25 Best Linux Games

bobz writes "The Linux Game Tome has announced the winners of the Happypenguin Awards. Games, toys and libraries in 25 different categories were nominated and voted upon by the Linux gaming community. Take a look at the best Linux gaming has to offer." Alas, no SimCity 4, and no Sims Online.

Comments

25?

[Schnapple]

Linux has 25 games now? I guess they all win...

there are 26 linux games??

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. But are 10 of them "moria" variants? Or are we talking about 25+ *unique* games??

Re:there are 26 linux games??

[bellings]

Actually, three of them are "Frozen Bubble", two are "Freeciv", two are "Quake 3 Arena", and one is the "Simple Direct Media Player Library".

There are only two versions of solitaire, and one version of nethack. Rejoice!

List of Award Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Games
Best Free Game - Frozen Bubble

Best Free 3D Action Game - Cube

Best Free Arcade Game - Frozen Bubble

Best Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - PySol

Best Free Multiplayer Action Game - BZFlag

Best Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Freeciv

Best Free Role-Playing Game - NetHack: Falcon's Eye

Best Free Simulation Game - Flight Gear

Best Free Single Player Strategy Game - Freeciv

Non-Free Games
Best Non-Free Game - Quake 3 Arena

Best Non-Free 3D Action Game - Return To Castle Wolfenstein

Best Non-Free Arcade Game - Space Tripper

Best Non-Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - Eric's Ultimate Solitaire

Best Non-Free Multiplayer Action Game - Quake 3 Arena

Best Non-Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Best Non-Free Role-Playing Game - Ultima I: A Legend Is Reborn

Best Non-Free Simulation Game - SimCity 3000 Unlimited

Best Non-Free Single Player Strategy Game - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Miscellaneous Categories
Best Emulator - ScummVM

Best Game Support Library - SDL

Best Graphics - Unreal Tournament 2003

Best Sound/Music - Frozen Bubble

Best Toy - Celestia

Most Original/Unique Game - Liquid War

Most Promising Linux Game Project - Planeshift

Re:List of Award Winners

[Xpilot]

Some of these games got the "best game" of a particular category because they are the only game in that particular category :)

Old

[dissonant7]

...almost all these games are over a year old. If I want to play games, I'll use Windows. If I want to get work done, I'll run Linux. It just doesn't make since to use a screwdriver to pound in a nail.

Re:Old

[kvn299]

Just because a game is old doesn't make it bad. In my opinion, a game that can withstand the test of time (such a SimCity or Civ) is worth a hundred new games, in my opinion.

Re: Old

[Black Parrot]

> ...almost all these games are over a year old.

Are you bragging or complaining?

IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.

Re:Old

[StarTux]

And your point is?

Of course some are over a year old, it takes time and costs money to port to Linux. Now if you stopped and thought about it and actually bought a couple of games for Linux from http://www.tuxgames.com you'd see more and more games appear a lot quicker from the bigger companies.

OTOH, have you played Uplink? Just because it didn't end up on Happy Penguins winning list does not mean a thing, its one of the big surprises of 2002; a game by a small development team that is very addictive and was released on Linux at the same time as the Windows version. Its here http://www.introversion.co.uk.

I didn't vote for Quake 3, its really quite sad people put that as the best game, as with all things Linux related my opinion differs. Perhaps next year they can limit the vote to commercial games released during the year. As for the free games, most are still in active development.

The upshot of your argument and others who make it is that we'll never help break break the monopoly on the desktop with that attitude, and yes to begin with we need to help create the correct amount of market share (yes its hard to manage), but do you, when you see a game you'd like to play, e-mail the publishers and developers with a kind e-mail?

Are you one of those people who runs a Linux gaming server? If so, write to the development and ask for a client and actually use that client.

StarTux

Re:Old

[AKnightCowboy]

I think you took my comment a bit too literally. But to clarify using one of my examples, I played Civ 2 right up the moment Civ 3 was released. I expect to continue playing Civ 3 until the next one is released.

Right, but did you wait a year or two to buy Civ 2 before you started playing it? Did you wait another year or two for Civ 3 before you bought it? The fact is, new games only come out for Windows. If you like to play new cutting edge games without waiting for years for someone to (hopefully) port it then settle with Linux for games. Personally I'm like most people, my windows box (and PS2) is for games and my Linux box is my file server, shell box for programming, and all around general purpose workhorse. The Windows box is just a desktop for browsing IE only sites and a game machine. The right tool for the right job.

