Linux Games

This is simply a list of all the games on this website of which I know that a Linux version exists. It does not include most roguelike games, games later released under GPL (like most olf first-person shooters), Magnetic Scrolls games, for which a Linux viewer exists, or games running under SCUMMVM.

ADOM	Roguelike	94
Doom	FPS			Linux DOOM FAQ
GJID	Puzzle	96		Port by Mike Sharov
Quake	FPS			Linux Quake HOWTO
Quake II	FPS	97
Descent³	FPS	99
Dope Wars	strat
Heretic	FPS
Hexen	FPS
Railroad Tycoon II	strat
Theocracy	RTS	00
Alizarin Tetris	Tetris	01		Kiri Wagstaff and Westley Weimer
Catapults	Connect Four			Ariel Jacob
Postal	Action
Return to Castle Wolfenstein	FPS
SimCity 3000	strat
Tetris Queen	Tetris			David A. Capello
Tile World	Puzzle			Brian Raiter
Waurie	Mancala			David Grogono
Neverwinter Nights	RPG	02
Serious Sam	FPS			Beta
Bedter	Tetris	03		Andrew Bednarz
BlueCube	Tetris			Sebastian Falbesoner
Enigma	Puzzle
Slime Forest	edu
Devil Whiskey	RPG	04
Doom 3	FPS
Escape	Puzzle
OpenTTD	Simulation
Odium (Gorky 17)	RPG	06
Knights and Merchants	RTS	07

A Few Notes, 2010-11-26

I originally set up this page in February 2004. I took some moderate interest in the topic then, I take very little interest in it now, for several reasons:

• The time and energy spent on porting a game to Linux would probably add or at least improve the support of several games if spent on the development of Wine or DOSBox instead.
• Besides issues of raw performance, relevant only in high-end 3D games as long as they're new, I see no disadvantage of having an additional layer. In fact, I much prefer playing DOS games over playing Windows games nowadays, precisely because I can play them in DOSBox. I played games in DOSBox that I never got to run on actual hardware.
• Commercial ports that are released as binaries only seem to me especially pointless. In ten or fifteen years they probably won't run on anything any more, while the Windows original will still run on Wine.

Links

These links are older than the page itself, they date back to 2001 or so (I know I added Loki when it was still active). I check them occasionally and remove the broken once, but very rarely add any new ones.

• Loki was the probably the first company porting retail games to Linux. There repertoir consisted mostly of shooters and a couple of strategies.—Loki Games closed with the end of January 2002. as of 2010-11-26, the website is still up.
• Piga Software
• Linux Games
• The Linux Game Tome (happypenguin.org)
• Linux Rising: Linux Games Come of Age, an article from 1999 or 2000.
• The Linux Gamers' HOWTO by Peter Jay Salzman