Quoting: averyvhofc I am running the game executable itself. When you download the game from HB that is the file that is downloaded, they don't give you an installer or archive. Volgarr the Viking is an archive, however, but does not work either.

HB just provides the downloads. The actual format seems to be completely up to the individual developers. In any case, it would be much easier to help you if you provided the exact terminal output from trying to launch the game. It is very likely you are simply missing a few libraries.

Quoting: tuubiHB just provides the downloads. The actual format seems to be completely up to the individual developers. In any case, it would be much easier to help you if you provided the exact terminal output from trying to launch the game. It is very likely you are simply missing a few libraries.

already did a couple posts ago: http://imgur.com/x16cU9i
exact terminal output is literally this (from all the games that don't run): bash: ./filename: no such file or directory

Ah, sorry! I completely missed that post on the previous page. This is indeed beyond weird. Google finds several old threads around the net with the exact same problem, and in every case it's about missing 32bit libraries despite the misleading error messages. But as the threads are outdated, the fixes won't work unmodified.

Let's try this: GOG's page for Volgarr lists these dependencies: libc6:i386, libasound2:i386, libasound2-data:i386, libasound2-plugins:i386, libsdl2-2.0-0:i386. You can install them with: sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libasound2:i386 libasound2-data:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386

Can you try that?

I think tuubi is in the right direction. I just read this same problem description and it seems reasonable.

If after installing the libraries as proposed by tuubi you still get errors, you can try this:
ldd Volgarr and see if it tells you what is missing.

what is the output of
cat ./Volgarr

After installing the packages tuubi listed then supermeatboy and vvvvvv worked but volgarr the viking still did not. Which is bizarre since those are the dependencies required for Volgarr.
Fortunately I found this: https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/202759400-Installing-32-bit-libs-on-a-64-bit-Linux-system
after installing a bazillion things all the games work now! Thanks everyone!