Re:Old

[PunchMonkey]

...almost all these games are over a year old. If I want to play games, I'll use Windows. If I want to get work done, I'll run Linux. It just doesn't make since to use a screwdriver to pound in a nail.

It does if the hammer is going to cost you $200.

I like your analogy though :-)

Why use a $200 hammer that can't turn a screw when you can use a free screwdriver that can pound in a nail.

I'm sure someone can reword that nicely into a sig...

Re: Old

[fitten]

Cling to your dogma. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. With your logic, PacMan and Mrs. PacMan should still be the top games in the arcades and MYST should still be the hottest game on the PC. The fact is that some games do enjoy long life (StarCraft, etc.) but people do like to play new games.

One of the reasons that games do well on the PC is that evne though the game will be pirated, there will still be enough sales to warrant the initial investment and recoup your costs of paying the programmers.

The problem is that games don't fit into the enterprise software model (which is one of the few ways to make money in the Linux/OSS world). You have to have money to start the development on one and you won't make any money on support/training for it. In addition, few people are likely to even want to pay for the initial copy of it. In addition, even without piracy, the market segment for Linux/OSS is not that big. This leaves you in the area of doing it for FreeBeer(tm) style development. How many game developers are going to code a game for free? Some, sure. How many who code games for a big game house will have the free time (unless supported by the game house) of developing/porting for Linux/OSS? Maybe a few.

Game lifespan is too short (among other things) to fit the enterprise model. Until you can make money developing games on Linux/OSS so you can pay people to code them, I'll predict that the rate of new games emergence will be slow.

Re:Old

[Zenithal]

Ok, no offence here... but if everyone had your opinions we'd still be using DOS and NES's. The current state of a situation is not a definition of the future state of a situation.

Or rather, because games are not widely available today doesn't mean they'll never be.

I really wish I had a nickle for every time someone said that real gamers only use Windows. It's one of the silliest ideas I've ever heard of. Obviously not every game company is going to drop everything and start porting games to a platform with only 1%,2%,5% (or whatever it is now) share of the desktop market. It's incremental. Everything is incremental in the market. As the market share increases for Linux desktops, so will software availablity. As that availability increases so will share.

I have no idea why people think that because it's a great idea to have Linux desktop machines, and Linux games on those machines, that magically the entire market should be converted over night. Nothing happens this way. Ever.

The move from Dos to Win3.x to Win95 was incremental too. When Win95 first came out you could have made the exact same argument about it vs. Dos. True many games would run under Win95 that were intended for Dos, but still in general the speed was better with a clean boot. So I heard the same things: real gamers use Dos, Windows is meant for business applications, not games... why would anyone want to use it for games?

Well, here we are, aren't we?

Re:Old

[JustAnotherReader]

almost all these games are over a year old. If I want to play games, I'll use Windows. If I want to get work done, I'll run Linux. It just doesn't make since to use a screwdriver to pound in a nail.

No No No! You young people have no appriciation of the proper use of tools.

Screwdrivers are used to chop a mortise for a door hinge.
A chisel is for opening paint cans.
A hammer is for driving screws IN.
Pliers are for taking screws OUT.

Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win

[October_30th]

Why should we expect Linux games to be any better than the millions of shareware games made for Windows? I mean, I've never found freely available Windows game that would be fun.

Re:Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win

[killmenow]

The best way to play minesweeper is to set the grid size to its max and the number of mines to its min.

This way, you have a big space with like only ten mines. A lot of times, you can clear the board with one click.

YES! New Record! One Second! Woohoo!

Re:Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win

[LoudMusic]

Why should we expect Linux games to be any better than the millions of shareware games made for Windows?

Because not all Linux games are free ...

Unreal Tournament, Railroad Tycoon 2, the various Sims, QUAKE! - these games aren't free or even shareware. I wouldn't expect them to be better, but at least comparable to their Windows counterparts.

Why is it that when people think of Linux, or any other OpenSource project, they immediately think "free"? These terms aren't interchangeable. And not all the software that goes with them is going to be OpenSource or free either.

