If you have younger children and want to get some family-friendly games for them, take a look at the Humble Humongous Back To School Bundle that's filled full. Quite a good bundle this one, and I can approve of multiple titles in this that my own mini-me played through years ago. Almost all of them have Linux builds available too.
The bundle includes 37 items across different tiers:
See the full Humble Humongous Back To School Bundle if interested.
The big new release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition from BioWare and EA is only supported for Windows on PC, but with Proton GE you should now be able to play it on Linux. Should being the keyword, as Proton can be a little fiddly at times.
If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page . It's a special compatibility layer for running Windows games and apps from Steam on Linux. Proton GE is the community-made version which has a number of extras.
Proton-6.8-GE-2 is officially out now with these changes:
- Mass Effect Legendary Edition Launcher and ME1 fixes added. All 3 games should be playable.
- DOOM Eternal should no longer hang and resolution change should work again
- Forza Horizon 4 frequency patch added, however this does not seem to improve the crashing :/
- RE8 REENGINE Logo audio is fixed and no longer plays static (game is still crashy)
- RE8 Display menu fixes ported from proton experimental
- Nioh 2 hang fixed (videos still don't play)
- Fallout: New Vegas audio looping fixed
- 2k Launcher fixes ported from proton experimental (fixes mafia, mafia II, and others)
- Yakuza 0 - fsync disabled (thanks tgurr!)
- Yakuza Kiwami - fsync disabled (thanks tgurr!)
- LEGO The Lord of the Rings d3dx9_41 override added (thanks alkazar and FigoFrago!)
Also of note is that you may need to remove your Wine/Proton prefix for Persona 4 Golden to work, see how to do that in our previous article .
To use it here's what you do:
~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/
Want to see how Mass Effect Legendary Edition runs on Linux with Proton GE? See below:
Note: the stuttering you see is pretty common for running Windows games through Proton, as it needs to manually build up a cache to pull from. Usually not an issue on Windows, as games are directly made for it and build it themselves. Over time it becomes smoother and this is what the Steam Shader Pre-Caching system is supposed to be helping with.
Spoiler alert though for older players: apparently the face of Tali was changed from a stock photo you could see in-game to a unique and more appropriate image, it does make me laugh that such a small change has generated big headlines across the major gaming sites.
For me, Mass Effect is one series that holds an immensely special place. I played through the entire series back when I was a big console gaming fan (before truly diving fully into Linux) and I loved the story and the whole experience. Being able to do it again, enhanced and on Linux is just beautiful.
You can buy it on Steam , just remember though that running it in this way on Linux is not actually supported. The usual caveats apply: it can break any time and the developer doesn't need to ensure it continues working this way.
NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy is the upcoming title from Dream Harvest, an upcoming choose your own adventure styled cyberpunk visual novel and it looks brilliant.
While Dream Harvest are also working on the strategy game NeuroSlicers (which will also come to Linux ), NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy will be coming out first but they're not giving a date just yet. NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy is also confirmed to be launching with support for Linux.
"You are an artificial intelligence charged with managing a city-wide augmented reality network known as the "NeuroNet". Embark on a journey of self-discovery as you learn what it means to be human in a world losing itself to technology."
Features:
Definitely excited about this one. With some wonderful visuals backed up by what sounds like a thoroughly interesting story in a visual novel adventure style setting with a cyberpunk theme.
You can follow it on itch.io and Steam .
Paws and Claws, a pretty wholesome DLC for the fantastic and stylish Children of Morta has managed to raise a rather nice lump sum for charity.
"We have a piece of truly wonderful and heartwarming news for you today! The Paws and Claws charity DLC has proven to be a huge success and ever since its launch, we've been able to raise MORE than $130K for animals worldwide!" - Dead Mage & 11 bit studios
Not an essential DLC for the game by any measure, and it's a completely different experience to the main game overall. However, it's just so wonderful that you should probably buy it anyway. It adds in an animal shelter system, a herd of various animals to visit you, a new treats mechanic for animals, animal-related character boosts and quite a bit more. 100% of the proceeds of Paws and Claws goes to the Humane Society International (HSI) .
