It's that time of year again! Like last time, it's time to share your favourite games that you played on Linux this year.

The games don't need to have been released this year, they just need to be playable on Linux in some way - whether that's an emulated 1985 Famicom game, a 1990s Windows release played through a compatibility-layer or an engine-replacement, or a 2023 native Linux title, it's all about your favourite gaming experiences on our OS of choice throughout this year.

What were your top games in 2023? Share away!

These are mine, starting with my personal game-of-the-year, which isn't going to remotely surprise anybody on GOL who knows me.

Pengling's Game of the Year

Super Bomberman R 2 (Proton)
After several years of disappointments contributed to me leaving consoles behind, it was beyond refreshing for a game that I'd eagerly waited for to actually deliver - and in spades, too! A new entry in the long under-served maze-chase genre, Super Bomberman R 2 sees Bomberman and his eccentric siblings - a family of cute bomb-making robots who act as heroic protectors of the universe, otherwise known as the "Super Bomberman Rangers" (all perfectly-cast, and perfectly hitting the series' long-lived Saturday-morning-cartoon/animated-movie feel in the comic-book-styled cutscenes) - return to prevent a mysterious force from ending all of existence. Of course, all of the famous multiplayer modes return as well, along with a new addition called Castle, which is basically like the comedic Japanese gameshow Takeshi's Castle, but with added bombs.

I waited for 15 months for this game to release - the longest that I've ever waited for any game - and as soon as it was out, it gripped me like nothing else ever has, and it still hasn't let go. I'll be playing this one for years to come, and it turned out to be a fitting release for the Bomberman series' 40th anniversary, too!

And now for the best of the rest! Here we go;


Ape Out (Proton)
A procedurally-generated modern maze-chase game where a powerful-but-outnumbered gorilla must survive and escape from numerous scenarios. The game does a great job of making you feel mighty (you can easily reduce enemy humans to a bloody splatter), whilst also challenging you because you're outgunned - literally! The jazzy soundtrack responds to your actions, and also ties in with the game's striking art-style - each "world" is instead an "album", complete with record-sleeve art. Even though it can be quite difficult, it has that classic "One more go!" feel to it, and that keeps hold of you right until the very end, when the game pulls out all the stops for a super-difficult bonus stage which is unlocked after you've beaten everything else. And as if that's not enough, it got a charming NES-style Donkey Kong Jr.-inspired sequel in the form of Ape Out Jr., found in the parody-game compilation, Devolver Bootleg.


Bomberman Hero (Nintendo 64; Emulated)
The only 3D platformer in the Bomberman series; I didn't expect a lot out of this one because I don't enjoy 3D-platformers 99% of the time. However, Bomberman Hero pleasantly surprised me by having that lightning-in-a-bottle combination of good handling, fun moves, fitting animations, and good game-design that adds up to a great experience regardless of genre. As far as the gameplay goes, thankfully this one hews closer to titles like Crash Bandicoot and Croc: Legend of the Gobbos by opting for boxed-in and usually bite-sized levels instead of having you repeatedly revisit large barren spaces, and it also has a selection of brief jetpack, propeller, submarine, and snowboard stages, so as to break up the platforming that makes up most of the game. It's got a lot of personality and charm, and is also a little bit of a Star Wars tribute here and there (keeping in mind that the remastered versions of the original trilogy were a recent big deal when this game was made). It lives up to its name by really nailing the feeling of tagging along on one of Bomberman's solo hero-missions! It would be great to see a new installment like this, made with modern game-design sensibilities, and including the rest of Bomberman's family to add even more variety.


Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PlayStation; Emulated)
Every 100 years, the eldest child of the Belmont clan is fated to fight and defeat Count Dracula when he returns to life - but not this time! Instead, Richter Belmont chooses to side with Dracula, and it falls to a man named Alucard - Dracula's son who has rebelled against his father's evil ways - to investigate, put things right, and defeat Dracula this time around. This is the game that singlehandedly created the "Metroidvania" subgenre, by combining Konami's Castlevania with elements of Nintendo's Metroid series, and though I'm usually not a fan of Metroidvania titles, this is one of the rare ones that I found to be well-designed and to have good landmarks with which to find your way around the vast setting. It also controls really well and just feels plain fun to play, and the feeling of progression as Alucard grows more powerful and learns various transformations makes you feel like a real hero - I can't even quibble with the difficulty being lower than in past titles, because a lot of those were simply unreasonable in their design, and the series putting that behind it was a good thing. An absolute must-play.