Grow some balls, pay for your software.

I'd rather not...

[Big Mark]

"Take a look at the best Linux gaming has to offer."

That'll be a stack of empty pizza boxes and a tower of coffee-stained mugs. I can see that in my room already, why'd I want to see someone else's mess?!

-Mark

I hope they included nethack

[MoreDruid]

You turn around the corner. Your foe (Server, 58 Hp 3D1) awaits. You engage battle. You /. the server.
You gained an experience level!

Re:Quake III still kicks ass!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And that atmosphere is.... brown.

Linux needs games

[TTMuskrat]

IMO, Linux needs games in order to "make it" in the mass market. It already has the good O/S, it has the word processing software, it has GUIs if you want them - the only thing it doesn't have is a good games library.

Once you get developers either making games specifically for Linux or devs porting other O/S games to Linux, then Linux will be ready to take down the MS behemoth. After all, once it has games, you wouldn't need a different O/S for anything and you could then use your Windows discs as really cool frisbees :)

Spectrum emu. - one of the best games for Linux

[BACbKA]

I've always been amazed at the marvelous art of the Spectrum game designers. Cramped into a 8-bit environment with really sucking video, they managed to create very addictive games, with really non-trivial gaming ideas. (When you don't have too much resources to waste, every bit of your game better be brilliant). Now the newer generation computer games have all those fancy video effects, tons of multimedia played in your face, but the signal to noise ration is much lower IMHO than was on Spectrum. Kinda like the modern FX-laden films with no really good plot behind them compared to the old classics. Perhaps I'm getting old, but Spectrum emulation is one of the best gaming environments I've seen on Linux...

Gaming on linux

[Kirby-meister]

Linux could get more support, if only developers saw other developers do well on the system. And the only way that'll happen is if someone gives Linux support. Kind of a catch-22 there.

Re:Gaming on linux

[Zathrus]

And the only way that'll happen is if someone gives Linux support

You mean, kinda like how id Software does? Or maybe Epic (Unreal, Unreal Tournament)?

The reality is that there are some companies supporting Linux - id Software is probably the best as far as it goes - but it's not making money. For id it's not a huge deal, since they've specifically chosen a portable development structure, but for most companies it's a huge ordeal to not use DirectX, or to port from DirectX to anything else. And sales (and usage) figures aren't indicating that it's worth the money to do so.

Cut-n-Paste Karma Whoring

[bellings]

Free Games

• Best Free Game - Frozen Bubble
• Best Free 3D Action Game - Cube
• Best Free Arcade Game - Frozen Bubble
• Best Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - PySol
• Best Free Multiplayer Action Game - BZFlag
• Best Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Freeciv
• Best Free Role-Playing Game - NetHack: Falcon's Eye
• Best Free Simulation Game - Flight Gear
• Best Free Single Player Strategy Game - Freeciv

Non-Free Games

• Best Non-Free Game - Quake 3 Arena
• Best Non-Free 3D Action Game - Return To Castle Wolfenstein
• Best Non-Free Arcade Game - Space Tripper
• Best Non-Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - Eric's Ultimate Solitaire
• Best Non-Free Multiplayer Action Game - Quake 3 Arena
• Best Non-Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Heroes of Might and Magic 3
• Best Non-Free Role-Playing Game - Ultima I: A Legend Is Reborn
• Best Non-Free Simulation Game - SimCity 3000 Unlimited
• Best Non-Free Single Player Strategy Game - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Miscellaneous Categories

• Best Emulator - ScummVM
• Best Game Support Library - SDL
• Best Graphics - Unreal Tournament 2003
• Best Sound/Music - Frozen Bubble
• Best Toy - Celestia
• Most Original/Unique Game - Liquid War
• Most Promising Linux Game Project - Planeshift

Er, MAME?

[kahei]

Games available on Linux, right? So that would include every arcade game up till the late 90's, right? Unless there's a hidden rule saying the game can't be emulated or illegal...?

Samurai Shodown
Tempest
Strike Force
I, Robot
New Zealand Story
Drift Out
Metal Slug
Waku waku 7
Alien vs Predator ...why, I don't believe it's possible to pick just 25! And that's before I turn on any *console* emulators! LIFE IS TOO GOOD!