The developer confirmed the figure is PC platforms and Consoles combined for the total. Considering the low £2.99 / $3.99 / 3,99€ price - it means it's sold quite a number of copies.
You can buy Children of Morta from GOG , Humble Store and Steam . We can easily recommend it.
Excited for the huge Caves & Cliffs upgrade coming to Minecraft? Even though it's being split in half , we certainly are and you can get a little more behind the scenes info in a new video.
Caves are one of the most unloved areas in Minecraft, so to see Mojang put some effort into sprucing them up a bit is quite exciting. Digging deep for riches should be much more enticing than it currently is and there's a lot of new goodies coming. What about the mobs though? There's plenty of new there too.
Interested in knowing more? Watch the below video:
As a reminder the first part of Caves & Cliffs arrives "mid-2021" bringing with it the new blocks, mobs, copper and more with the second part due towards the end of the year to include the expanded world generation for new caves, increases to the height and depth world limits, new mountain generation, new biomes and so on. There's a seriously huge amount to look forward to for Minecraft this year.
After being available in some form since 2012, RUNNING WITH RIFLES (RWR) seems to be finally hitting it big with a sudden surge of thousands flocking to the top-down tactical shooter.
For Osumia Games, this has been a long-deserved moment in the spotlight. They've supported Linux with RWR since 2012 during the early Beta builds and it's a huge amount of fun to run around in. It's currently 80% off on Steam, which has probably helped the surge of players, however it's done the same discount multiple times in the past which did not cause much of a surge until now.
How big a change are we talking? Well, RWR usually only saw around 100-300 players. Now? It's been seeing multiple thousands with a new record set of 14,149 online on Sunday, May 16 2021.
What caused it then? Well, it wasn't Twitch livestreams like Among Us saw, instead it looks like it might have been YouTube and specifically the Asian market with multiple videos hitting 10s of thousands of views and some in the 100s of thousands ( like this one ). It shows once again, how powerful a market it is and translations can really help sell a game with RWR seeing text translations to Simplified Chinese, Korean and plenty more.
You can buy RUNNING WITH RIFLES on Steam with 80% off until May 21. Also on Humble Store but no discount.
Stadia has confirmed another few new announcements for their Linux-powered game streaming service that will be coming soon. Some out now, some have no release date yet.has confirmed another few new announcements for their Linux-powered game streaming service that will be coming soon, although neither has an actual release date.
Two recently we missed were Street Power Football and Hundred Days , both of which are out now and available on the Stadia store.
As for other titles coming up? Just this week they announced Super Animal Royale and Shantae and the Pirate's Curse will be coming over to Stadia. Super Animal Royale will be "Coming Soon" with no clearer date. It's going to be free to play too, so it gives people yet another chance to try out something on Stadia with no commitment to anything.
Meanwhile Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is said to be coming out on Stadia "Summer 2021".
If you missed it, Stadia claim the service is "alive and well" in a recent interview. Certainly will be interesting to see how long Stadia sticks around for, with ~100 games coming to it this year. Stadia still have a problem of getting their marketing right too - so many people still don't quite understand Stadia itself is free as Stadia Pro is an optional subscription to get free games and 4K support (varies between games). Stadia really need to be making all of it a lot clearer for potential people to sign up to it.
Play Stadia on Linux on Stadia.com with a Chromium browser.
Terraria, the 2D pixel-art sandbox survival adventure has now officially turned 10 years old and it's going as strong as ever. Seriously impressive from developer Re-Logic!
I remember seeing it on PC for the first time almost 10 years ago while a friend was playing it, thinking it looked interesting and never thought it would go on to be as popular as it is. Frankly, I sort-of dismissed it entirely back then and went back to Minecraft. I was seriously wrong about it because it's an incredible game that deserves to be played.
Anyway, a fresh update went out to mark the occasion. Re-Logic mentions that "this update may not contain any new content (we were serious when we said 1.4.2 was it ;) ) - it does contain a very special celebratory world seed that is unlike any other that we have made previously". The wink face being an obvious nod to this really not being the end of Terraria.
Here's what's new in Terraria 1.4.2.3:
- Added Celebratory Seed
- Corrected the damage on Frost Armor's set bonus debuff from 20 to 25 DPS.
