After an initial release in early September, Draknek & Friends have now put up a Linux build of their absolutely gorgeous puzzle game A Monster's Expedition. Created by some of the same talent behind other great games like A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, which our contributor flesk called a "must-have" in a previous review.
It's an open-world styled puzzle game where you walk around little islands, pushing around trees to create paths between them and learn about the history of "humanity". Seems this is set in the far future, as the idea is you're learning about "the mythical humans from the perspective of curious monsters".
Check out the trailer:
Direct Link
It seems the initial lack of a Linux build was due to a Unity game engine issue with FMOD. A problem a lot of developers saw with Unity 2019.3 and newer which Linux porter Ethan Lee talked about on Twitter. Lee mentioned they shared the fix with Draknek & Friends so the Linux build of A Monster's Expedition went up.
After one of the developers, Alan Hazelden, sent word to us about the release yesterday I've been playing through it without issues and it is absolutely wonderful. You walk from island to island, reading the various plaques you find to hilariously explain things these humans from "Englandland" did. It just keeps getting better the further you go into it, although it does get quite challenging.
This open-world approach is pretty sweet too. Giving you the ability to go off in a few different directions, so if you're stuck in one part you can take a walk and see some sights somewhere else. Thankfully, keeping it all chilled you can reset step by step on and island or refresh your current island if you get stuck.
Such a ridiculously calming game and a thoroughly charming experience. You can buy it from Humble Store, itch.io and Steam.
Anyone who has been playing the game on Proton should make sure they back up their progress though, as Steam seems to wipe cloud saves from Proton when a native version is released:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/7464
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