope editing, mixing, built-in effects and plug-ins, all with unlimited undo.
Battle for Wesnoth
Version: 0.9.1
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://www.wesnoth.org/
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/
The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. Supports online multi-player.
Blender
Version: 2.36
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://www.blender3d.org/
Open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Available for Windows, Linux, Irix, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD or Mac OS X.
CDex
Version: 1.51
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos/
CDex is a CD-Ripper, thus extracting digital audio data from an Audio CD. The application supports many Audio encoders, like MPEG (MP2,MP3), VQF, AAC encoders.
Celestia
Version: 1.3.2
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://celestia.sourceforge.net/
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/
Celestia is real-time 3D space simulation which lets you travel through our solar system and to over 100,000 stars in our neighborhood.
Glest
Version: 1.0.9
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://www.glest.org/
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/glest/
Glest is a project for making a free 3d real-time customizable strategy game. Current version is fully playable, includes single player game against CPU controlled players, two factions with their corresponding tech trees, units, buildings and some maps.
Scorched 3d
Version: 38.1b
License: GNU General Public License
Link: http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/scorched3d/
Scorched3D is a 3D remake of the popular 2D artillery game Scorched Earth. Scorched3D can be played against the computer, other players and remotely across the internet or LAN.
VLC Media Player
Version: 0.8.1
License:

At the other end of the spectrum though, you will have large companies that have a pile of internal applications that run exclusively on Win32, making a move to Linux extremely difficult or largely pointless if they needed to use QEmu/VMWare on every PC just to run their internal applications. This is where Wine really shines, for applications that are needed, but have a low chance of being ported to Linux, and for which no native application exists. In the future they may decide to rewrite the applications to be native to Linux, but the chances of doing that as a part of the initial transion are low, as the time required to develop and test such applications is generally non-trivial.

I think in general, Wine is one of the catalysts for Linux adoption, which, ironically, will at the same time will cause it's own irrelevance at an accelerated rate. Without Wine, Linux adoption would be much slower than it is right now, even if only initially, people like to stick with what they're familiar with. Every person I know who has tried out Linux (including myself), has attempted to run the programs they used to use under Wine. I can also point out that they usually find native applications that replace the functionality of the programs they were running under Wine. I certainly did, and I no longer have a use for Wine, I've been running Linux exclusively for about 2 years now.

The one sticking point for a lot of users is still games however. Few Win32 games will ever be ported to Linux, and finding native games that can act as a replacement can be very difficult except for some of the most popular games, for example, the Civilization series => FreeCiv. Not to say that there aren't any games available for Linux, but if there was no Wine, the list would be significantly shortened, and many of the games that people want to play have no equivalant.

I don't think Wine will ever be completely irrelevant, but as it gets better, it will drive itself that way.

Battle for Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/. Great RTS game.

If you want something more visually impressive, but still 2D turn-based, then try Battle for Wesnoth.

> Somehow, I don't feel it rewards "right" gameplay, if you ask me. I had to slow down where I could (the clock is running in each scenario, but no carry), kill units, gain experience instead of concentrating on the mission objectives.

Almost every release involves some playbalance adjustments (at least according to the announcements). You may be able to have some influence on things between now and v. 1.0 by participating in the forums at wesnoth.org.

However, I find that FOSS games like Freeciv and Wesnoth push my "I would have done it differently" button with even more annoying vigor than commercial games do, since I could fork the source and hack it to do things differently, if only I were willing to invest all my free time in it.

Freeciv is neat and all, but as of late, I'm quite partial to the battle for Wesnoth when it comes to turn based strategy. Great community, excellent game, yet not well known. It's getting closer to a 1.0 release, albeit slowly.

I never really liked freeciv, there are soooo much rules, they take away all the fun. I would suggest a game like the battle for wesnoth

1. It works
2. It's free
3. Hey look, here's a game

Try Battle for Wesnoth : it's a fantasy turn based strategy game which is open-source, so it's both: free to download and test immediately (there is a Windows version), and in case of incompatibility with your headmouse, you COULD find a developper to patch it. And it's one of those rare open-source games that have good graphics, sound and music.