- Fixed Vulkan and Metal rendering issues that lead to crash, on FNA builds.
- Fixed a certain exploit.
- Fixed missing tooltip in Queen Slime's treasure bag.
- Fixed every vine type except Normal/Flower vines from passing on paint as they grow longer.
- Fixed King Slime's spiked minions being able to pick up money and despawn with it, similar to Queen Slime's minions previously.
The celebration world seeds are:
Across both GOG and Steam it's currently 50% off for about 8 hours, so the sale ends around 4PM UTC. Be quick if you wish to get it with such a nice discount although it's not the highest it's been discounted but still a fantastic game to get so cheap right now.
You can buy it on GOG , Steam and Humble Store .
Another week will be starting soon, so it's time to catch up on a few missing pieces for Linux and Linux Gaming that we didn't get around to covering this week.
Firstly let's start with the open source news!
AMD has released Radeon Rays v4.1 , a "high-efficiency, high-performance ray intersection acceleration library for DirectX12 and Vulkan". This release actually puts it under an open source license now (MIT) and so it's all up on GitHub . Nice to see AMD do more open source.
KDE Plasma 5.22 Beta has been released, as the KDE camp continue to advance their flashy flagship Linux desktop environment. The aim of this release is to further "stability and usability" fixing up bugs, solving annoying paper-cuts and there's a number of big improvements for Wayland support again too which is quite exciting to see! 2021 looks truly set to be the Year of Wayland on the Linux desktop.
Developer Luke Jones who has been hacking away (with a number of others) on getting ASUS ROG laptops better support on Linux, has written up a blog post going over the current status of a number of patches. A number have already been merged and available in current Kernel versions, with more merged and on the way for future Kernel versions. Excellent to see more hardware seeing better support.
The Linux App Summit has been in full swing once again, with a number of interesting topics. You can catch up on the official YouTube Channel .
OpenLoco , the free and open source game engine reimplementation for Chris Sawyer's Locomotion saw release v21.05. Here's what's new in the release:
- Feature: Implement cheats window with financial, company, vehicle, and town cheats.
- Feature: Remember last save directory in configuration variable.
- Feature: Tween (linear interpolate) entities when frame limiter is uncapped for smoother movement.
- Fix: Boats get stuck in approaching dock mode when water is above a certain height. This was incorrectly fixed in 21.04.1.
- Fix: Decouple viewport updates from game ticks for smoother panning and zooming.
- Fix: Some available industries are missing in the 'Fund new industries' tab.
- Fix: Station construction preview image is using wrong colours.
- Fix: Element name is not shown when inspecting track elements using the Tile Inspector.
- Change: The multiplayer toggle button on the title screen has been hidden, as multiplayer has not been reimplemented yet.
Oh and Vulkan, the high-performance open and modern graphics API got a website facelift .
We also finally changed our own YouTube Channel introduction video, which was going on 7 years old! It's now showing off me getting scared in VR - a bit more modern. We also started uploading VOD from our Twitch ( follow us on Twitch !) livestreams so you can keep up with it all.
Paradox Interactive seem to be in a bit of hot water with fans right now, as the botched roll-out of the latest Europa Universalis 4 expansion has caused a lot of issues. It's now one of the most negatively reviewed item on Steam , leading to Johan the Studio Manager of Paradox Tinto to put up an apology .
Unrailed, the frantic co-op railtrack building game from Indoor Astronaut and Daedalic had a big update recently with a whole new game mode. This mode sees you race against the clock, with randomized biomes. They also added a new auto-save feature to the checkpoint system. Unrailed! is available from the Humble Store and Steam .
Hope you all have a good weekend, see you next week for more news!
Scarlet Hollow, a rather excellent horror-novel adventure is getting a second paid episode that will enter Early Access with Linux support on June 11. This follows on from the successful Kickstarter campaign late last year, and the free release of episode one which you can play now.
"Trapped in the dying Appalachian mining town of Scarlet Hollow for the funeral of your estranged aunt, you quickly find yourself at the center of a dark mystery that threatens your life and the fate of an entire town. Who lives, who dies, and the fate of an entire town rests on your shoulders."