Doom (1993) (Proton)
The vast majority of first-person games give me motion-sickness, so I only experienced the original Doom for the first time by a playing a little bit at a time after getting it in a mystery Steam-key bundle. I ended up absolutely loving it (and am currently working my way through the second game in the same way) - the action is fun and well-paced, and mostly flows really well, occasionally broken up by some mazes and the like, and the atmosphere and design of the whole thing was simply great. It was really fun to finally see why Doom is considered such an important and damn-near-timeless game, and the strong, comic-bookish art-direction has helped it to age really well visually, too.


Downwell (Proton)
A procedurally-generated roguelite downward-platformer, Downwell sees a guy dive into a well in search of treasure, with only a pair of Gunboots for defense against what's below. When airborne, you have a limited number of shots that you can use, and these are replenished when you touch the ground again. Your goal is to progress as far as possible, whilst gathering upgrades to aid you on your quest, and collecting gems. The minimalist art-style is charming in a Game Boy-ish sort of way, and there are various palettes to unlock (including ones that are a nod to both the Game Boy and the Super Game Boy add-on for the SNES). It's very addictive, and considering how cheap it is even when it's not in a sale, it's well worth picking up for playing in short bursts when you have a few free moments. Also, like Ape Out, above, Downwell got a NES-style sequel, Shootyboots, in the Devolver Bootleg compilation.


Frog Detective 1 + 2 + 3 (Proton)
A silly little trilogy of short detective-game spoofs, featuring a frog as a detective, hence the name. Each game is a chilled-out and family-friendly parody of the detective genre, with simple puzzles and amusing, tongue-in-cheek writing, coupled with proper detective-movie-sounding music as a counterpoint to the goofy concept. Frog Detective himself is a charming and somewhat self-deprecating fellow, and you'll definitely grow attached to him and the oddball people that he meets over the course of his adventures. The third game wraps up the trilogy nicely - and has the artistic integrity to be the end of the story instead of driving it into the ground with further unnecessary follow-ups. The games all cost only a few pounds or so, and only have a short runtime of about 30 minutes to one hour each, so they're a great fit if you just want something quick to play, too.


FUR Squadron (Proton)
One of several Star Fox-like games to appear on the market after Nintendo stopped making that series, FUR Squadron puts its own cast of humanoid-animal-pilots into a setting not often seen in this type of rail-shooter: Metal Gear Solid-style VR training! The story sees Blaze Mustela (ferret), Kiro Nax (fruit-bat/flying-fox), and Axel Mex (axolotl) training during peace-time to face off against a potential future threat, only for things to go terribly wrong, leaving the pilots having to find a way out of being trapped in their own training simulation. It has a cool-looking vapourwave aesthetic and nice character artwork, and the lowest difficulty-setting makes for a nice, short-but-sweet game, with the higher ones being much more challenging. It pays tribute to Star Fox whilst also being its own thing, and has done well enough that a prequel, titled FUR Squadron Phoenix, is now in the works.


Layers of Fear (2016) (Native Linux, but you might want to use Proton to avoid both cosmetic and gameplay-impacting rendering bugs in the native version)
Venture into a twisted, ever-changing mansion in order to try to uncover the unsettling past of a painter who's trying to complete his magnum opus. The game is mainly a walking-simulator, so it's quite low-stress for a horror-game, with the main scares coming from unsettling visions and flashbacks, and some well-implemented minor jump-scares. Before you begin, you're told "This may be our game, but it is your journey.", which is a great way of describing the whole experience.


