Played the demo of Paradise Killer with Proton. I have been curious about that for a while, but I'd never imagined how wonderfully weird or weirdly wonderful this was going to be. It's Windows only, but didn't notice any issues playing. And best of all, it'll be out by the end of next week.

Also started playing Beautiful Desolation. That must be the prettiest isometric game I've seen so far. Although it does indeed feel a bit desolate, with some of these large environments having little more to offer than an item or two. So apparently the name says it all.

Gameplay wise it's not quite a true P&C adventure, with actual puzzles being few and far between. Instead it's more a series of fetch or delivery quests, which will open up new locations with new characters that will want another favor before showing the way forward. And while it's got quite the interesting background, there's actually little incentive to go through all that hassle. No big mystery, nothing really at stake, so not sure if I'll make it to the end. Especially with so many games I'm eagerly awaiting right around the corner.

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Quoting: fagnerlnSome Linux games on GoG can't run anymore as it uses outdated libs

Actually just experienced that with The Journey Down, which I started playing this weekend. Luckily there was a workaround, but for a minute or two I was reminded of the fact how frail (closed source) software actually is. Often we don't notice because software we use on a regular basis also gets regular updates and we never feel the need to go back to a version from 10 years ago. In other cases there is emulation for OSes or platforms that no longer exist. But I guess there might be a whole bunch of fairly new 32bit Linux games out there that will be completely unplayable on modern distros in the not so distant future.

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Quoting: PatolaSpeaking of drivers, the 450.57 drivers got to the graphics-drivers PPA for Ubuntu 20.04

So much for Ubuntu LTS releases to get updated NVIDIA drivers without PPAs. :-(

As for Proton/DX12/VKD3D I'm still waiting for Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure to get into a working state. With such a low profile title, there seems to be little incentive, despite it being free (as in beer) and in parts even open source.

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Quoting: DuncThe Settlers, Dune 2, Civilization, A-Train

All games I played on the Amiga :-).

For some reason, I never liked Settlers II as much as the first. I think the original required a bit more care in organizing transport of wares, while the production chains were fairly simple to keep going as long as wares were flowing. With the second part, transport stopped being the bottleneck and I never really figured out the ratio of materials required for smooth operation. It must also have lacked the split-screen multiplayer of part 1. I bought a second mouse just so that friends could come over and play against me :-).

So with my preference for the first, I'm not that interested in Widelands, unfortunately. But I absolutely appreciate the effort put into the project!

Quoting: GuestCiv: Call to Power (for Linux) CD from Loki is in the bookshelf next to me, and was (IIRC) the first commercial linux game I fully played through :D

Here in Germany it was distributed by SuSE, and through some logistics mishap I ended up with 2 copies (both paid for, eventually). So it was both my first and second commercial Linux game :-D.

Sam Lantinga even made changes to SDL for me, so video and audio would run in sync with my cheap Soundblaster knockoff. Good memories!

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Quoting: Liam Dawethe games are popular sure but Wheels I think are still a niche.

Given how pricey they can be that is certainly true. Though from my own experience of playing F1 2017 with a gamepad (and having played various racing games with a wheel back when I didn't have to justify the expense), I would say a wheel makes a hell of a difference. There are some courses where I feel the gamepad is working fairly well, but even then remaining consistent is quite the challenge when the analogue sticks and triggers have such a short travel distance and you're not really in full control when cornering, accelerating or breaking. But then there are courses where there are easily 2 to 3 seconds between a good lap and a bad, and the only consistency is that most laps are bad.

Plus, I don't even want to think about turning off most of the driving aids while on a gamepad. With a wheel and pedals that was a no brainer.

Quoting: leillo1975We hope that Feral Interactive makes an announce

Me too, but I guess if there's no announcement by now, chances are slim :-(.

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Not sure if it's even mentioned in there, but I really was looking forward to In The Valley of Gods, which more or less was abandoned after the devs got absorbed by other, possibly more exciting Valve projects. I'd rather have that than any Half-Life, though :-).

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I'm with apocalyptech. I've spent a few minutes trying to figure out what the tech behind Flutter really is (because if it's some abomination like Electron I wouldn't want to touch it), and the following gem caught my eye:

QuoteFor a Material app, you can use a Scaffold widget; it provides a default banner, background color, and has API for adding drawers, snack bars, and bottom sheets. [1]

Thanks, I think I'll pass ... . We dinosaurs might die out, but at least we'll die out in style!

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Frankly, I'd be hard pressed to list 5 native Linux games of 2020 that I've played or been looking forward to, much less a top 5. But the same would be true outside of Linux, too. No big gaming hits for me this year so far.

I guess one possible contender for a top 5 entry might be Beyond a Steel Sky, though I want to play it first before judging. I'd also add LUNA The Shadow Dust as an honorable mention, because it's really gorgeous, just not a lot of game.

Another one, if I dare take the plunge, might turn out to be Crusader Kings III.

Sadly, the games I'm really looking forward to (Sable, Haven and Pendragon) won't come to Linux.

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Quoting: ShmerlGOG release is coming too?

Quite likely, but looks like it's not such a high priority. I'll be waiting patiently ...

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Played the demos of Pendragon and Haven on Steam with Proton (latter requiring a prefix with Windows Media Foundation installed, former running out of the box).

Pendragon seems a bit casual and slow at first. But the demo was brief and so far everything made by inkle was good, so I hope this will be no exception. They are probably the best when it comes to emergent narratives in video games, and I'm quite thrilled to see that paired with a bit of turn based strategy.

Haven not only looks gorgeous, it also has an interesting angle by having a couple as the two main characters. I was a bit worried since it's more of an action adventure, but even I could beat the first boss with relative ease, so I'm looking forward to this more than before. The relation between the two is a bit less harmonic than I thought, though, especially when picking the wrong dialogue choices. Just like real life, I guess ... ;-).

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