Designed and developed by Bearded Giant Games, Space Mercs is an extreme arcade space combat game like some of the classics and it's out now with Linux support.
As a reminder, Bearded Giant Games have been developing Space Mercs entirely on Linux with the Unity game engine. Working from a low-powered Notebook, they've put a special amount of attention into the optimizations so it should work great across a huge variety of systems. It certainly does look good, with an impressive atmosphere to it!
Feature Highlight:
- Huge, real-time, space ship battles, with up to hundreds of spaceships on screen at the same time
- Mission battles range from small (3-10 ships) and scale up into the gigantic sector wide battles (400-500 ships)
- Single-player campaign where the stakes increase with every mission
- Thousands of projectiles on screen at every time
- Consistent graphics and performance even on really low hardware specs
- Shooter-style control and flight system optimized for Keyboard and Gamepad use
- Instant battle mode where you are thrown in a procedural generated battle of epic scales
- Loadout system for ship weaponry and internal systems
- Coffee-break design where you can pickup and play in short 3 to 10 minute sessions
- Functional cockpit display
As a surprise feature announced along with the release, Space Mercs includes a Battle Designer. Once you complete the main missions, it will allow you to make custom battles to participate in with up to 4000 ships. The developer provided some interesting screenshots taken from that mode (click to enlarge):
If you enjoy classic arcade space action, Space Mercs should be on your radar. It would be worth reading their release info post, which contains a few extra important bits of info (especially for owners of an AMD Vega GPU). Also, do check out our previous interview with Bearded Giant Games here.
You can find Space Mercs on Steam. With an itch.io release due later.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
This dev has knocked it out of the park in terms of engagement, approach and results. It's been a pleasure following his progress on Twitter. Insta-buy.
3 Likes, Who?
Dev out celebrating release. Takes time to respond personally on discord to Q.
Legend.
Purchased ^_^
Legend.
Purchased ^_^
5 Likes, Who?
Sweet af game, make sure to leave a review on Steam if you pick it up! ^_^
1 Likes, Who?
Para-Gliding 2 Aug 2019
Sweet af game, make sure to leave a review on Steam if you pick it up! ^_^and to us ;)
0 Likes
Instant purchase! Going to play now...
Hope you have more luck than me - does not work for me.
I still use a 5:4 screen and game starts in windowed mode - no native resolution support:(
Game hangs on start.
Currently I have no time to look deeper into that.
Last edited by johndoe on 2 Aug 2019 at 9:07 pm UTC
0 Likes
Runs for me, but won't let me use my full resolution and won't let me use mouse... Oddly, both of those were fine in the beta. Will let them know...Instant purchase! Going to play now...
Hope you have more luck than me - does not work for me.
I still use a 5:4 screen and game starts in windowed mode - no native resolution support:(
Game hangs on start.
Currently I have no time to look deeper into that.
0 Likes
I Insta-buy it. I have some bugs, which all are listed in "Bugs and Issues - report them here" topic in discussions on steam, but it is first day and it's excellent game.
New game and my GPU is "slightly" overkill :-D Good to see.
Liam, can you please try new interview with him after month or two? I'd like to know linux/windows sales ratio and there can be more interesting info, thanks.
New game and my GPU is "slightly" overkill :-D Good to see.
Liam, can you please try new interview with him after month or two? I'd like to know linux/windows sales ratio and there can be more interesting info, thanks.
1 Likes, Who?
linuxfiend 2 Aug 2019
Looks cool but can I use a joystick? KB and mouse just aren't the same.
1 Likes, Who?
Joystick and gamepad should work fine.
Mouse is disabled at the moment as Zapa had some problems getting it working properly in-game, even though it works in the editor. Just Unity things...
Owners of Vega cards may have issues with volumetric fog not rendering correctly, if you can't see any asteroids or ships, disable Foggle for now. (or use Proton, that runs perfectly too) Expect a fog fix coming soon.
Bearded Giant Discord, if you want in: https://discord.gg/UyVJKY4
Mouse is disabled at the moment as Zapa had some problems getting it working properly in-game, even though it works in the editor. Just Unity things...
