So Many Ports, So Little Time

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While we don’t do posts for every release or announcement out there, there’s been a number of news recently that need to be summarized. Nothing extremely high profile, but there are certainly a couple of things to keep an eye on.

Released Recently

Atari Vault has been released for Linux. If you are into super old retro games, this is a package that may be worth purchasing unless you prefer emulators. At least this version has proper Steam Controller support if that’s something important to you. Though, it’s a bit pricey for super, super-old games.

Ballistic Overkill is a (cheap) FPS that saw a Linux release back in May following the Windows release last year in Early Access. It’s still not finalized but you can already play with the Linux client.

Transmission Elements 120 is a free game based on the Source Engine, in the Half Life universe. It provides a short single player campaign, and is directly available on Steam for download. I am thinking of writing a review at some point.

Oxenfree is a side-viewed adventure thriller. It was released back in June for Linux.

Edna and Harvey is a new adventure game from the developers that brought you the Deponia series. The art is very much in the same style.

Undertale, the now famous adventure game has finally hit the Linux platform after the developer decided to finally take care of it. It was done in less than a week. Good news as this seems like a fun game with very retro graphics. I have just barely started it, I will probably write a review down the road too.

Upcoming

We Happy Few: this upcoming action/adventure game looks great and there’s certainly something reminiscent of Bioshock in it. Hard to say what to expect at this stage, but the trailer is intriguing.

Tyranny is a new RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, that should come on Linux after Pillars of Eternity.

Virtual Programming is porting Overlord to Linux and while they have been teasing us for a while, they just announced it will be released today (21st of July). They are also working on King Arthur 2: the Role-Playing Wargame. Overlord is a fairly old game by now, but it’s great to get older titles coming to Linux too. Codemasters is again the publisher behind this port, showing continuous support for bringing more and more games to Linux. I hope we get to see some of the Dirt games later down the road too (Dirt Rally is apparently planned, but others would be welcome too).

Stardew Valley will hit Linux pretty soon as well - supposedly on the 29th of July. It did not take too long to reach Linux after the Windows release earlier this year in February.

Legends of Eisenwald - we mentioned that game during our podcast with James Ramey, as Codeweavers is supporting the developers for the Linux port. It’s been out for a year now on Windows, and hopefully comes to Linux sometimes soon too.

Talos Principle 2 has been announced. We can certainly expect a Linux port since CroTeam has been well known for a while for their Linux support, even for Vulkan.

There are not many RARE-like platforms on Linux yet, so the upcoming Yooka Laylee is a welcome addition. The new trailer gives us more insights as to what they game will be like.

SteamDB rumors

Seems like both Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (top-down adventure/shooter multiplayer game using Lara Croft) and Hitman have now got Linux repos. At this stage it’s still unconfirmed if ports will be actually released, but that may be a first indication. But both are possible, since there’s already official support for Tomb Raider (2013 reboot) and Hitman in some fashion (Hitman GO).

The past few months have been pretty quiet, but we can hope for a slightly more busy summer and end of the year. It would be great to get news about Rocket League or Street Fighter V, if such ports are still on the table… and don’t get me started on Witcher 3.