Features:
The plan is for the full experience to stay in Early Access until all 7 episodes are done.
Follow on Steam and play the first episode free on Steam too.
Need some more games for the weekend and the coming months? Humble are back with the Humble DeckBuild & Battle Bundle .
This bundle is quite a small one overall, with a selection that's not the best but hopefully by us highlighting it some of you might find a gem or two you've been meaning to pick up. Here's what's included with Linux-supported titles highlights for you to make it easier.
£0.72 / $1 - Thea: The Awakening
Beat the average for: Cultist Simulator and SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech
£8.65 or more to get: Imperator: Rome , NEOVERSE, Thea 2: The Shattering, Fantasy General II
The Humble DeckBuild & Battle Bundle is live for two weeks.
This is also a good opportunity to remind you of the The Humble Heal: Covid-19 Bundle , where 100% of the proceeds will be going to charity. There's tons of great games in that too with four days left.
Increlution is quite unusual and somewhat engrossing, an idle-styled game about survival and seeing how long you can last while doing various tasks.
It blends together elements of an idle game, a clicker and a text-adventure all into one package. It's a little weird but surprisingly it actually works quite well. I've been somewhat enamoured with it, keen to see more as I explore and unlock new activities. The game sprinkles in story elements too as you explore, it's just such a great idea if you love the basic idea behind it.
"Survive the ever increasing pressure of time for as long as you can! A minimalistic idle game about time management that takes inspiration from roguelite games, with a focus on meta-progression. Every generation will have better chances at survival, because previous lives influence its instincts"
Check out Increlution on Steam and try out the demo now.
The release is planned for Q3 2021, with it planned to be in Early Access for 6-18 months while the developer continues to expand what's possible with it.
Press F to pay respects. Remember the Smach Z? A handheld gaming unit where you could pick between Windows 10 and SMACH OS (Linux) - well it looks like it's all over now.
The situation surrounding the Smach Z has always been a bit of an odd one, with the team behind it often going completely silent with plenty of people out there who considered it a scam from the beginning. It's had multiple funding rounds with €474,530 from Kickstarter and a further bunch from IndieGoGo in 2016, and they had pre-orders available since 2018 too. Over time it seems they pulled in some investors too but the well has run dry.
In a forum post from the Founder, Daniel Fernandez, which isn't available to view publicly (but reposted to Reddit ) Fernandez goes on to mention how they "might soon enter bankruptcy" due to their main investor pulling out of the project and they were the only thing keeping it afloat.
Fernandez makes it clear that despite all the money, "the project was way more ambitious than the budget we were managing" and they even had aid given by their government and private investors but "after a few missteps, the investors felt forced to decide to stop supporting the project".
What does Fernandez claim are the reasons? A mixture of COVID, the charging unit failed an emissions test and problems with the batteries heating up too with continued delays that has led to this.
Will anyone get their ordered devices? Considering some have pre-ordered units for close to £1,000, it's a lot of money to lose on your dream handheld gaming device. Sadly, it looks like a no and there's only three people on their team so it's clearly not going to happen. How about refunds then? If they do declare bankruptcy, anything they have left will apparently go towards refunds. They also claim to have been providing refunds "for a very long time" already but they can no longer do it now due to the investor pulling out.
Sounds like a clear message: It's dead, Jim.
Valve / CodeWeavers have releases another update to the current stable Proton series with the 6.3-4 release.
If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page . It's a special compatibility layer for running Windows games and apps from Steam on Linux.
Proton 6.3-4 is a small update that just focuses on fixing up a few annoyances including:
If you missed it Proton Experimental was also updated recently to further improve Resident Evil Village on Linux, and has again been upgraded so it has all the fixes of Proton 6.3-4. For those of you who prefer the community-built Proton GE, you should also check our recent article .
After a long time of waiting with the last proper release in 2018, the Unvanquished team have managed to do it! The next version 0.52 Beta is officially out now and waiting to be played.
What is it? A free and open source first-person shooter with strategy elements, that puts humans vs aliens. It's a fork of the classic Tremulous, think of it like the well-known Natural Selection series with both sides providing very different gameplay overall.
