Nekro >:D

I don't usually tend to fork out wet stinky for Early Access-games on Steam, but, on this occasion I made an exception. After watching LinuxGameCast's episode about it, I just couldn't help myself :P

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( Forward to 9:02 for review of Nekro's Early Access )

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Excerpt from the Nekro Steam-page:

Raise demons and spawn unholy weapons of war as a powerful Necromancer with an insatiable blood lust. Customize your minions to your liking and perfect your ideal "monster loadout." Tear your enemies limb from limb and harvest their corpses to strengthen your dark magics.

For an Early Access beta, this game is surprisingly well made (and even debugged(!)) to be at version 0.8.5.5. Not even at pre-release stage and it behaves like a release already.

It ran exceptionally well on Linux (32-bit "Unity"-game on 64-bit Linux).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/246400/

All the following screenshots are from the 0.8.0.3-version.

Civilization V @Linux

I'm really not a big fan of strategy-builder games (at least not since C&C), but Sid Meier's Civilization-series are more interesting than other similar games, at least in my opinion.

The game did have some peculiar bugs (ex: not running on selected screen in multi-monitor setups), but nothing major. The screenshots below were taken on an Intel Core 2 Duo Linux-laptop.

2 years Linux-gaming

SteamOS and Steam for Linux have really progressed the last two years. And with this year showing AAA-titles also wanting "teh' working Linux", things are really looking good for VALVe ;) :)

Personally, the bugs I've encountered playing beta- and alpha-games on Linux since December 2012 really weren't all that bad.

I really only had one major issue; the Steam-for-Linux client itself had some CPU-bugs.

In VALVe's defense, that was due to the fact I was launching it on a low-powered Asus Eee 900 netbook that sported an Intel Celeron 900MHz uni-processor (single-core). One lousy, 32-bit, barely-functioning little crappy "mini-computer".

This low-end CPU did not sport certain CPU-flags that Steam-for-Linux expected it to have, so they had to make workarounds for low-powered devices with integrated graphics (in part because of yours truly).

Apart from that VALVe-specific debugging, I've also sent a few bug reports to various game-studios about specific library-support issues, audio-bugs, and similar low-priority bugs. Nothing big.

Steam for Linux...

Ok, time for a little summary of my "Steam for Linux"- / "SteamOS"-testing:

All of my current Linux-based Steam-games (50 out of 67) run flawlessly on both Linux Mint v13 (with backports) and Ubuntu Desktop v12.04 (vanilla).

• They do not require a top-of-the-line gaming graphics-card.
• They (also) do not require vast amounts of memory (8GB will do fine).

List of mentioned games is available on my Steam-profile.

Will be adding a new picture-album entitled "Linux-gaming" on my G+ profile soon. Stay tuned!

"Linux-gaming" Google+ photos:
https://plus.google.com/photos/104557379246577572135/albums/5977405744473413313

SteamOS is still in it's early testing-stage(s). You basically have to posess a fair amount of advanced Linux-tinkering skills to be able to utilize it properly, but things are progressing. There are some automated versions being made (custom ISO-images) to let anyone install, test and even debug it on hardware (without the earlier requirement of a EFI-capable motherboard, you can manage with a BIOS-version now).

SteamOS

Steam OS in it's early stages. Fairly straightforward installer actually no need for command-line magic or anything. It's a modified Debian GNU/Linux 7.1 ("Wheezy") distribution, maintained by Valve.

Bootscreen.

Live-CD installer, loading components.

Installing SteamOS base system.

SteamOS desktop, after exiting the Steam for Linux client.

"Steam controller"

Interesting design. Wonder how it will perform in practical use.

Article-link:
http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/19124