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The Linux GOTY Award 2019 is now over, there were thousands of votes across many categories and we have the winners in so it's time to show the top five for each group. All groups are ordered from highest to lowest votes but it's safe to say they're all popular.

Starting off with the FOSS categories:

Favourite FOSS Project

Proton (Compatibility tool)
DXVK
Godot Engine
Wine
Blender

 

Favourite FOSS game engine reimplementation

OpenMW
ScummVM
OpenRA
ZDoom (GZDoom)
OpenTTD

 

Favourite FOSS game

SuperTuxKart
0 A.D.
Battle for Wesnoth
Mindustry
Xonotic

 

Best visual style for a FOSS game

0 A.D.
SuperTuxKart
Xonotic
Mindustry
Red Eclipse 2

 

Now we're going to move onto the "Support" section of the voting:

Best DLC release of 2019

Surviving Mars: Green Planet
Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm
Stellaris: Ancient Relics Story Pack
Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Road to the Black Sea
BATTLETECH Heavy Metal

 

Best update received in 2019

Black Mesa
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
The Long Dark
Factorio
Slay the Spire

 

Favourite long-term supported game

Dying Light
Stardew Valley
Stellaris
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Euro Truck Simulator 2

 

Now we're moving onto the main categories which is where it gets quite exciting!

Favourite Developer

Feral Interactive
Valve
Ethan Lee
Paradox Development Studio
Klei Entertainment

 

Best game release of 2019 to play with your kids

SuperTuxKart
Shotgun Farmers
Streets of Rogue
Pikuniku
Knights And Bikes

 

Best short game of 2019

Dicey Dungeons
A Short Hike
Space Mercs
Hive Time
Pilgrims

 

Best storytelling from 2019

Life is Strange 2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Trüberbrook - A Nerd Saves the World
Little Misfortune
Indivisible

 

Most impressive soundtrack in a 2019 release

Life is Strange 2
Ion Fury
DUSK
Slay the Spire
Dicey Dungeons

 

Most innovative gameplay for a 2019 release

Baba Is You
Slay the Spire
Oxygen Not Included
Dicey Dungeons
X4: Foundations

 

Most promising Early Access game for Linux available in 2019

Black Mesa
Jupiter Hell
Dota Underlords
Volcanoids
Last Epoch

 

Overall best visual style for a game release in 2019

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Ion Fury
Oxygen Not Included
X4: Foundations
A Short Hike

 

Absolute favourite game for Linux released in 2019

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Slay the Spire
Ion Fury
Oxygen Not Included
Life is Strange 2

 

Our GOTY Page will be kept open for a while for those who wish to see the full details.

Some seriously hot competition across the categories included this year! Congratulations to all the winners and to every single item nominated.

Thank you to everyone who participated and shared the page around. It's always a good bit of fun to see what people have enjoyed the most. See you again next year for another round and let's see if we can make a bigger splash. We are planning a few changes for next time too, both categories (fewer and more focused) and the mechanics of it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: GOTY
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15 comments

WorMzy Feb 8, 2020
Maybe make the closing date a Sunday next year so you get the weekend off :P

Some good games, tools and developers up there!
Liam Dawe Feb 8, 2020
Maybe make the closing date a Sunday next year so you get the weekend off :P
It's fine, I only had to fix 2 bugs which created another 99 bugs to make this all possible. Saturdays eh?
NeoTheFox Feb 8, 2020
Yay, DUSK made it into best OST! Nice to see enough games to compile this whole list, looking forward to 2020
thykr Feb 9, 2020
FOSS game engine reimplementation: you really should have picked OpenRCT2 (RollerCoaster Tycoon) https://openrct2.org/ and CorsixTH (Theme Hospital) https://github.com/corsixth/corsixth
tmtvl Feb 9, 2020
FOSS game engine reimplementation: you really should have picked OpenRCT2 (RollerCoaster Tycoon) https://openrct2.org/ and CorsixTH (Theme Hospital) https://github.com/corsixth/corsixth

Submissions are open to the general public before voting, so anyone can add whatever they feel is appropriate.
TheSHEEEP Feb 9, 2020
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Nice to see Ion Fury ranks generally high among the votes.

A bit surprised to see Tomb Raider in the first place, as it bored me rather quickly and I couldn't even get more than 10 hours in.
But that was mostly due to the game being pretty much a carbon copy of the previous game (with some improvements) and there's only so much I can take of that formula within a few years it seems...
tonR Feb 9, 2020
Ok with most result except Favourite long-term supported game. Should be Stardew Valley. :P

Nevertheless, for me it's fine, not bad.
kaiman Feb 9, 2020
A bit disappointed that Pillars of Eternity II didn't even make the top 5 of Best 2019 update. That's when Obsidian officially added turn based mode, which basically changed it into a completely different game; and a much better one at that, IMO.
Liam Dawe Feb 9, 2020
A bit disappointed that Pillars of Eternity II didn't even make the top 5 of Best 2019 update. That's when Obsidian officially added turn based mode, which basically changed it into a completely different game; and a much better one at that, IMO.
Probably a mix of things, but mostly the game as a whole did not sell well and people largely forgot about it.
kaiman Feb 9, 2020
Probably a mix of things, but mostly the game as a whole did not sell well and people largely forgot about it.
Wonder how much the setting is to blame for that. I didn't like it too much either, but at least it was a deviation from the typical medieval European inspired fantasy. But even then, PoE II wasn't to PoE what Baldur's Gate 2 was to Baldur's Gate. Maybe expectations were a bit too high.
einherjar Feb 9, 2020
Yay! X4: Foundations appearing in two categories... :D

Yes, a great game. But TBH I am wondering, why it in the "Most innovative gameplay for a 2019 release".

I would have been happy to see it in the "Absolute favourite game for Linux released in 2019" - all the games there, are not that interesting to me.
Salvatos Feb 9, 2020
I abstained from voting in several categories because i play too few games to have a good overall idea of what games are better than others.
At the end of the day, these types of awards are just popularity contests anyway. I didn’t know anything about most of the games listed, nor why they were suggested for any particular category. I assume the same is true to some degree for most people.
g000h Feb 9, 2020
Just want to say that I'm sorry I neither nominated nor voted on any of these games. I have a reason for that: It is that I don't play enough recent games titles or enough variety of games to feel I can make a good and meaningful contribution. The only contribution I feel I can make is when I've played a game for a decent amount of time, and then feel that it is worth recommending to others.

Over the past year, 2019, I've played these native Linux games which I'd recommend:

Slay The Spire
Fate Hunters
FTL: Faster Than Light
7 Days To Die
Crypt of the Necrodancer
Dicey Dungeons
UnExplored
Tesla vs Lovecraft
Islanders
omer666 Feb 9, 2020
To be honest, I didn't vote this year because most things I've been playing were on Proton+DXVK. Truly groundbreaking technology, it deserves its first place as the most meaningful open source project of the year!


Last edited by omer666 on 9 February 2020 at 9:44 pm UTC
Ehvis Feb 10, 2020
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To be honest, I didn't vote this year because most things I've been playing were on Proton+DXVK. Truly groundbreaking technology, it deserves its first place as the most meaningful open source project of the year!

It's a slightly difficult one though. Proton is not just its own project, but the result of quite a few others. Including the very important part, the Steam client that had it integrated for easy use. I voted DXVK myself because I found it technically impressive and I believe that it was a catalyst for a lot of development. In fact, I doubt Proton would have existed without it.
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