Top 20 Best Free Linux Games To Download

If you use Linux as your primary OS, then you already understand why it is so great. But, do you game on it? Ever try to convert your Windows friends to Linux? More times than not, the dreaded first question is, "Can I game on it?"

For some reason, there is a constant mindset that there are not many games for Linux when in fact there are many. I don't mean the small ones that are included with GNOME or KDE, but full blown projects that deliver captivating and deep game play experiences. There are even a few good commercial games out there for Linux, but that's not the topic of today's article.
Instead, here is a top 20 list of free games you should have installed.

1. Battle For Wesnoth

David White who started Wesnoth back in 2003, had a vision of a free open source strategy game that had very simple rules, uses a strong artificial intelligence, challenging and fun. Wesnoth has already passed the 1 million mark for downloads. As of March 2007, the game is available in 35 different languages.

A normal Wesnoth player has
* 200+ unit types
* 16 different races
* 6 major factions

to choose from. Actually, you can even make your own custom units, design your own map, scenarios or even campaigns. It’s all up to your creativity. The most interesting part of any game is the ability to multiplay. You can challenge up to a total of 8 friends in multiplayer fantasy battles.

2. Nexuiz

Nexuiz is a free, cross platform, first person shooter distributed under GNU General Public License by Alientrap Software. It started back in May 31 2005 with version 1.0 using DarkPlaces, a significanlty modified quake engine. The current version, 2.2.3, was released on January 26, 2007. Nexuiz’s logo is based on the chinese character “力” which means strength.

Several notable features of the game include
* ability to multiplay up to 64 players
* ability to generate bots for practice sessions
* dynamic lighting system similar to Doom 3

3. America’s Army
America’s Army is a tactical, multiplayer, first-person shooter owned by the United States Government and released as a global public relations initiative to help with U.S. Army recruitment. The first version, Recon, was released on 4th July 2002. The current version 2.8.1 was released on 22nd Mar 2007.

It’s the first well known computer game used for political aims. The game is used as a playable recruiting tool and critics have charged the game serves as a propaganda device. A counter on the homepage of the PC version shows over eight million registered accounts as of 2007. GameSpy tracked the game usage and reported an average of 4,500 players at any one time between 2002 and 2005. It is enough for America’s Army to rank in the Top 10 Online Games chart.

4. Enemy Territory : Quake Wars

It is a first-person shooter follow-up to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. It also has the same science fiction universe as Quake 4, with a story serving as a prequel to Quake II. Quake Wars is the second multiplayer-only game in the Quake series after Quake III Arena. The gameplay is almost the same as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, but with the addition of controllable vehicles and aircraft, asymmetric teams, much larger maps and the option of computer-controlled bots. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is being developed by Splash Damage for the PC using a modified version of id Software’s Doom 3 engine and MegaTexture rendering technology.

At E3 2006(Electronic Entertainment Expo), the game won the Game Critics Award for Best Online Multiplayer.

5. Tremulous

Tremulous is an open source team-based first-person shooter with a game play that is similar to Gloom(a quake 2 mod) and Natural Selection (a Half-Life mod). The game features two teams, humans and aliens, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The game has been downloaded over 200,000 times and was voted “Player’s Choice Standalone Game of the Year” in Mod Database’s “Mod of the Year” 2006 competition.

6. Tux Racer

Tux Racer is a newbie friendly, open source, 3D computer game starring the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. Like many open-source games, the replay value of Tux Racer is extended by easy modification of the game. New maps can be created by making three raster images to indicate height, surface, and object placement. The last release of Tux Racer was version 0.61, 29th October 2001.

7. World Of Padman

WOP is a new and free comic style game that uses the Quake 3 engine. The game was recently featured in 3 German magazine covers; PC Action, ‘BRAVO Screenfun’ and ‘Linux Intern’.

8. Vendetta

It is a first person twitch based MMORPG. New players get an 8 hour trial which is enough to get anyone hooked to it. After that, you gotta pay $5 a month which is quite worthwhile, especially considering the incredibly communicative development of the game. It has a native linux installer as well as one for Macs and Windows.

