For me it didn't get worse...though it didn't get better either.

My problem has been "Cannot initialize renderer" since I switched from nVIDIA to AMD. Apparently compiling Mesa without libglvnd migh help, but haven't gotten around doing that.

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: AnzaCrowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit
Nicest adventure game in this event that I have played.

I didn't play this demo because I'm generally not really into adventure games, but from the trailer it looked really well done and I might put it on the wishlist. I got a good laugh out of the trailer conversation:
"Someone broke into my grandfather's place last night."
"Oh, wow. Is he ok?"
"No, he's dead."
"What?!?"
"No, I mean, he passed away a while back. I'm just here to sell his house."

If you're interested, demo seems to be still available for download. Puzzles are not too difficult. They might make you scratch your head a little, but you should be able to figure out the solution. I have no idea if they will ramp up the difficulty or is the difficulty to be about the same whole game.

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Quoting: RaabenMaybe once a month it will manage to die and need to be restarted.

That's bit too much Pulseaudio compatibility for my taste

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Quoting: AnzaWhat Valve is doing is that they automatically re-encode the videos into free format. And at least these days there's hint that there's a missing video.

Quoting: elmapulno one want "excuses" people want solutions, now, i know why the cutscnes dont work, i just wish people could be informed that they will be missing part of the content by playing on linux so they can make the informed decision of if they care or not about the cut content.
if we cant fix it now, at least let people know that they are playing without the story of the game, so they dont spoil the experience, ask then to wait until this problem is solved and let then know when its fixed.

Too bad that's not how things work. Solutions take time and meantime there will be lot of confused players. Making people aware that that they should care about the cutscenes is not instantly solved. Lot of the reporters don't have interest testing with Windows, only people who are in position to know if something working wrong are the dualbooters. Or people who watch let's plays before playing.

Or at least if the problem is in anything else than the videos. If people know what the placeholder video means, they have chance to to notice that there should have been cutscene or some other kind of video. Placeholder video just won't tell if that video is essential not. I have been just guessing based on the video length (though I'm not totally sure if the placeholder video is displayed as long as the original video would play).

Sometimes the best solution could be that you show good example. That could slowly get people to copy what you are doing, especially if the understand the issue just by seeing your example. In this case, just stating that the videos have been tested might just be enough as long as the testing is simple enough. Maybe little hint how the testing was done also helps.

PS: native games could still have problems with videos and situation might not be as good. I don't think they have the placeholder video so in worst case we're back in square one and would have to pay for Windows license to do the testing properly.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: mr-victory

Quoting: elmapulyou need an comparision point... eg: test it on windows too.
i saw a lot of reports on protonDB from people who never played an particular game saying it run flawless on linux, then you open the game and... where are the cutscenes? where is the video behind the title screen?

If they didn’t notice something is wrong, then Proton did its job nicely

sigh, nope, they never tried the game on windows so they dont know they are missing some features.
some people may not care about missing features, but a lot of people do, especially those who know those features supose to be there.
if we dont fix it, they will go back to windows.

Cutscenes is bit more of an licensing issue. Linux could play them, but Valve can't include the codec because it would eat their profits.

What Valve is doing is that they automatically re-encode the videos into free format. And at least these days there's hint that there's a missing video.

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As event is ending quite soon (which means that many of the demos might vanish), I'll my give my recommendations as a summary.

For the Proton titles, The Wandering Village and IXION are easy to recommend for sure. They have reviews right there in the previous post and another review earlier by Philadelphus.

Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit
Nicest adventure game in this event that I have played.

TFC: The Fertile Crescent
If you're looking for city build and RTS mashup, this seems to win in both genres (if Proton titles are not counted)

Oaken
Pretty enjoyable card battler with hex grid based battles.

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I played the games that people have wishlisted the most and few that I downloaded already earlier. Philadelphus has reviewed both Wandering Village and IXION, I'll just add my own take on them.

The Wandering Village (Proton)
The twist that the city builder is happening on top of a big creature works quite nicely. Creature being on the move adds totally different layer to the gameplay. With right buildings you can control the creature and go on expeditions nearby.

World is also quite hostile, so if you're careful you will kill the creature or your villagers. I haven't finished the demo yet. The poison clouds are still my nemesis, but I know tactic how to minimize the damage. The thing is that disease will spread quite quickly.

Still, it's great. I know it's not native, but this time around finding anything wishlist worthy from natives is bit of a challenge. Only technical issues that I noticed is that Valve hasn't re-encoded the videos. They're not long though, so maybe they don't have anything important.

IXION (Proton)
Nice city builder inside a spaceship mixed in with space exploration. Kind of like Space Haven, but prettier.

Nice touch is that spaceship contains lot of resources that can be reclaimed. Also it's round like a space station .

Performance didn't seem that great, but I did turn all the settings to maximum. Could see what happens if I stick to defaults.

Stardeus
Stardeus also city builder inside a space station. In the demo it largely plays like the other games in the genre, though user interface has nice search, so you don't have navigate through all the menus. I didn't manage to see any automation features in the demo. It's possible that they might be there, demo has two hour time limit and I got bit stuck (which usual for the genre).

