Felix Pleşoianu

Plenty of games on Linux

Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:34:30 PM

I'm a Linux user, and one of the most common criticisms I hear regarding my favorite OS is: "but there are no games for Linux". And if this is meant to mean "my favorite Windows games haven't been ported", well, it's most likely true. But that's not how it sounds. They say it as if Linux didn't have any games available, which is annoying, because nothing could be further from the truth. I do know computer games, dammit!

Seriously, though, did you really think we geeks don't play games at all? Rogue, the ancestor of Diablo (and possibly all computer RPGs) was created on a Unix computer. Likewise Zork, the first commercial adventure game. Unix itself was initially written to support development of a game, or so the legend goes. The first Star Trek game ever (before computers even had graphics!) also ran on Unix machines.

Nowadays, you don't need to worry about your computer supporting graphics. Similarly, you don't need to worry about Linux supporting games. Just look at the following listings.

OK, so those don't look very compelling, except for the sheer number of entries (then again, that's what I wanted to emphasize). If you don't mind trying a lot of them, go ahead. Otherwise, read on.

(As an aside, if your idea of a good game is along the lines of Minesweeper or Solitaire, just look for the games section in your computer's application menu. Chances are, you won't need much else beyond the two dozen games or so that ship with a typical Linux desktop.)

Off the top of my head, here are some games I either played or else I keep hearing about:

Shooters: Tremulous, Nexuiz, Sauerbraten, Open Arena, BZFlag.
Turn-based strategy: FreeCiv, Battle for Wesnoth, 8 Kingdoms, FreeCol.
Real-time strategy: Widelands, OpenTTD.
Abstract strategy: Liquid War.
Graphical roguelikes: Lost Labyrinth.
Arcade: TuxRacer, TuxKart, SuperTux.
Puzzle games: Pathological.

Other games that work, but you won't find them listed as Linux ports, are those that require an emulator, such as the old LucasArts adventures, many DOS titles and games for various consoles and old computers, if you are into that sort of thing. Needless to say, anything that runs in a Web browser will also run on Linux.

One category of games that (as far as I know) are poorly represented on Linux are RPGs. Then again, World of Warcraft runs on Linux, and so does Guild Wars. Apparently, even Planescape Torment works, which means all the Infinity Engine classics might just be available as well. But those were not released specifically for Linux; the indie title Eschalon was, and there are open source RPGs in development, such as Adonthell and JCRPG.

Another underrepresented category is commercial games. Most of the games listed above are open source and, as a friend of mine pointed out, it could be argued that open source games can't hope to reach the same level of complexity and polish as their commercial counterparts. Then again, people have said the same with regard to Linux versus proprietary operating systems, and things turned out to be rather different in practice.

Speaking of open source, it's worth mentioning that while commercial titles typically lack Linux ports, F/OSS games do run on other platforms, so you don't need to run Linux just to play them. But if you do want to run Linux for some other reason, rest assured that the penguin will bring you plenty of ways to relax.

P.S. One week later... http://www.penguspy.com/

Plenty of games on Linux by Felix Pleşoianu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.