Sad news today, Arcen Games who support Linux rather nicely with their games is laying off almost all staff members. I like how honest the owner is in that blog post, it's refreshing to see people own up to their failures.
Arcen Games did something for Linux that few other developers do, they ported their entire game catalogue over to Linux, so it's really sad to see this.
Sounds like their games just aren't selling well any more partly thanks to Steam changes, and that's a shame, but competition is pretty fierce with how many developers we have pushing out games so quickly.
Making games is expensive, hell everything ends up being expensive. I hope Arcen Games pull through and bring out Stars Beyond Reach to a mass of sales.
We will also have a post about Starward Rogue (their new game) from contributor BTRE soon.
You can find their games on Steam here, and also on GOG here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Arcen Games did something for Linux that few other developers do, they ported their entire game catalogue over to Linux, so it's really sad to see this.
Sounds like their games just aren't selling well any more partly thanks to Steam changes, and that's a shame, but competition is pretty fierce with how many developers we have pushing out games so quickly.
Making games is expensive, hell everything ends up being expensive. I hope Arcen Games pull through and bring out Stars Beyond Reach to a mass of sales.
We will also have a post about Starward Rogue (their new game) from contributor BTRE soon.
You can find their games on Steam here, and also on GOG here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The problem with Arcen's titles is that the feel low effort. I know that they aren't low effort, but every time I see recycled UIs and hear recycled music it cheapens the experience.
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edo 28 Jan 2016
I hope than they will recover from that situation, since they took the time and effort to port all their games to linux, even the older ones than were released many years ago. Even on gog their games has the tux icon, thats great.
Last edited by edo on 28 Jan 2016 at 5:14 pm UTC
Last edited by edo on 28 Jan 2016 at 5:14 pm UTC
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scaine 28 Jan 2016
The problem with Arcen's titles is that the feel low effort. I know that they aren't low effort, but every time I see recycled UIs and hear recycled music it cheapens the experience.
I only own Bionic Dues and it's excellent. Really beautiful experience. Their plea has led me to look at their game catalogue again, and when I get through this weekend and get paid, I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up at least one more of their titles.
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cybersol 28 Jan 2016
For a hardcore, bring you to your knees, strategic challenge AI War and its expansions are still one of the best games ever made. Even without fancy graphics, the uneven game design really poses a beautiful challenge for the player (or even co-op).
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Viktualius 28 Jan 2016
Chris Park seems really nice, when looking at his blog. Honest it seems.
If you think about helping them out a little by buying games, I think it would be a good idea to thank them for the linux-support (in the blog - comments maybe...), to show that we appreciate it.
If you think about helping them out a little by buying games, I think it would be a good idea to thank them for the linux-support (in the blog - comments maybe...), to show that we appreciate it.
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rustybroomhandle 29 Jan 2016
To help them out, why not buy a few of their titles? I'm rather enjoying Skyward Rogue at the moment.
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Halifax 30 Jan 2016
A Valley Without Wind. Retroactively, now let's call it 1. Since Arcen games released AVWW 2 as a free update to all owners of AVWW(1).
A Valley Without Wind fascinated me.
But then Arcen games took almost everything that fascinated me with AVWW and threw it out the Window with AVWW2. I tried hard to love AVWW2, but it just wasn't the same. Better art assets, far less intriguing / way toned back procedural 2D platformer gameplay, mostly replaced with a largely unremarkable and uninteresting grid/turn based strat game now, ok :-/
Skyward Rogue looks completely uninteresting to me. Last Federation looks like I could appreciate it - but mainly for me, I wanted to see them continue their thought line with AVWW1 - which they *completely* abandoned for other game ideas after a strong initial start that was in need of fine tuning / version 2 polish.
The only vindication I have for my thoughts on this one, since no one in this limited user base will agree with me is hey! Look at how things went for Terraria and Starbound... Those were also procedural gen 2D platformer RPGs with Linux support. And they followed through on a more complete procedural gen 2D platformer RPG experiences instead of abandoning that theme for other formats, and both of those dev houses are now multi-millionaire successes with some of the highest performance games Steam has ever had. *Maybe* you should have just concentrated on making AVWW more polished and continuing it's great ideas instead of abandoning it for a slew of other less compelling game themes?
A Valley Without Wind fascinated me.
But then Arcen games took almost everything that fascinated me with AVWW and threw it out the Window with AVWW2. I tried hard to love AVWW2, but it just wasn't the same. Better art assets, far less intriguing / way toned back procedural 2D platformer gameplay, mostly replaced with a largely unremarkable and uninteresting grid/turn based strat game now, ok :-/
Skyward Rogue looks completely uninteresting to me. Last Federation looks like I could appreciate it - but mainly for me, I wanted to see them continue their thought line with AVWW1 - which they *completely* abandoned for other game ideas after a strong initial start that was in need of fine tuning / version 2 polish.
The only vindication I have for my thoughts on this one, since no one in this limited user base will agree with me is hey! Look at how things went for Terraria and Starbound... Those were also procedural gen 2D platformer RPGs with Linux support. And they followed through on a more complete procedural gen 2D platformer RPG experiences instead of abandoning that theme for other formats, and both of those dev houses are now multi-millionaire successes with some of the highest performance games Steam has ever had. *Maybe* you should have just concentrated on making AVWW more polished and continuing it's great ideas instead of abandoning it for a slew of other less compelling game themes?
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