Risk of Rain 2 from Hopoo Games and Gearbox Publishing recently entered Early Access, it’s already become massively popular and thanks to Steam Play we’re not missing out.
Risk of Rain 2 entered Early Access on March 28th and almost a week later it’s still hitting a daily player peak of over forty thousand! What is it? The developer describes it like this:
The classic multiplayer roguelike, Risk of Rain, returns with an extra dimension and more challenging action. No run will ever be the same with randomized stages, enemies, bosses, and items. Play solo, or team up with up to four friends to fight your way through hordes of monsters, unlock new loot, and find a way to escape the planet.
Here’s a look at just how well it runs on Ubuntu 18.10, click and play using Steam Play with Proton 4.2. In some of the more crazy action sequences, when tons of enemies are around it can become a little overwhelming.
Direct Link
Do note: it does appear to struggle during late-game action with lots going on.
Features:
- Play four player co-op seamlessly through Steam — no more port forwarding
- Unlock over 75 items over time, keeping each run fresh and full of new challenges
- Play and unlock new and returning survivors, each with their own abilities to master
- Theorycraft and exploit endless item and character combos
- Encounter challenging monsters and enormous bosses
- Explore massive, handcrafted 3D levels
- Discover lore through the collection of Monster, Item, and Environment Logs
- Challenge your friends—and the world—in all-new Prismatic Trials, a unique seeded run where everyone can race up a global leaderboard
One of the main issues right now with the online play (it has single-player too), is the host of the game just quitting which abruptly forces all other players back to the main menu. Not great, so a host migration feature is going to be needed. Happened often when I was playing it, the host dies and they just quit. On top of that, the networking isn’t amazing as you’re reliant on the host having a good computer and internet so there’s been a few games that have had unplayable lag. If they want the game to continue being successful, that will need sorting.
Honestly, I’m in shock at just how well it works for a game that’s only just become available. If we can get to a stage where 90% of game releases on Steam are either native ports or great in Steam Play, Linux gaming will have a bright future.
It’s always a shame when we see games released just for Windows or Windows and Mac, become popular as they’re obviously interesting or fun to play and Linux gamers get left out in the cold. There’s many, often complicated reasons why Linux doesn’t see support (low market share, small development team with no extra time and so on) but thanks to Steam Play, that won’t happen so often any more.
I’m not sure if it will be able to dethrone my current favourite Steam Play title Deep Rock Galactic, or the native Linux port of Rocket League but it might eventually.
You can find it on Humble Store and Steam.
With thanks to reader archtoasty for my copy.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: XpanderI have been keeping my eye on this game, looks fun, but whats the end goal for this game?. For me it seems fun for like up to 10-15 hours to just go and kill everything with friends, loot and gear up, but what is the progression there? Will the upgrades reset after you die and you start all over again? Is there some background story you can discover during gameplay? I never played the first one as i dont like pixel stuff usually.
From playing the first and seeing some streams of this second. It is rogue-like where you do lose all items and levels on death, however after each run you do unlock characters and have knowledge about what the items are for your next run.
I actually just got done re-arranging my partitions without a windows partition for the first time ever (i think), all thanks to steam play. Which just keeps getting better it seems.
Quoting: TapocoLQuoting: XpanderI have been keeping my eye on this game, looks fun, but whats the end goal for this game?. For me it seems fun for like up to 10-15 hours to just go and kill everything with friends, loot and gear up, but what is the progression there? Will the upgrades reset after you die and you start all over again? Is there some background story you can discover during gameplay? I never played the first one as i dont like pixel stuff usually.
From playing the first and seeing some streams of this second. It is rogue-like where you do lose all items and levels on death, however after each run you do unlock characters and have knowledge about what the items are for your next run.
Also, doing certain things unlocks new items. Plus, RoR1 had "Artifacts" that you could collect. Starting a game with an Artifact selected changed the starting rules a bit. They'll be adding Artifacts eventually, from what I've seen.
- Linux sales that count as Linux ones and not Windows
- Official Linux support either natively or via Steam Play
I won't buy this game until it release on Linux because i know that if i do buy it now, I won't buy it again when it comes to Linux, so my copy would count as a Windows sales.
There are pleinty of good Linux games by developers who did the effort to support us that deserve more attention that windows-only games.
A good use of Steam Play is to me games like Dying Light that are supported on Linux but run better on Steam Play. My copy counts as a Linux sale, developers deserve my money as they made the effort to target us and I can play at 60fps on average hardware.
Of course everyone is free to buy and play what he wants. But for those who care about having more games targeting Linux, it's wiser to buy Linux games than windows-only ones.
Last edited by TheBard on 4 April 2019 at 6:58 am UTC
Quoting: TheBardSteam Play is a wonderful thing but we still need two things:
- Linux sales that count as Linux ones and not Windows
- Official Linux support either natively or via Steam Play
It is known since the release of Proton that your game will count as a Linux sale if you play it with Linux.
trawzified Apr 4, 2019
Quoting: kuhpunktI wish it were that simple...Quoting: MayeulCI had a blast with this one, was really surprised at how smoothly it went. However, I agree that I am a bit afraid they might add some anti-cheat and ruin compatibility with Proton.
Anti-Cheat is for competetive games, though. Risk of Rain doesn't need that.
I mean, I agree, but you can find quite a few co-op online games that still force EAC or other stuff upon their users, for reasons I can't quite fathom.
Hopefully, this game doesn't follow that trend, but I'll certainly wait and see before I buy.
Quoting: kuhpunktCorrect. To make this absolutely clear: Steam Play counts as a Linux sale.Quoting: TheBardSteam Play is a wonderful thing but we still need two things:
- Linux sales that count as Linux ones and not Windows
- Official Linux support either natively or via Steam Play
It is known since the release of Proton that your game will count as a Linux sale if you play it with Linux.
When Steam Play was first announced, I got a clear message from Valve about that. See the bottom in this article for confirmation.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: kuhpunktCorrect. To make this absolutely clear: Steam Play counts as a Linux sale.Quoting: TheBardSteam Play is a wonderful thing but we still need two things:
- Linux sales that count as Linux ones and not Windows
- Official Linux support either natively or via Steam Play
It is known since the release of Proton that your game will count as a Linux sale if you play it with Linux.
When Steam Play was first announced, I got a clear message from Valve about that. See the bottom in this article for confirmation.
Do you know if gifts that are mostly played on Linux during the first 2 weeks also count as Linux? Or do they count as whatever platform they were bought from?
sneakeyboard Apr 4, 2019
We'll see. Maybe they'll add it to GoG or itch.
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