Owners of Vega cards may have issues with volumetric fog not rendering correctly, if you can't see any asteroids or ships, disable Foggle for now. (or use Proton, that runs perfectly too) Expect a fog fix coming soon.
Bearded Giant Discord, if you want in: https://discord.gg/UyVJKY4
1 Likes, Who?
I don't recall hearing of this, and it's not my usual genre... but it's not expensive, has day one Linux support and looks good for a casual pew pew in between other things.
Bought.
Bought.
0 Likes
Hey guys, thank you for your support! For those asking, so far, Linux sales are 30% from the total of 135 since the game released! I hope it stays like that during the first month because I'm looking to write an article on Game development on Linux and for Linux and toot the high number.
The usual number you hear thrown around is 3-5% of the copies sold, and it might be true for really big games. But small indies like me can benefit a ton from supporting Linux!
Edit: Linux is more. What's 54 out of 135? (goes and brews coffee)
Last edited by Zapa on 3 Aug 2019 at 6:54 am UTC
The usual number you hear thrown around is 3-5% of the copies sold, and it might be true for really big games. But small indies like me can benefit a ton from supporting Linux!
Edit: Linux is more. What's 54 out of 135? (goes and brews coffee)
Last edited by Zapa on 3 Aug 2019 at 6:54 am UTC
16 Likes, Who?
Hey guys, thank you for your support! For those asking, so far, Linux sales are 30% from the total of 135 since the game released! I hope it stays like that during the first month because I'm looking to write an article on Game development on Linux and for Linux and toot the high number.54 sales from Linux in a single night, that's more than some see across a month. Lovely to see.
The usual number you hear thrown around is 3-5% of the copies sold, and it might be true for really big games. But small indies like me can benefit a ton from supporting Linux!
Edit: Linux is more. What's 54 out of 135? (goes and brews coffee)
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 3 Aug 2019 at 8:22 am UTC
4 Likes, Who?
I just bought the game and kept failing the first real mission. Took me a few tries to complete it but when I did I was like, "YES!" Usually when I play these sorts of games I fail and quit almost right away, so I'd say that is a sign of a well made game!
Last edited by herc on 3 Aug 2019 at 8:14 am UTC
Last edited by herc on 3 Aug 2019 at 8:14 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
I just bought the game and kept failing the first real mission. Took me a few tries to complete it but when I did I was like, "YES!" Usually when I play these sorts of games I fail and quit almost right away, so I'd say that is a sign of a well made game!Can I quote you on this on twitter? <3!
Best thing I heard all day :D
5 Likes, Who?
I just bought the game and kept failing the first real mission. Took me a few tries to complete it but when I did I was like, "YES!" Usually when I play these sorts of games I fail and quit almost right away, so I'd say that is a sign of a well made game!Can I quote you on this on twitter? <3!
Best thing I heard all day :D
Sure thing!
1 Likes, Who?
What a totally fun game. Steam Controller works right away in-game, which is nice. I guess it's planned to add controller support to the menu in the future? Also the sound was set to 0% on the first load, so I thought that there was a problem with the sound at first. Is that intentional?
Nice game - nice price - go get it!
Nice game - nice price - go get it!
3 Likes, Who?
...Edit: Linux is more. What's 54 out of 135? (goes and brews coffee)
Well it's definitely more than 54
I also promised to buy it. Runs great on my GTX970. Very nice ^_^
0 Likes
Hey guys, thank you for your support! For those asking, so far, Linux sales are 30% from the total of 135 since the game released! I hope it stays like that during the first month because I'm looking to write an article on Game development on Linux and for Linux and toot the high number.54 sales from Linux in a single night, that's more than some see across a month. Lovely to see.
The usual number you hear thrown around is 3-5% of the copies sold, and it might be true for really big games. But small indies like me can benefit a ton from supporting Linux!
Edit: Linux is more. What's 54 out of 135? (goes and brews coffee)
Update from Discord:
"So we sold 190 units so far. Linux accounts for 46% of them (GO LINUX)"
3 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
How to set, change and reset your SteamOS / Steam Deck desktop sudo password
How to set up Decky Loader on Steam Deck / SteamOS for easy plugins
See more from me