Mia and the Dragon Princess (Proton)
A modern FMV-game that plays out as an hour-long action-movie. In it, ordinary London barmaid Mia is dragged into an adventure when a mysterious woman with possible links to a lost pirate treasure turns up at the same time as a group of thugs trying to find that treasure are trying to get Mia's boss to sell his bar. There are several branching story-paths and different endings to unlock depending on the choices that you make at key points in the story, and after your first playthrough you get a handy Story Tree option in the main menu in order to keep track of this. The acting is good, the story is fun and knows when to double down on the action or add light-hearted humour, and it's fun to see what the different options will lead to. Mia and the Dragon Princess is completely different to the FMV-games that we saw on the likes of the TurboCD and Mega CD a few decades ago, and is well worth experiencing.


Pizza Tower (Proton)
The best platformer featuring an Italian protagonist in many years, hands down! Pizza Tower sees pizzeria-owner Peppino Spaghetti scaling the titular tower in order to save his business from destruction by the evil giant floating pizza, Pizzaface. It's well-tuned with tight controls, and is inspired strongly by the later entries in Nintendo's now-abandoned Wario Land series, plus influences from various 1990s cartoons and comics, giving it a surreal and chaotic feel all its own. It plays great, it feels great, it sounds great, and it's designed great. Unforgettable.


Placid Plastic Duck Simulator (Proton)
This silly little game does exactly what it says on the tin - you get to experience life from the perspective of fun toy ducks in various chilled-out themed swimming-pools. It's bizarrely compelling for a completely passive game, and watching out for unique interactions between particular types of ducks and trying to collect them all is fun to fill a few minutes here and there. The game is super-cheap, and so are its DLC packs, which periodically come along and add a bunch more ducks to the game. It's very much a spiritual successor to titles such as Little Computer People, Dogz, and MOPy Fish.


SegaSonic The Hedgehog (Arcade; Emulated)
I was fascinated by this trackball-driven 1993 arcade-game as a kid, as it got a bit of press coverage but didn't get a wide release. A cabinet existed in the UK, originally in Bournemouth and then later moved to London, but when I visited those locations it was out-of-commission each time! I finally got to play it in emulated form this year, and it didn't disappoint - you pick from one of three characters (Sonic The Hedgehog, Ray the Flying Squirrel, or Mighty the Armadillo), and have to try to escape from a trap-laden island. It supports up to three players, and actually handles surprisingly well with a d-pad under emulation (trying to use analogue inputs caused problems for me, so I gave up on that). It's a short-but-sweet and very charming game that was well worth the 30-year wait to play!


Super Destronaut DX (Proton)
After being disappointed to discover that Square-Enix-owned Taito didn't bother to release Space Invaders Invincible Collection/Space Invaders Forever on Steam (they only released Space Invaders Extreme there a long time ago, but that one doesn't appeal to me), I opted to pick up this low-cost indie title instead, and I was really glad that I did! Super Destronaut DX has an appealing retrowave aesthetic with fitting music, and adds some new twists to the Invaders formula, such as different aliens having different weapon-types, alien ships sometimes falling out of the sky after defeat so that you can shoot them again repeatedly for additional points, and crashed ships sometimes littering the ground which you have to avoid whilst also avoiding enemy fire. In addition to its standard arcade-mode, it also has a selection of increasingly-difficult challenges, which ultimately get into addictive teeth-grindingly-annoying-but-still-really-fun "One more go! I swear I'll get it this time!" territory, but don't outstay their welcome. It must have done well, as it has an upcoming first-person sequel, Super Destronaut Land Wars, on the way, too! It's well worth your time if you want a Space Invaders-style game with a modern twist. The only gotcha is that, if playing on a Steam Deck, you'll need to set the resolution to 1280x720 the first time that you run it, instead of the 1280x800 that it defaults to, or else the game will be slightly zoomed-in and certain elements will get cut off at the sides of the screen.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (Native Linux)
A modern beat-'em-up with slick pixel-art, set in the universe of the 1980s/1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, where you take your pick from various popular characters and prevent Shredder from carrying out his revenge, as the title suggests. The presentation is amazing, in-game and out, even down to the game opening out with a modern re-recording of the iconic theme-song with newly-produced traditional animation to go with it, and all of the original voice-actors returning to their classic roles! The gameplay is equally polished and smooth, playing out like you remember the games of old playing, even if some of those no longer quite live up to the memories. An absolute must if you enjoy the genre!