This marks the first Beta release too, as the team explained they "think the engine and the game experience are polished enough to remove the alpha flag and wear the beta one". The game engine used, the Dæmon engine, also saw its own dedicated blog post to explain all the advances over the last two years - as expected there's been a huge amount of changes, including a "single rounding error that was the cause of many bugs" - oops. The amount of work that went into the underlying game engine is simply marvellous, with it being more bug free and advanced than ever.
As for the game itself, the list of what's changed is just as ridiculously long. The new player experience is much improved, there's new presets for different keyboard layouts, the UI now scales with your screen resolution, there's now graphics presets to easily switch between modes, many graphics improvements and the list goes on. It's pretty safe to say that Unvanquished 0.52 Beta is like a different game.
Check it out on the Unvanquished website .
Ready for more retro-infused first-person shooting action? Viscerafest is now confirmed to be launching on May 20 into Early Access on Steam following a successful Beta. The developer, Acid Man Games / Fire Plant Games have been regularly putting out Beta builds on their Discord which have shown a lot of promise.
"Viscerafest is a Sci-Fi Fantasy Singleplayer Arena FPS with minor Collectathon elements. Fight through hordes of aliens and eldritch monstrosities wielding a slew of powerful weapons, juggling your resources, and exploring over 26 intricately designed hand crafted levels."
Features:
The Linux version we tested before release has been running exceptionally well, we think this is one you're going to like a lot if you love arena-styled fast-paced shooters. You need some good reflexes for this one. When we say it's fast - we really do mean it. A lot of fun though punching through everyone. Ammo is limited, so you will be using your fists quite a bit. Wishlist Viscerafest and follow on Steam .
Despite everywhere you look there's always someone pointing to the Google Graveyard, the game streaming service Stadia is still soldiering on in the face of overwhelming competition.
In a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz , Stadia's developer marketing lead Nate Ahearn says the service is actually "alive and well" and went on to mention how they have over 100 new titles launching for Stadia through 2021. They're also continuing to grow their Stadia Makers program where they help Unity developers port to Stadia (with another 20 coming from that) along with continuing partnerships with many AAA studios like Capcom, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and others.
A while ago Google shut down the Stadia Games & Entertainment studio, which seemed like a bad sign. Following that, they lost key developers like Jade Raymond, John Justice and a bunch of other staff members recently who all joined Raymond's new Haven Studio. Were those all signs of a service in trouble? Not quite , it's pretty much just the tail-end of SG&E closing. Still, no big first-party exclusive games to pull people in isn't doing the service any favours.
Stadia, much like Linux desktop gaming, faces a huge uphill battle to actually win people over. The tech is there, it just needs a lot more games and people to actually use it. For Stadia especially, they have to fight off the upcoming Amazon Luna along with Xbox Cloud Gaming - both of which will give a much more Netflix-like subscription model rather than buying individual games.
In other news, Stadia recently finally got a search bar and more UI changes planned.
Play Stadia on Linux on Stadia.com with a Chromium browser.
After releasing upgrading their stable drivers with version 460.80 following the release of the the RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti for laptops - a new Vulkan Beta Driver is out now.
Vulkan Beta 455.50.19 is a pretty small one, here's what's changed:
- New:
- Fixes:
- Added support for Vulkan provisional video session picture parameters objects
Reminder: This special Vulkan beta driver is where all the shiny new stuff goes in before making its way into the stable release for everyone. Really, it's mostly aimed at developers and serious enthusiasts. Unless you need what's in them, it's generally best to use the stable drivers.
The newest stable versions of the main NVIDIA driver for Linux are at 460.80 released on May 11, 2021 from their "Production Branch" series or 465.27 released on April 29, 2020 from their "New Feature" series. Confused? It's a lot of numbers to remember but both Production and New Feature series are fine for normal use.
Note: you should probably make sure your drivers are up to date, especially after the recent security issues .
See the driver page for more .
Today we've seen the first official gameplay of the upcoming Total War: WARHAMMER III from Creative Assembly, SEGA and porting studio Feral Interactive.