If IXION is not an option because it's not native, give this one a go. Though if you have extra time, you could try both.

Tower Offender
Tower offender is tower defense mashed up with platformer. You defend against the heroes and your character is a green pig.

I couldn't get past the tutorial as it's missing button customization and it doesn't list all the controls. If somebody figures out how to switch between trap types, I could give it another go. It might be good, but it's hard to tell.

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat worked. Unfortunately, although it worked, it didn't work. That is, I found the enable-y thing, and it let me download the demo and busily also downloaded Proton and tried to use it and . . . I'm not totally clear from the popups whether it was the demo or Proton itself that didn't happen, but yeah. Demo did not happen. Oh well. Thanks though--clearly in theory you gave me exactly the correct advice.

No worries. You said it was IXION you wanted to try, right? You might try forcing it to use Proton Experimental (if you didn't set that when you enabled its use for everything)—IXION itself didn't require it for me, but there were a few demos I downloaded that didn't run until I forced them to use it. And hey, at least you've got it next time you feel like trying a Windows-only demo.

You might accidentally anyway download the Windows demos. As usual some games have set the native version visible for the front page, but they don't actually have it yet. Or the game is native, but demo isn't native.

Usually I would be playing only native games, but I was playing Control and had the setting already enabled. I will give IXION a try as my plan for today is to play few of the most wishlisted games. Natives so far haven't had the most innovative games (though Liams list could have few, I haven't tried them all yet)

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMakes me think . . . they make consoles to sell more games, they make games to sell more hardware. Does anyone ever make a thing just to sell that thing, any more?

IKEA? Or perhaps they have a stake in marriage counselling?

Bit offtopic, but isn't IKEA making furniture to be able to sell more meatballs? Or was it other way around? They might make more money from marriage counselling though...

If I would want to smooth jump back to the topic, rings are used to mark that people are married. Which would awkwardly lead me to Elden Ring...

The meatballs came much later, for the first 24 years they only sold furniture.

No company perfects their business plans right away

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Today I have more time, so I could try more demos than during the week.

Elemental War 2
Element War 2 is tower defense game that places emphasis on elements (as kind of can be guessed from the name). Launching demo throws error message about online functionalities right at the start, but as far as I know, it just means that leaderboard don't work.

Demo throws so many hints at once that I missed how the elements are supposed to work. Tutorial also go into state where I could build new towers or scroll.

One you start the main mission things start work better. Defeating elementals in order to unlock new towers and upgrades is nice variation to the tower defense formula. In addition to element, tower types have different range, damage and alike.

Could be fun if they would spend more effort into to the tutorial. Not straight to wishlist material, but there's some potential.

Crystal Plague (Proton)
Crystal Plague is dungeon crawler with very small dungeons. After each dungeon you have to pick a curse, so if you though the game is easy, it's really not. The dungeon end screens are quite buggy. Skill upgrades screen doesn't properly, but if you try to dismiss once, you can move and if you align yourself with the portal correctly, you can progress. Demo has two characters with different set of skills.

First Parsec
First Parsec seems to be space dogfight game. User interface is quite minimum, but you do get status updates when your shields deplete. And missiles won't fire when you have run out of them. Music is also nice.

Problem is that game doesn't bring much new that hasn't done many times in other games. Other games have also many other things going on, First Parsec based on the store page is only about the fights. Though if that's exactly what you're looking for First Parsec might have some potential. Alternatively you could just download the demo if you want to have fun. Just be warned that second mission ramps up the difficulty quite a lot.

Chill Panda
This is something you can find, when you don't look too closely at the store description. I played it anyway.

Chill Panda is game that teaches relaxation to children. I'm looking things from gaming perspective as I'm more familiar with that.

Chill Panda sprinkles in relaxation exercises. Most of the time exercises can be skipped. Otherwise gameplay is mostly about collecting coins (you can buy furniture to your house with them) and doing fetch quests. Also at the same time you can get mildly creeped out with the panda models and voice acting.

Performance is not that good and there are several bugs. Player character went invisible inside the cave, there's at least one quick way to fill the chill meter. Basically when you get out of labyrinth, you chill meter fill up as a reward. The thing is that you can go in and out of the labyrinth and you get the reward every time.

For kids there's potential as they might overlook the issues. And collecting things is kind of fun and for kids it might be something new.

Circle of Kerzoven
Circle of Kerzoven is city builder in similar style than Settlers. It's still in alpha stage and it shows in few things. Tutorial doesn't hold your hand, it just tells what to build. After a while it starts to assume that you know what other buildings you need to build in order to build the building tutorial asks you to build.

I run into issues where I couldn't figure out why buildings weren't producing materials. I could figure out that I can rearrange priorities, but for some reason only for some people. I gave up at that point and there's you can't save in the demo.

All in all, at the moment game seems to be for city builder veterans. Store page mentions deeper nature simulation. That alone might not be enough differentiate it.

If I remember, I should maybe still take another look.

Intruder in Antiquonia
Intruder in Antiquonia is adventure game, though based on demo, focus seems to be on the story. Plotwise it seems to be aiming for bit more serious tone. If you need to fill your amnesia mystery fix, try it out. Plot will keep you hanging though until Q2 though.

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