Even Quake I was a knock-off

[hpulley]

Doom was the original and even Castle Wolfenstein 3D before that should get the real credit but it didn't quite have the environment that Doom had (the secret levels paying homage to Wolf3D and Keen were great).

Playing Doom with my Gravis Ultrasound MAX sound card so I could hear guitars in the music was just awesome. Simply hearing the music for level 1 was amazing. And the stereo separation was so good that I could kill enemies with the (single barrel only) shotgun with my eyes closed. Played great on Linux in an X11 window too.

I wish another game would come along with the impact that Doom had. It was just SOOOO amazing and nothing has come close since. Every 3D shooter since is just the same old with better graphics and sound, aside from interesting forms of multiplayer action like Team Fortress and Infiltration. Pretty sad, actually, but at least 3D shooters haven't had to go down the cheesy movie route like adventure games.

Multiplayer really came along with Quake. In Doom it worked better as a cooperative feature. Deathmatch was really born in Quake, along with Capture the Flag, Team Fortress, etc.

Re:Stores to buy

[SLot]

Fry's usually has some linux games. I just picked up Myth2:Soulblighter and Heretic 2 this weekend for 5 bucks a piece! :)

Huge omissions

[fishdan]

Actually, over all "su" is the BEST game ever.

Let's not forget the old classic:

cat /var/spool/mail/hotgirl | grep sex

Although I think that's probably closly followed by 2 others:

$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $EXTIF -o $INTIF -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

tail - 200 access.log | grep "GET /scripts/root.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0"

I got a new game recently: The Oracle 9i install! I've been playing this for MONTHS now, and I'm still not sure how it's gonna turn out! I love the way you have to keep trying different things until you finally solve it! Please no spoilers!

I'm also a big fan of the "adding a non-standard serial device" game, but I'm not very good at it yet.

The Top 3 Mac Games

[Quarters]

Breakout, Super Breakout, ...photoshop...

Re:The Top 3 Mac Games

[Seehund]

Those who don't understand why the parent post is funny, check out Drunk Gamers' (R.I.P., I guess...) "Switch" parody.

Thanks, Quarters. Until now I couldn't hear that he said "Photoshop". :)

Add one to the list!

[teamhasnoi]

It's called "Get Linux Ready for the Desktop"!

You play a software programmer who has one mission: Get Linux Ready for the Desktop!

You must navigate new users, configuration scripts, unsupported printers, and obscure terminal messages!

Your enemy, BILL GATES will do anything to stop you! Beware the dreaded Intellectual Property attack, and the TOC missle! Dodge laywer after laywer who will try anything to stop you! Pick up pizzas, Mountain Dew, and Penguin Mints for extra power!

All this without a consistent user interface, and sound!

If you think your good enough to beat the 'Steve Balmer Monkey Dance' and churn out a thousand lines of code a day, you just might be ready for "Get Linux Ready for the Desktop"!

Act now, and well include a DCCS encoded bonus level: 'Shave Richard Stalman!'

You gotta be quick, you gotta be good, you gotta "Get Linux Ready for the Desktop"!

Number 26

[duckpoopy]

It has to be xbill.

Tribes 2

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

T2 is a newer game than Quake 3, has unbounded maps and much deeper gameplay.. yet does not even warrant a mention? Come on!

Ur-Quan Masters

[TeknoHog]

Don't forget Star Control 2!

"Playing the Open Source Game"

[peterpi]

Shawn Hargreaves (of Allegro fame, and also my lead coder) has written an interesting essay on why open source is quite a poor development model for games.

Check it out Here

Linux needs marketing

[mausmalone]

I'm afraid of the flames I'm gonna get for this... but the problem with people adopting linux isn't linux, it's people.

See, you say linux has a good OS, many good GUIs (I really love GNOME), and office tools for people to work on. I wouldn't disagree with you there... but that's not the problem. People just don't wanna use linux. And by "People" I mean "the masses."

Here's an example. Dreamweaver is the most incredibly wonderful GUI-based web design program there is. It has everything anyone needs, and it outputs tight, compatible code. But do "people" use it? No.... I work in a place where we have enough licenses to go around, and what does everyone want? Frontpage. F'ing Frontpage. Not Claris Homepage, not Netscape Composer. F'ing Frontpage. And they ask me stupid things like "I want to use Frontpage, can you install it on the server for me?" ARGH!

