Hi everyone! So I just switched to Linux and I am a little unsure of what to play on my laptop.
It’s a presumably decent laptop, 16gb of ram and Iris Xe, but I find that it has battery issues trying to play anything fancy like Skyrim.
I’m looking into things like emulation, finally tackling my Itch.io backlog, and bringing out old classics.
I like RPGs and text-based choose your own adventure games, so if you have any recommendations I’d appreciate it!
Same boat! Here are some i picked up;
- Planescape Torment - rpg & adventure,
- Darklands - old skool rpg & adventure,
- Spiritfarer - simulation & adventure,
- Papers Please - simulation & puzzle,
- The Captain - rpg & simulation,
- Shadowrun - rpg & strategy,
- Baldurs Gate II - rpg & strategy,
- Don’t Starve - action & adventure,
- Rimworld - simulation & strategy,
- FTL - strategy & simulation
Edit; formatting
Well steam has proton, which can run many, many windows games at generally good speeds. I suggest looking at older games and indie games, as they will run best on your Xe. For example, the Heroes of Might and Magic series, particularly 3 and 5 are very good 4x/RPG hybrids. Find interesting games then go to protondb.com and see if its ‘gold’ or better
If you like text-based adventure games, check out ifdb.org for a massive store of free and abandoned text-based games. You can play in-browser or on any OS with a native client, Linux and Android included
Mount and blade: Warband
Its on Steam
Absolutely yes, Warband is tons of fun and there’s no other game quite like it. The mods are great too, I’ve put so many hours into Floris and Prophesy of Pendor.
Don’t sleep on Gekokujo. Warring-states era Japan has a very different meta from the base game due to the firearms and lack of shields
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Between SNES, Genesis and GBA, there’s an enourmous wealth of RPG and adventure games out there
I’d suggest to check IFDB for the text adventures.
Ooh I didn’t know there was a database for interactive fiction! Thank you!
I want to stress that I am NOT liable for any loss of educational opportunities or employment resulting from this discovery ;)
Might be a bit off topic here. I really suggest to have a check at https://www.protondb.com/
Many Win-only steam games are performing great on Linux now.
Besides, I’ve played https://vita3k.org/ for a while. There are countless decent old games which can be played via emulators on linux
All Steam Deck verified games should play just fine on that laptop. While Intel Xe graphics are not the greatest, Steam Deck is restricted to 15W and you laptop is not.
Wait, what? Is that why everyone’s recommending steam deck games? I assumed Steam Deck verified games required something like, an okay GPU. Its actually the voltage? That definitely makes my life easier, lmfao.
By the Steam Deck’s site, the verification means that:
- It plays well with the Deck’s inputs
- Can use the Deck’s native resolution or similar (1280x800 or 1280x720) without issues
- It “just works” without having to tinker with the game
- Every component of the game is supported by Proton if running a non-native game
Small list from me: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Caves of Qud, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, ADOM, Reigns, SanctuaryRPG: Black Edition, King’s Quest, Liberal Crime Squad. The old Elder Scrolls Arena and Daggerfall are also currently available for free. I see Daggerfall is playable with DosBox/Lutris, I assume Arena is as well.
Pretty sure you can play Daggerfall Unity Native - https://gist.github.com/holmraven/fa82f6106f4367f9efb36a842c9f947f
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Not saying it’s true here, but I’ve run into some games where playing the Windows version with proton runs better than the native Linux client.
Suikoden I and II are great PSX RPGs, if you can emulate. Shadowrun (Returns, Dragonfall and Hong Kong) are great and Linux native.
Suikoden I and II are required playing for jrpg fans!
But emulation as a suggestion alone is good. You have access to so much of a field of human creativity if you’re okay copying the bits to your drive.
Edit: I feel obligated to say that I also like the other suikoden games. My rank is
II
V
I
III
IV
But I still enjoyed IV.
If you want an old classic, I’ve been playing rollercoaster tycoon 2 recently and there is an open source engine for it (openrct2) that has native linux compatibility. The controls take some getting used to, But I think that artstyle looks totally amazing.
Go nuts over on GOG!
So many great titles for cheap.
I know that you can run TES 4 Oblivion decently well on Linux with a Windows emulator (WINE). I had a few odd graphics glitches like a gigantic texture of a tree just completely taking over the sky. I guess it wanted to be some kind of Yggdrasil tree or something.
It ran well though, and on a early 2010-era laptop. I don’t know about mod compatibility though.
WINE Is Not an Emulator 😉
Seriously, that’s what the acronym means, because it’s not an emulator, it’s a compatibility layer.
There’s also Proton for Steam games, or even non-steam games, though it’s a little more complicated to set up in the later case.
Oblivion’s excellent with mods, though I’m unfamiliar with modding Bethesda games on Linux.
Proton is Wine with a bundle of extra libraries included for compatibility. It’s basically an opinionated gaming-focused distribution of Wine for games.
I realize you may know this but I’m just adding it here for anyone who may be confused and see the two as in-competition with each other.
While it may not exactly match up with the body of your message, I think this would fit the subject line rather well:
…and cataclysm: dark days ahead.
with those two, i can survive indefinitely on (almost) any linux machine.
