1 yr. ago • 97%

Your favorite native Linux games?

Let's leave Steam and other launchers and distribution platforms alone a bit. Also lets stop discussing game engines for moment ...

What are your favorite games that run natively on Linux and what genre are they?

Would be cool if you could write a few words about the game and why it's your favorite game.

63 comments

Does Minecraft (specifically the Java edition) count as a Linux native game? It's written in Java, so thus it's not really "native" to one specific platform.

It's always worked perfectly for me on Linux, and have a lot of strong memories with the game. Pair it with something like Prism Launcher for easily installing mods / modpacks / resource packs / etc (which is available on Flathub) and you've got a pretty good setup! Though the "official" launcher is available through most package repositories these days as well.

24
- I was an avid Minecraft player in my teens. It being cross-platform (basically 100 % compatibility) made my switch to Linux quite painless; if Minecraft did not work, I probably wouldn't install Linux.
  
  6
Valheim

Genre: survival sandbox

Why I love it:

it's got a bit of progression to it

great terraforming and building

it's gameplay loop of "buildup, explore, smelt" repeat is on point
21
factorio, the factory must grow.

17
Rimworld - colony sim, survival, strategy, crisis management game.

Watch the trailer

One of the few games where losing is actually fun. There's a lot of mods available and it can (reasonably) run on a potato.

17
- Make sure to subscribe to the Lemmy Rimworld page. I've been missing my daily Rimworld posts on Lemmy!
  
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  I think I already am. I never posted on the r/rimworld sub but I'll see what I can post here. :D
  
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Neverwinter Nights

It was the first native Linux game I've ever played and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Unreal Tournament 99/2004

It was fun when my reflexes were better. I can't stand no chance anymore since I got old 🤣

RTCW, Wolf:ET

Not as fast-paced as UT99 but still enjoyable.

Metro Last Light/Redux/Exodus

I've played Metro 2033 on Win7 and was really surprised about Metro Last Light being ported to Linux. It was a pretty good port IIRC. Metro Exodus was also really enjoyable but I'm a bit disappointed about the enhanced edition not being ported to Linux.

BioShock: Infinite

Just as I was ready to give up on trying to get B:I running on Wine, 2k dropped the bomb. VirtualProgramming's Linux ports aren't popular, but it wasn't that bad TBH.

Serious Sam 3: BFE / Fusion 2017

SS3 was really showing me the limits of my old AMD GPU but with a more recent one and Fusion 2017's Vulkan power everything went fine.
16
- I'm 46 and it took weeks for me to become competitive in Battlebit. You can still do it, it just takes a much bigger investment in effort and time.
  
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I am surprised Factorio has not been cited yet. This game is addictive!

15
Factorio.

The factory must grow!

14
Mindustry (flathub). A tower defense mixed with RTS gameplay

Super addictive game

You play for 2 months non stop and then give up for 6 months and start again.

It'll take your life

11
It might be somewhat controversial of a take, but to me an awesome-performing Proton version of a game is far better than a Linux version that may be native, but has severe deficiencies and/or lags behind its Windows version.

To me, my favorite native Linux games would be ones that do things on Linux that are not possible on other platforms. Generally, this would be an "unfair" advantage, as games should strive for feature parity on all platforms within reason, but so often we end up being on the wrong side of that equation that seeing some of the perks of the platform is nice.

To my knowledge, the only major game I can think of that does this to a certain extent is Factorio, which enables non-blocking game saves on Linux and macOS and not Windows. It's not a Linux-exclusive feature, but it's nice that the developers went through the effort to implement the feature on Linux even though it's not possible on Windows.

9
- Agreed, Amnesia rebirth, civ5 and some warhammer game all ran better with proton
  
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- Exactly. I don't distinguish between them anymore, aside from sometimes buying a game with native Linux support when I'm on the fence. I like to see people making the effort to test and release their game on Linux, but as long as Proton can run it reasonably well, I'll buy it.
  
  1
Starbound. I've played the crap out of it. I still haven't finished it tho...

8
Terraria: sandbox game

Project Zomboid: survival/sandbox game

Almost any renpy VN game runs natively too.
8
Mine would be Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (with expansion). My favorite 4X game of all time.

8
- SMAC always has a home on my hdd.
  
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- Agreed! Does it still run? I have install media around here somewhere...
  
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Europa Universalis IV - by far my favorite grand strategy game; most Paradox games have native Linux support

Factorio - I bought it when it was in early access or something straight from the developer, and they had Linux support the whole time; at the time, it was pretty much the only factory game, and it was groundbreaking

Black Mesa - fan made Half Life remake, and it's fantastic; again, played before the official release and it had Linux support out of the gate

Aside from the first, these aren't my favorite games I've played on Linux, just my favorite Linux native games. With Proton/WINE, I've played tons of Windows games on Linux.
8
From the Depths is AMAZING. I lose a couple months to it every year as it sucks me in again.

StarMade has so much potential. It's been open sourced and the community is starting to take it over, watch this space.

I really love games where you build large vehicles you can walk around inside, and then you go blow them up.

7
- Huh, didn't expect to run across another FTD player in the wild. Hi!
  
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  I finally beat my first campaign this year. On Very Hard! It has displaced all my Toribash black belts as my rarest achievements. More people need to play!!
  
  Hey, wanna exchange some blueprints and fight?
  
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Pathfinder Kingmaker: https://www.gog.com/game/pathfinder_kingmaker_explorer_edition

6
- I wish it had co-op
  
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  @Montagge @Dirk @whitecapstromgard Like a noble couple a la House of Cards? While you are off defeating the neighbors militarily your spouse is at home fighting off rumors and gossip while putting a knife in the back (metaphorically) of your enemies in court? Id play that.
  