Before it gets into the gameplay though, it also shows off the Trial By Fire trailer that was released by itself yesterday which gets you in the mood for some action. This is the final game in the Total War Warhammer trilogy, and it's pleasing to see that we will have all three officially on Linux.
Have a look below:
Some much bigger sites than us (Hi Eurogamer , IGN and so on) also got a hands-on preview. Sounds like all the previews were played across Parsec , which is pretty intriguing to see streaming tech used more like this.
"I think what I could say is that this is the final in a series of games, a trilogy, and this one is bigger, badder, better than the rest. We’ve had time to look over Warhammer 1, 2 and the DLCs. We've taken fan feedback and we’ve really improved on this game in terms of functionality and usability", says designer James Martin.
You can pre-purchase on Steam . The release will be sometime late this year.
Ready for your next keyboard? How about one that's properly open source and looks quite fantastic? System76 has today properly revealed and released the Launch Configurable Keyboard.
Sticking to their ethos, they've launched the Launch as a fully open source unit. This includes the hardware ( certified by the OSHWA ), firmware and configuration tooling all as open source and firmware updates can be done directly through LVFS but it's not forced - it's up to users if they want to update the firmware.
While System76 remains a Linux vendor selling their custom Thelio desktops, laptops and they continue with their Pop!_OS Linux distribution - this is their first to be fully compatible with Windows and macOS too. System76 created the System76 Keyboard Configurator app to allow fully customization of the keyboard layout - with changes saved to they keyboard so you can take it anywhere.
“Launch with macOS and Windows 10 is a phenomenal, high-end keyboard with a comfortable feel and unique high-speed USB hub,” said Carl Richell, CEO of System76. “Combined with Pop!_OS and, in particular, auto-tiling, the hardware and OS blend into a holistic desktop experience that's faster and easier to navigate.”
Just like their Thelio computers, the Launch is custom-built in their own facility in Denver, CO. Featuring a chassis
milled out of a solid block of aluminium, as well as a custom PCB (printed circuit board). Created for customization, it comes with a set of red, blue, or brown keycaps to get it how you want it. It also has runner feet to keep it still, along with a magnetic foot for an optional 15% incline.
"With a wide swath of customization options, the Launch is flexible to a variety of needs and use cases. The keyboard’s thoughtful design keeps everything within reach, vastly reducing awkward hand contortions. Launch comes with additional keycaps and a convenient keycap puller, meaning one can swap keys based on personal workflow preferences to maximize efficiency. Launch also features a novel split Space Bar, which allows the user to swap out oneSpace Bar keycap for Shift, Backspace, or Function to reduce hand fatigue while typing. Launch uses only three keycap sizes to vastly expand configuration options." — System76.
Check out our gallery of pictures below, click the image to view more along with some close-ups of the switches:
Ever feel like "I don't need it but I need it"? I've got that right now. Although, I'm not sure how I would cope without the trust numpad. Would be interested to know in the comments how many of you never use the numpad though, does it bother you it doesn't have one?
System76 Launch Configurable Keyboard Specifications:
Chassis | System76 Open Source milled chassis design Detachable lift bar to adjust keyboard angle by 15 degrees |
Electronics | System76 Open Source PCB design Individually addressable RGB LED backlighting N-Key Rollover |
Sockets and Switches | Kailh MX Hotswap Sockets Kailh Box Jade or Kailh Box Royal Switches |
Key Caps | PBT plastic Dye sublimated legend XDA profile |
Layout | ANSI US QWERTY |
Custom Configuration | Customize layout and lighting in firmware with the System76 Keyboard Configurator Available on Linux, Windows, and macOS |
Integrated Hub | 2 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C (Up to 10 Gbps) 2 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A (Up to 10 Gbps) |
Connectivity | Wired, with detachable USB cable (USB-C to USB-C and USB-A to USB-C cables included) |
Dimensions | 12.17′′ × 5.35′′ × 1.3′′ (309mm x 136mm x 33mm) |
Weight | 2.09 lbs (948g) |
Available to pre-order from May 13, 2021 with shipping starting in June - with a price of $285. We're hoping to see a review unit at some point to give our thoughts.
Check it out on the official site .