See, Frontpage isn't requested because it's... well.. good... or useable... or functional for that matter. Everyone wants it because it's MS Word for web pages. It may be a disgusting train wreck of a program the likes of which should warrant its creators' executions on a public street in broad daylight as a warning to other MS programmers, but the "people" are too lazy and dumb to contest their friend who says "Frontpage is the best" because he heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a sales-bot at CompUSA. Why do sales clerks reccommend Frontpage? Because it's wizard-based, and any monkey can do that... less chance of returned product.

So the moral? "People" will continue to use Windows and slink away from linux as long as we keep thinking that they're too stupid to learn anything else. It's about time to shirk the attitude of "I use linux, but that's because I'm a genius. You lower life forms can use Windows." It'll go a long way.

Oh, and never use your Windows discs as frisbees. Instead, keep them around to make copies for all of your friends. :)

Re:Stores to buy

[slux]

Tux Games sells Linux games exclusively and provides packages with Linux binaries even when the developers choose not to. (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has been added as a preorder item already after the icculus.org announcement)

Loki Games' has ceased to exist but their site still lists their resellers here, I'm sure many of them still stock Loki's old games and probably titles from other publishers too.

Linux Game Publishing lists their resellers here.

Ultima I: ALiR has been cancelled

[homb]

Peroxide, the company from Denmark that started the Ultima I port to the new generation, decided to create a completely new game instead and calls it now "Era".

It's totally unrelated to Ultima I.

See it at:
http://www.peroxide.dk/era/

Dynamix is gone...

[Wee]

The reason Tribes2 isn't alive (or even worth a mention) is that Sierra killed (literally) Dynamix right after T2 was released. "Thanks for all the hard work and late nights... Now go home." Of course, Sierra still releases patches for Windows, but with Loki gone as well, the Linux patches lag months behind them (meaning Windows and Linux players can't play on the same servers). Consequently, T2 doesn't have the mod community that Tribes did and so can't depend on that to stay alive.

I was a huge Tribes fan, and waiting for a long time for Tribes2 to come out since it meant that I could finally dump Windows and use Linux for everything. After about a year I realized that wanting to use Linux for everyday gaming use was a pipe dream. I still play Wolfenstein, SimCity, Tribes2 and old ROMs and stuff, but to play PC games these days you either need WineX or a Win32 partition.

-B

This list is why I keep a Windows box around.

[Wakko Warner]

Take a look at it -- best non-free game, Quake 3 arena? That came out, what, 3 years ago?

The state of gaming on Linux is terrible, and, unfortunately, I don't see it getting better any time soon.

- A.P.

Re:This list is why I keep a Windows box around.

[Afrosheen]

Quake3 is still the best because of mods like Urban Terror and tons of others. It's the engine that counts, not the game itself.

Two words

[roystgnr]

I wish another game would come along with the impact that Doom had. It was just SOOOO amazing and nothing has come close since.

Deus Ex

You will be waiting a long time.

[RatBastard]

I wish another game would come along with the impact that Doom had.

I'm afraid that you will be waiting a long time. It's not even the gaming industry's fault on this one. Games like DOOM (or whatever your first quality game of any genre is) are like your first love: you never quite recapture the feeling of that very first (insert first sexual encounter here).

DOOM did a good enough job at faking 3D that when we got real 3D it wasn't that big of a deal. And now that we have 3D, what's left? Better graphics. And one day, maybe, passable AI.

The closest I've gotten to recapturing the feelings I had when playing DOOM have been with Half-Life and Halo. But neither of these games made me stare into my monitor at an odd angle trying to see around the corner, and they only made me jump out of my chair about three times each.

Liquid War

[philovivero]

I'll vote for that. I'm sure most of the readers haven't heard of Liquid War. It's a 2D realtime strategy game that is so incredibly simple in concept (probably took a long week to code up and get working) but very, very fun.

Unfortunately, the game's strategy is closer to Go than Chess, so the computer is a pretty lame player.

But fear not! Liquid War has network play! So you can try your hand against other human players, if you can find anyone who's heard of it and is therefore willing to play against you.

Anyone in the Sacramento greater metro area, goto my homepage, find my email, and email me. We'll do a Liquidwar LAN party.