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Teeworlds (Flathub) is the cutest game ever, with simple mechanics but insane depth. I love playing it solo or with friends!

6
Re-Volt. Modern rewrite of the classic RC car racing game. Two decades of community-created tracks and cars to choose from. Still has an active multiplayer community, too!

6
I'm so disappointed, no mention of tux cart?

5
- It's fun, but there are a lot better native games out there imo.
  
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Currently A Dance Of Fire And Ice

5
A bit generic, but War Thunder and CS:GO, Rocket league would have been my number one but they stopped supporting Linux a couple years ago.

5
I don't play a lot of native games but I quite like 0ad. The only issue I've had is I couldn't quite get into it. I like the idea of it, but it feels a bit too overwhelming, and isn't exactly my type of game in practice. I quite enjoyed Sauerbraten, though I don't play shooters that much anymore. The native game I've played the most has to be GNOME Mahjongg funnily enough. I also really like Minetest, but I haven't been able to get into it.

5
Doom 2016, runs better than Windows and looks amazing. Better in every way over Doom Eternal, not sure why anyone liked Eternal tbh.

5
- Doom 2016 runs on a toaster it's so stupidly optimized
  
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Starsector is an space sim game, probably one of my favourites. Sseth did a review on it if you want an idea of it:

Video

4
- Looks a bit like Pioneer but in more complex!
  
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Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, it's a FOSS racing game inspired by mario kart but more chaotic.

4
Hyper Rogue: Roguelike set in a non-euclidian world. It redefines what a fantastic world might look like, and has a very unique atmosphere.

FTL: Deep space exploration ahoy. If you enjoy space operas, FTL is the thing to play.

Atomic Tanks: Oldschool artillery game. Great fun to play with friends.

Warsow: The quintessential FPS. Damn good.

Battle for Wesnoth, SuperTuxKart, Hedgewars are probably known. I love these.

I'm programming our games primarily for Linux OSs. I'm very fond of them.
4
X-plane - it's real flight simulator (from version 9,10,11 and still12) and working fine od 10 years old PC (Endeavour OS - Gnome), for children Tux kart and 0Ad. From Steam: war thunder, arma3...

4
- Is that the one where installing it was just copying the files over, and also let you fly on Mars? I loved that game!
  
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  Yes but now have a Linux installer and is just real one of the best flight simulator on the world.
  
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Lugaru - fighting game, but with animals and unique combat mechanics

4
- Wasn't there supposed to be sequel? I remember watching some kind of dev log videos ages ago.
  
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  Overgrowth by Wolfire Games
  
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- I keep almost buying this. If it was online pvp I would have been all over it.
  
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Stellaris and the Total War Warhammer games

4
Beyond all reason (BAR) you can get it for free on the pop shop with popos and likely most other distro app store.

Excellent successor to the OG RTS total annihilation from the late 90s.

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

4
Gotta go with Dwarf Fortress, boss. Never gets old, and seems to run better on Linux.

4
Shapez.io: It's like factorio, but it is also really minimal. It is my favorite game because I can be proud of myself when I build a factory that gives me around 13 FPS. Some say it isn't playable at such low FPS, but I still enjoy it, even if it is a slide show.

4
Unequivocally for me, team fortress 2 (fps)

4
@Dirk
abuse (side scroller shooter) always pullsme back, it's great.
and
Battle for Wesnoth (RTS) has lots of content, it's highly enjoyable.

4
- I’ve only found a short demo of that in the repos. Where can I find the full version?
  
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@Dirk
Veloren
It's an online rpg with an open world
Still in pre-alpha , so much of the content isn't finished, but it's already visually stunning for a voxel game and the gameplay is already quite enjoyable

4
Battle for Wesnoth!

Fantasy themed turn based strategy game with simple mechanics. And it's (probably) already in your repo! Ships with some good campaigns, some not so good, but there's more floating around.

I'm mostly an fps-rpg guy but when I get a tactical itch it's hard to do better honestly. I unapologetically save scum my way through it and have a blast.

4
Although its been a while, ksp linux was the fist to have 64bit support compared to the windows version. If you haven't heard of ksp it's space program/ spaceflight simulator grounden in real world physics/rocket technology with a few caveats. Without mods, the planets are "on rails" and don't change orbits, and you are only affected by one "gravity source" at a time. The system it takes place in is about 1/10th scale

3
- I have thousands of hours across dozens of playthroughs, and every single one of them ends the same way; the whole damn universe eventually de-coheres under the pressure of a relatively small quantity of mods and everything gets borked. I swear never again to waste my life playing it, and then start a new campaign 6-12 months later.
  
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XEvil. Come one people, you can turn people into frogs!

But seriously, what a classic. The mechanics are well balanced and the rules while quite simple offer so many possibilities. For example the robot have a gun but can't use drags. Ninja has low health but can climb walls. Chopter boy can fly but don't have any melee attack. And so on...

As for the rules for example for each item you have use and drop actions. So to kill someone with a bomb you have to use it (arm it) and then drop it. It explodes 3 seconds after being armed. There's also a soul swapper gun available. Shoot someone with it and you swap bodies. So what would I do? Arm the bomb and shoot someone with the soul swapper. They swap into a body with an active bomb and explode after 3 seconds. So fun.

In the end each round is different and the game is super difficult. One thing I never did is play it against other people. So... who wants to try?

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- There's a blast from the past. And don't forget https://obscuritory.com/action/battalion/
  
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I think I installed Kohan for Linux on my FreeBSD box? Does that sound possible? I really enjoyed it, and I don't think I had anything but FreeBSD in my home at the time...

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@Dirk Portal 1 y 2.

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Wube Factorio - sunk so many hours into this, fun, explorable and longlasting gameplay

Egosoft X4 Foundations - needs no words I think? Otherwise look it up, it's just too much going on in this game, amazing!

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