When Linux Game Publishing first announced Shadowgrounds Survivor, I didn’t think much of it. I love LGP, but my initial reaction was simply that it was another game I’d never heard of, and that it didn’t really sound too compelling, especially since most LGP games tend to be close to the $50 price point. I’d try the demo, but I made no plans to buy.

Then, Michael Simms announced that they were getting the prequel, Shadowgrounds, basically for free out of the port, so they’d arranged to distribute the prequel as well. Even better, since it was an unexpected windfall, they’d be selling Shadowgrounds for about $10.

That is within my impulse range when it comes to supporting Linux game developers, so I bit, springing for the physical copy with the download now option. I love that the industry has gone the instant gratification option with download now.

The plot line of the game is pretty basic for a overhead shooter: Humanity has learned to terraform, and expanded to Mars and Ganymede. Your character was working for the security forces on Ganymede, but an accident at the power plant in the colony got him fired and now he’s a mechanic. The game opens with a power failure that you’re ordered to investigate, and in pretty short order you find out that the colony is under attack from aliens, and you have to help what military presence is still around survive.

Unfortunately, my initial experience with the game was not positive. Load times were high, audio would cut out completely, and the game would periodically crash. Now, I can’t really blame all this on Shadowgrounds, as my computer never quite ran right with Ubuntu 9.04. I was having frequent performance issues, and I suspect they were related to my video card and it’s drivers.

I’d been thinking about upgrading to the 9.10 Alphas, so I decided to do that, since the recent unbootable problem had been solved. Much to my surprise, and pleasure, almost all of my performance issues have been resolved, and I’m hopeful that an impending RAM upgrade (up from 2 GiB) will help alleviate the rest.

Anyway, the game was now playable without any noticeable issues, a fact I quickly found myself grateful for. Shadowground’s gameplay is vaguely Gauntlet-like, in that it’s controlled from an overhead angle, and control of your character is as simple as choosing an angle to face, and firing. There are some events where you have to use items in the environment, or fix broken items in between waves of enemies.

It’s simple, it’s not terribly original, but it works, and it works well. The game designers do a good job of adding twists to the mechanic from time to time, which generally make sense, and they never really overuse any of the little puzzle elements.

The weapons are pretty well balanced, with even the trusty infinite ammo pistol being useful late into the game, and upgrade units, which act as currency to buy upgrades to your weapons, are plentiful enough to keep things interesting, even if you can’t build a surplus.

The writing and story are good. Not great, but it at least makes sense, and the characters are all interesting enough you want them to survive.

Unfortunately this game was built to be co-op, but the only multiplayer it supports is with two keyboards and mice, on the same host. What, no network play?

This would be acceptable, if SDL had support for multiple input devices. Apparently, this will be fixed in a forthcoming version of the library, and LGP has promised a patch to the games.

For me, Shadowgrounds was an easy purchase at the price that LGP is asking. And yes, I purchased it sight unseen because I really do want to support native gaming on Linux. Luckily for Michael Simms and crew, Shadowgrounds has been good enough (if a bit short, given with how close to the end I believe I am), that I’m definitely planning to buy the sequel, Shadowgrounds Survivor, a game I thought I had little interest in.

Can’t wait for the co-op mode to be enabled…

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness is a new Action RPG released by Hothouse Games in colloboration with the Penny Arcade webcomic guys. It takes place in the Penny Arcade Universe starring Tycho, Gabe, and a character of your own design.

Admittedly, I am not a big Penny Arcade fan. I purchased the game largely because it looked funny, it was based on a 1920s horror-pulp story line, and it has a Linux version. in fact, if you’re using Windows, Mac, or Linux, I’d suggest you head over to Play Greenhouse now and download the demo. XBox Live users should be able to find a demo there.

The story starts out simply: You character is standing outside his home when a mysterious voice begins talking to him (or her), and begs him to clean up his yard with the rake. While he does that, a GIANT ROBOT appears, and crushes his house, before walking away, quickly pursued by Gabe and Tycho, of the Startling Developments Detective Agency.

Your character pursues Gabe and Tycho, learning how to play the game, and fighting the beginnings of a horde of ‘Fruit Fucker’ robots, the name of which pretty clearly describes what you’re dealing with. When you finally catch up with Gabe and Tycho, you join the agency, to get revenge on the Robot, and your adventure sets off in earnest. On the way, you’ll uncover a horrible plot involving Pagan Mimes, fight a horde of filthy hobos, and try to find a place to live.

The game has a decent length for the $20 price tag. A straight play through took just under ten hours, but as I found virtually none of the special music tracks, artwork, and collectibles, I’m likely to go back and search for those things. The game is amusing, and well-polished, though it’s likely unlike any other action RPG you’ve played in it’s mechanics.

Those mechanics made the game feel kind of strange. Whenever battle ends, the entire party is fully healed, you can only have a single status effect on each party member at a time. One of my favorite features is the blocking mechanism, which allows you to time a button hit with the enemies health bar flashing to get either a Block, Partial Block, Missed Block, or the elusive Counterattack. The special attacks feature a similar mechanism, but I do wish there had been a bit more variety in these. Each character’s special attacks operate basically the same, becoming harder with better attacks only because of the time limits and increasing amount of things to accomplish.

The game is simply a good time, and I believe it is worth the $20 asking price. There are three more episodes, which I expect will each hit that price point, though I do wish that they’d decided to offer a “Season Pass” like Sam & Max at a slightly reduced rate. That probably won’t stop me from buying the rest of the series.

For a fun, humorous, adult-oriented adventure, I’d suggest buying Penny Arcade Adventures. Download the demo first, and it gives a pretty complete feel for the tone of the game. But you two, can be a mewling babe on the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness.

Blob Wars is the story of a blob named Bob, who’s trying to save his race from certain destruction from the Aliens. It’s a simple 2d Platform game written in SDL, so it runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS (probably others as well). It’s also the most polished FLOSS game I’ve ever seen.

The level design is simple, with levels unlocking as you clear others, sometimes branching into multiple paths you can take, and each level includes some things you can’t access until you get the Rebreather (allows you to swim indefinitely) or the Jetpack.

There are a variety of weapons, each providing different strategies. Each weapon gives you unlimited ammunition, however, you can only have one weapon at a time, so sometimes you have to be careful not to pick up an unwanted weapon drop.

This is just a great freeware game, and I’d seriously suggest you pick it up. Anyone interested in game development might also want to consider the sequel, which is in 3D and in development at the same site.