Steam

Game Review: Guard Duty

Marcel Gagné — Thu, 02 May 2019 16:15:00 +0000

Guard Duty from Sick Chicken Studios launches today! You can get it from Steam for $9.99.

It's a thousand years ago in the kingdom of Wrinklewood and you are Tondbert, a dwarf/huma-halfling palace guard. After a night of heavy drinking, most of which you're happy not to remember, not only do you wake up to discover you may have been responsible for getting the princess kidnapped by an evil wizard, but also your clothes and armor are missing, and after you fall from the tower where your tiny bedroom sits, you get stung by a swarm of angry wasps, your face is all swelled up, and nobody can understand the mumbles coming out of your mouth, so you get no respect from anyone—not that you ever did.

Welcome to Guard Duty and oddly enough, that's not where the game starts—a thousand years ago, I mean. It actually starts out in our future, in 2074 to be precise, a mostly unremarkable day except for that whole part about the destruction of the Earth and all.

I've spent several hours now, enjoying the sometimes frustrating new game, Guard Duty, from Sick Chicken Studios. Did I say "frustrating"? Because I meant it, but in a good way. The Sick Chicken people have spent way too many hours watching Monty Python and reading Terry Pratchett novels, and it shows. They also have a thing for golden-age point-and-click games, classic 320x240 resolution pixel art, all combined with comedic and sometimes touching storytelling.

Figure 1. Castle Wrinklewood and the Surrounding Countryside

As I said at the beginning of this review, the story starts, strangely enough, in our future where a demonic monstrosity sets out to bring the end of the world and the destruction of our planet. Like our hero of ancient times, named Tondbert, there's another knight of sorts, embarked on a quest to save what is left of mankind before there's nothing more to save. You get to meet him later, I'm told, though I'm still trying to get my halfling's ghost to stop feeling sorry for himself.

Figure 2. The Future, Right before the World Ends

What makes this particularly interesting is that your actions (or Tondbert's actions) in the past, will have an effect on what happens in the future, when you finally get there. How the threads of centuries wind their way into hero number two's battle is something I have yet to discover, but I'm seriously looking forward to working with him—once I rescue the princess, that is.

Go to Full Article

Game Review: Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements

Marcel Gagné — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 17:20:57 +0000

by Marcel Gagné

Welcome, young initiate. Do you have what it takes to become a full-fledged mage?

I've been playing a pre-release version of Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements, a classic role-playing game from Himalaya Studios, done in the style of Sierra On-Line's classic King's Quest series. This is only so surprising given that the people behind this new game worked on creating those classics and their remakes. Mage's Initiation is a medieval-style fantasy game with puzzles, treasures, labyrinthine settings, magic, spell-casting battles and monsters. Mage's Initiation began its life as a Kickstarter where it has been hotly anticipated. If you want to check into all that, I link to the Kickstarter page at the end, but right now, I just want to tell you about the game.

In Mage's Initiation, you play a student mage, taken from your family at the age of six to a mystical tower in Iginor, a seemingly idyllic land. In the Mage's Tower, you spend years studying the power of the elements. After ten years, it's Initiation Day, and you are ready to discover which of the elements has chosen you as its champion. In my case, I wound up following the path of water, but you can play (or replay) any of the four classic elements.

Figure 1. Initiation Day, Following the Path of Water

My young initiate's name is "D'Arc", which is, of course, an interesting name partly in what it might conceal. You find out that D'Arc dreams of demons which, he is told, means greatness. He also learns that the road to greatness is dangerous.

The colorful two-dimensional animation is reminiscent of games I played more than 20 years ago, and it's wonderful. I was taken in right away. There are plenty of characters, all with their own personalities, and the voice acting is varied and excellent. In the first part of the game, you'll wander the halls of the Mage's tower, taking in details, talking to other students, collecting various items, and most important, gathering information about what is to come next. This is, after all, the day of your initiation, and you will face a number of quite possibly, deadly trials before the day is out. Ask lots of questions. Pay attention. No detail is too small.

There are several halls that you access by an element-themed transport pad with a large gem in the center (pay attention, and don't forget the combinations). Each hall may be populated with different characters who will provide you with what you need to continue.

Go to Full Article

Review: Thrones of Britannia

Marcel Gagné — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 14:59:34 +0000

by Marcel Gagné

A look at the recent game from the Total War series on the Linux desktop thanks to Steam and Feral Interactive.

Back in 878 CE (or AD, if you prefer), the British Isles and England were far more exciting than what we see there today, especially if you are into historical dramas with lots of kings and knights in armor fighting for God and glory. Throw in Vikings launching an attack on the adolescent England, the retreat of its king who then gathers support from the provinces for a decisive counter-offensive against the horned warriors, and it makes for pretty cool story telling. Even if it is all true.

In January of that year, Vikings did attack at Chippenham, which is a little Northeast of Bath and Bristol. Alfred the Great, King of the Anglo-Saxons, was caught by surprise and retreated only to gather reinforcements from the counties of Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. In May, Alfred's combined forces met King Guthrum's army in Edington in Wiltshire, formerly known as Ethandun. To make a long story short, the Brits won, the Vikings lost, and the rest as they say, is history.

The cool thing about fiction, and video games for that matter, is that you can take a decisive period in history such as this and re-imagine it by asking what would have happened if the Vikings had won. Or maybe some lord from one of the counties would have seen this as a good opportunity to get rid of Alfred, make some backroom deals with other counties and districts, and maybe even the Vikings, and you'd have a very different England today.

Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia by Creative Assembly and SEGA, along with Feral Interactive (who brings us the Linux version of the game), asks us to envision these types of scenarios and rewrite history. Thrones of Britannia is a turns-based strategy game, with real-time elements, that asks you to join one of several factions (the British, the Welsh or even the Vikings) from which to build your empire (Figure 1). Each faction comes with its own regional strengths, goals, features and troops. No faction gives you a definitive advantage over the other, so take the time to read up on each and see what feels right to you. So far, I've played the Welsh and Gaelic kingdoms.

Figure 1. Choose your faction.

Go to Full Article

Crossing Platforms: a Talk with the Developers Building Games for Linux

K.G. Orphanides — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 21:52:14 +0000

by K.G. Orphanides

Games for Linux are booming like never before. The revolution comes courtesy of cross-platform dev tools, passionate programmers and community support.

In the last five years, the number of mainstream games released for Linux has increased dramatically, with thousands of titles now available. These range from major AAA releases, such as Civilization VI and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, to breakout indie hits like Night in the Woods

For this article, I spoke to different developers and publishers to discover the shape of the Linux games market and find out what's driving its prodigious growth.

Figure 1. Multi-award-winning comedy adventure game Night in the Woods is one of many games simultaneously released on Linux, macOS and Windows, thanks to development tools that can build for all three platforms.

Why Develop Games for Linux?

Support for Linux has boomed with the introduction of cross-platform development tools that make it comparatively easy to release titles on multiple operating systems. Perhaps more important, almost all the developers I spoke to personally support the Open Source movement, even if their games are proprietary.

For Zack Johnson, creative director of asymmetric's stick-figure comedy RPG, West of Loathing, the game's origins as a spin-off from popular browser game Kingdom of Loathing played a significant role.

"There was a vocal contingent of original Kingdom of Loathing players who urged us to [release a Linux version]", he said. "We knew we'd be able to get information and support from them during development, so it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do."

His experiences making an online game also helped form that decision: "My first game project was built on the LAMP stack, so I wouldn't have a career without open-source software. And just in general, it's hard to understate its importance to the fundamental underpinnings of the internet."

Figure 2. New Britannia, the online world created for Portalarium's Shroud of the Avatar, has been accessible to Linux users since its early pre-Alpha releases.

At Portalarium, the company behind Richard "Lord British" Garriott's latest fantasy RPG epic, Shroud of the Avatar, tech director Chris Spears says the drive to support Linux came from within:

Go to Full Article

Full SteamOS Ahead!

Shawn Powers — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 19:12:12 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Although its timetable may not always be ideal, Valve has come through for Linux users lately. Not only has it released a native Linux version of Steam (with many native games!), it also has expanded its Linux support as the basis for its standalone SteamBox. The first step toward a Steam-powered console is the operating system. Thankfully for nerds like me, Valve released its operating system (SteamOS) to the public.

SteamOS is in beta testing right now, and unfortunately at the time of this writing, it supports only NVIDIA graphics cards. That limits who can test the OS, but releasing the operating system at all is extremely exciting! Geeks have been creating their own XBMC boxes for years, and now we'll be able to create our own gaming consoles too.

(Image from https://www.steampowered.com)

If you haven't tried SteamOS yet, and if you have an NVIDIA graphics card, I urge you to go try it out (https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown). Will the SteamBox finally bridge the gap between PC gaming and console gaming? Will its open-source roots help SteamOS become the dominant living room device? It's been a number of years, but Valve definitely has invested into the Linux community. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go shoot some zombies.

Go to Full Article

Valve—It Really Does Love Linux

Shawn Powers — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:53:04 +0000

by Shawn Powers

I've teased about Steam, speculated about Steam and even bragged about Steam finally coming to Linux. Heck, check out the screenshot for just a partial list of games already running natively under our beloved OS. Little did I know that the folks at Valve not only planned to support Linux, but they're also putting a big part of their future behind it as well!

Valve recently announced SteamOS, which is a Linux-based operating system designed from the ground up to play games. Steam games. The operating system will be free, and it also will be the OS running on Valve's next big thing, SteamMachines. Although the hardware won't be available until sometime in 2014, the OS should be out before then.

Will Valve be the company to bridge the gap between computer gaming and console gaming? Will PC games translate to a television screen smoothly? Will the SteamOS's "game streaming" technology effectively bring the entire Steam library to Linux? I've learned enough not to make any predictions, but I can tell you it's an exciting prospect, and it's even more exciting because it's all running on Linux!

Go to Full Article

It's Getting Steamy in Here!

Shawn Powers — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:57:36 +0000

by Shawn Powers

After months of me promising Steam would be coming to Linux, it's finally here. The early verdict: it's pretty great! The installer is a simple pre-packaged .deb file for Ubuntu (or Xubuntu in my case), and the user portion of the install looks very much like Windows or Macintosh. In my limited testing, I've found the Steam beta to be at least as stable as Desura. I also was impressed with the large number of my Steam games that have Linux versions ready to download and play.

If you were under the impression that Steam was going to be the next Duke Nukem Forever, I'm happy to say that you (and I) were wrong. Steam has finally come to Linux, which has the potential to change the way Linux users play games. It also means fewer reboots into Windows just to shoot a few zombies! Check it out at www.steamforlinux.com.

Go to Full Article