Last month I thought February would bring a lot of news in terms of worthy releases, and it took a while… but it’s now playing out. I am sorry to tell you that Rocket League and Street Fighter V are still not available at this point, but there’s enough new games to make you fill you free time until they do (in case you missed XCom2, check out our review). As for Rocket League, the Xboxone version was released this February so now we should expect the Linux one to be next. Hopefully not in 2 years…

Anyway, let’s get to the news.

First, Sunless Sea is finally out after being in beta for so long. It’s also part of the recent Humble Indie Bundle that features a lot of Linux games. But more on that later on.

Then there’s a few surprises that we did not see coming.

Layers of Fear is an horror game from Bloober Team using pretty cool visual effects to go beyond the usual jump scares. It has not been getting super positive reviews, but then again, if Outcast was not enough for you it may be worth checking it out. Note that the game was released as a first class citizen on Linux.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is an indie game from Japan, already popular on Playstation formats (PSP, PS Vita at least, and alos on iOS and Android) and it’s very surprising to see such a game making it to Linux. It’s a relatively old game (2010) but we received the Linux version just one week after the Windows one, so that’s almost like a first class citizen on PC. Let’s hope more Japanese games make it to Linux as it’s still pretty much devoid of such games.

Hitman: GO is not really a new Hitman episode, but a simple turn-strategy game where you control little baldy and try to achieve objectives - it was designed for mobile gaming and released on iOS and Android in 2014, and more recently on PS4. I have no idea if it’s any good, but it’s certainly surprising to see Hitman and Linux associated for the first time - maybe a sign that Square Enix is considering the platform in the near future.

While not a new game per se, Factorio finally made it on Steam in Early Access. It was already available in alpha/beta stage on the dev’s website for a while, but now it may be more convenient if you only use Steam to play on Linux. For those unfamiliar with the concept of the game, well you start on a desolated planet and you have to start building machines that will connect to each other to produce increasingly complex parts and tools - in order to defend your territory from beasts set on destroying your place. It’s very original, I can’t think of any other game that did things this way.

Finally, SUPERHOT (do we need the caps on?) made it to Linux again as a first class citizen just a few days ago. The demo released several years back provided a good insight into the mechanics of the game: you are in constant bullet mode in this FPS, and time only starts to run when you move around. As long as you are immobile you can plan your strategy and your next moves in order to survive. Once again a very original concept, while many reviews mentioned that the game lacks in contents (not enough levels).

So, a pretty busy February so far. And even if you were not looking for new games, it’s definitely worth mentioning that the current Humble Indie Bundle itself is of great value.

For whatever you want to pay, you get Outlast (which is really an horror masterpiece, with great production values in Unreal Engine 3) and Never Alone, which was very recently released on Linux.

For more than the average you get Trine3, the latest in the Trine series, as well as Doorkickers which is an excellent 2D tactical game where you lead a SWAT team to infiltrate buildings and save hostages. And for the average + 2 dollars, you get Sunless Sea as we have mentioned above, and else.heart.break(), an adventure game where you use coding commands to progress and solve puzzles.

Phew! I am struggling to find free time to play everything I’d like to right now (Damn XCOM2!) and it looks like Saints Row 3 is close to being released on Linux as well, according to recent Steamdb changes. Nothing unexpected - if Saints Row 4 was too much “supehero-like” to you, you may end up liking SR3 a little more.