Quoting: CatKiller

QuoteFor people who are still somehow yet to play through Half-Life 2 and the episodes, perhaps this Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection might end up being the best way.

I haven't. I loved the first one to bits, but I never got very far in the second one. I gave it a shot a couple of times, but I just couldn't get into a groove with it.

It has some pacing issues. The sewer chapter (also known as Route Kanal) at the beginning of the game is way too long (I think developers even admitted to that somewhere). It's trying to keep things interesting, but if you don't know what you're doing, you'll get confused multiple times and it might take hours to complete the chapter.

It's bit of a shame that it might make people quit the game as the coolest things are introduced after that. Pace literally gets faster in the chapter after Route Kanal.

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Bit of a shame that native ones are available only in full bundle. Could try Luck be a Landlord demo though.

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I remember that before GamingOnLinux, there wasn't much. I think I browsed Linux Game Tome now and then, but was pretty much it.

GamingOnLinux has been clearly filling a void and while there's now some some competition out there, GamingOnLinux is putting more effort into the content and it really shows.

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Quoting: MakiNote that the original games and the enhanced are also listed as Windows only on Steam. Excepting System Shock 2 which also has Mac support. So I'm not expecting a Linux release unless it's made abundantly clear by them that they're working on it.

System Shock 2 used to be officially supported, though it was just a Wine wrapper. It didn't matter though as game worked.

I tried launching and it didn't work, I didn't check why.

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For me the performance was horrible, so I didn't finish the demo content. Looked nice though.

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Some leftover demos from the festival where the demos were still available and Railway Empire

With Railway Empire I have gotten little bit of frustrating point where better planning starts to be necessary, I haven't just necessarily found out all the best ways to do things. Signalling seems to be bit simplistic compared to OpenTTD, but scenarios are fun so far. It was in Humble Choice quite while back and I finally chose it and activated the license. I it seems I was right that I might spend quite several hours with it.

As for demos, all thee seem to have still the demo available. Vagabond Starship is adventure game that's mashup between sci-fi and fantasy tropes. It's at least mildly funny and some of the puzzles seem to give some challenge (which might be the reason why I didn't finish it). Seems to need some more polish still.

Tiny Planet Protectors. Name does explain the premise the game quite clearly. I got confused right at the second planet. Maybe vacuuming planets clean of everything is not enough. How the astronaut waters plants is quite creative though.

Bots Are Stupid. This one is platformer merged with a programming game. Practically lot of time can go into figuring out how long the bot has to wait until next action should be started (luckily I learned that instead of seconds, you can also wait frames). There's plenty of wait while and wait until constructs, but they don't cover all the scenarios. Cool concept though.

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Quoting: WorMzyAnyone else having issues with the "Steam Labs experiment 012" sales explorer not finding any results if they select Linux from the platform options?

I'm not 100% sure how you have selected the platform, but the default sales page for me is mainly Linux games at the top, more Windows games closer to bottom. I have no idea if that's by accident or not.

I have Linux set in the store settings, so widgets that do the filtering properly have only Linux games.

If I select Linux from category menu, all games seem to have Linux support as far as I can see.

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Demos I tried today.

Panic Mode
In short you're in charge of keeping idiots secure. Demo basically is just four levels in which building is on fire. There's only three devices available that you can use to get either fire little bit under control or get people to leave the building.

Idea might be good, but demo is so short and simple that it's hard to tell if game is going to be actually good or not.

Fantasy Town Regional Manager
Games is pretty much what you can deduct from the name. Idea is to try to balance food, housing and defense of your town. Each turn you get to buy buildings of three randomly selected buildings. To spice things up, each round there's news (where you can possibly select outcome of the story) and randomly there might be a quest.

Mechanics seem to be there, but hopefully full game will eventually add more complexity.

Insect Worlds
This one seems to be somewhat educational game. There are few problems though.

I'm not sure if the settings did had any difference. Performance was almost more like seconds per frame. Looked pretty though. I'm not sure if poor performance caused controls getting stuck now and then.

Also user interface was half translated. Luckily I remember tiny bit of German, so I was able to work out that Ja means yes...

Store page promises anthill fights etc. so maybe some day it might be good. Didn't finish the demo because of the performance though, so I don't know what demo has actually to offer.

Death Trash
Haven't finished the demo yet, but it looks promising. World building is interesting, there's several mysteries that I doubt will be revealed in the demo. Weakest link is the keyboard controls. At least the weapon switching keys commands haven't been mapped. I didn't find yet if controls can be redefined though, which might solve the issue.

Not for people who get grossed out easily (for example first abilities you get is puking). For others it's worth trying out.

Lila's Sky Ark

This is prequel to Resolutiion, but seems somewhat more approachable. The quirky humor is still there, but the game gives better directions what to do and where to go next.

I liked that you can pick things up and put into your backpack. Also throwing things is essential. Luckily in game tutorial hints that you can do that. How to apply that later in the demo is up to you though.

Enemies quickly get harder and best option seems to avoid them. Didn't finish the demo yet as it crashed and I got then preoccupied with Death Trash. But change of me finishing Lila's Sky Ark seems higher than with Resolutiion.

Because of the difficulty, it's good that the spawn points seem to be where they're needed the most. What actually counts as save point can vary little bit. Might have to play bit further to see if they're always the same after the first one.

Still seems worth a try if you feel that you need Zeldaesque game which is little bit bonkers and also gives some challenge.

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I found maybe bit easier way to find more Linux demos, right from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&category1=10&os=linux

The trick is to filter for Linux and demos and then sort by release date. As lot of demos were released for the event, something released within or close to event dates is very likely part of the event.

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I played the Zoria: Age of Shattering demo all the way through. It's certainly rough around the edges. It looks nice, but it could use bit more modern GPU than I have right now. Luckily turning resolution from 2K to HD and turning down the details all the way down made it playable. I know, my computer is quite close to the minimum requirements, but updating is not as simple these days as it used to be.

There were few UI freezes and once game just didn't properly exit combat mode.

Also camera rotation is really needed as objects can block the camera. Rotating the camera can cause bit disorientation until you learn how to manually reset it. One key to reset the orientation would be nice (backspace is quite common). Also old school RPG:s turned objects that blocked the view transparent (they weren't fully 3D though, so rotating the camera wasn't an option).

Also few of the splash screen tutorials were maybe little bit too heavy. Especially the one teaching combat is so full of stuff that it's hard to remember it all. Luckily the combat system feels familiar enough that it's possible to learn by just playing. All the energy and focus stuff can be bit confusing at first, so some patience is needed.

There are few choices that seem to matter. I chose quite near the beginning something that might have affected the combat difficulty, which meant that winning wasn't really guaranteed. That meant that I learned the hard way that while there is autosave, it's very infrequent. So remember to save now and then, especially if you see the enemy, but combat hasn't started yet. There's limited number of save slots, so if you want to keep saves for the key choices, you'll going to run out slots quite soon. Not that all the choices actually might matter that much in the end, in games choice can be bit of an illusion and things are more fun if you don't know it.

In the end Zoria is solid RPG. Storytelling is solid enough, though it's hard to know if the full plot has enough twists to keep it entertaining. Despite it faults, it's still enjoyable.

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