Interstellar Marines [Steam] was one of the most promising FPS games in a long time, until they basically ran out of money. They're still going and this latest updated fixes a long-standing Linux issue.
One of their online game modes "Wargames" can only be joined at specific times, the problem was on Linux the timer was always in a negative and just didn't work unless you set your regional settings to the US. The latest update this week finally fixes that issue and I've been able to actually test it. Turns out—it's actually pretty cool. Confusing as hell, but cool.
Wargames in Interstellar Marines is essentially an open-world sandbox area where you all compete for points. You find crates with points, weapons, ammo and so on. There's a Scavenge wargame mode where you can just grab as many points as possible (the only one that seems to be online right now). Then there's the Battle Royale wargame mode, where it will start eliminating players with the lowest score, until there's only three left and a winner is found. There's armed robots to deal with and other players in a bunch of connected maps you can travel between. It's a little confusing, something they should really explain to the player a bit better, but I love the idea of it.
Surprisingly, there's actually people still playing it online. I was even able to jump into a normal Deathmatch mode and get a recording of it. It reminded me of why I was so excited about this game! It feels good, the maps are dynamic and it can be a little freaky:
Direct Link
It has some of the most dynamic maps I've ever seen that switch between night and day, parts of the maps move around, there's weather effects and more.
I really hope they can continue working on it, as it is still really promising it just needs a big push. The lone survivor of Zero Point Software, Kim Haar Jørgensen, is still working on the game in their spare time while they work another job to keep income coming in. There's also some volunteers helping with art and code now.
If they do manage to come back in full force, I do hope they start focusing on the single-player and co-op again, as that's what was interesting about it originally. It has a few good missions, but it needs more. I think the online focus is part of what their problem was, they just didn't have a big enough player-base for what they were doing, as so many people were interested in the single-player and co-op experiences.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Will definitely return!
Last edited by Boldos on 21 January 2018 at 1:37 am UTC
slaapliedje Jan 21, 2018
Quoting: GuestI've always had high hopes for this game. I hope they can pull through and make it work. I think honestly they should drop the story and focus on multiplayer gameplay.
Ugh, don't we already have a billion multiplayer games? From what I remember, wasn't this touted as Raven Shield, but futuristic? I love playing through the campaign in co-op mode. If it were multiplayer only, it makes the longevity of the game weak, since people keep moving onto the next best thing and the multiplayer stagnates. Make the campaign fun enough and people will keep coming back.
Sputnik_tr_02 Jan 21, 2018
Quoting: DoomsdayOrangeHey, IM volunteer developer here, just want to state a minor thing, Kim isnt the only person working on the game anymore. He has gathered many experienced individuals like me to volunteer with the development of the game, and since were all working for free, we dont have to run into the issue of funding. That is all.Hi, can you please make some inquiries about the state of the SSAO on Linux builds? It used to work on older builds (Unity 4x) but since switching to Unity 5 it was disabled completely.
I asked the same question on Steam forums but nobody answered, and given the well known situation of game's development, I didn't insist.
(and well, maybe look into a Vulkan Linux build?)
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