9. Alien Arena 2007

Alien Arena is a completely free FPS started by COR Entertainment in 2004 comprising of a science fiction ambience and a Quake like gameplay. This game is playable in single player mode against bots, but the action and thrill lies at the online multiplayer mode. Features of the Alien Arena 2007 include an internal server browser for finding other people to play online and an external program that acts as an IRC interface. There are 6 game types and 6 game mutators that changes the gameplay. Cattle Prod is a new game type that requires you to herd robotic cattle to earn points. Alien Arena 2007 is playable in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

10. Urban Terror

A mod of Quake III Arena, Urban Terror focuses a lot on realism. Number of weapons and gear that can be carried is limited. Accuracy is reduced when fired while moving and magazines require reloading upon expension. Damage areas are identified throughout the body. Wounds require bandaging and slows down movement significantly if the damage is not bandaged. Even a stamina bar is present to indicate if the player is able to sprint or jump. Released on 1st April 2007, Urban Terror 4 introduced 4 new features namely, ‘powersliding’, new weapons, player models and improved hit detection. It also supports anti cheating tools like PunkBuster, BattleEye and RunDMC.

11. A Tale In The Desert

Set in Ancient Egypt, ATITD focuses on society rather than combat. Actually, there is no combat system whatsoever. The fun of the game lies in economic development. Most of the players are from the US and Europe and the variety of social activities encourages a lot of interaction. Players are to participate in building, community, research and test themselves through challenges called ‘Tests’. The male to female players ratio is considerably equal compared to other online games and the game is also noted by many to have high levels of civility and generosity. The first 24 hours is free, after that a monthly fee of $13.95 is required to continue playing.

12. Second Life

Second Life is an online virtual world that allows ‘Residents’ to explore, meet each other, socialize, participate in group activities, trade items and services. It’s creators, Linden Lab, intends to create a world like the Metaverse described by Neal Stephenson in his novel, Snow Crash. In this Metaverse, people can interact, have fun and do business. The current currency is Linden Dollar (L$) and is EXCHANGEABLE for US$ in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab and real life companies. It is hardly considered a game as tt does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels or an end-strategy. More than 7 million accounts have been registered since its conception. Basic accounts is free but Premium account is US$9.95 if you want to own lands.

13. Savage 2

This fantasy / science fiction, real-time strategy, fps, rpg game is a sequel to to S2 Games’ Savage : Battle for Newerth. Both teams of human and beasts are pitted against each other in a gameplay where strategy, agility and alertness is needed. The game is downloadable for free but online access requires a one time account purchase of US$29.99. Activities such as kills, deaths, assists, building razes, damage and score points are tracked. All Savage 2 matches are saved and thus searchable in the form of replays. The automatic replay network is a system that will greatly increase the skill levels of overall player populations and competitiveness.

14. Warsaw

Warsaw is a free FPS based in Qfusion 3D engine playable on Windows and Linux developed under the motto ‘by gamers for gamers’. Beta testers from the community goes through internal testing sessions and gives feedback on public releases where the main developers will carefully judge suggestions and comments made. Gameplay is focused a lot on agility. Weapons picked up will have weak ammo until a new ammo pack is found. Graphic effects are minimal, clear and visible.

15. TrueCombat: Elite

TC:Elite happens to be a total-conversion modification of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory by Team Terminator and Groove Six Studios. The game is free and playable across all platforms. Notable features include iron sights aiming (no crosshair), multi layer object penetration, letterbox / wide screen view modes, lag compensation, client side bullet prediction and support for PunkBuster, the anti cheat software.

16. Frozen Bubble

The latest version 2.0 includes an adjusted launcher speed, new scoring system, 4 lives and online multiplayer mode, but only available to Linux users at the time of writing. Version 1.0 of the game is available across all platforms including Symbian Series 60 line of smartphones and a single player Java applet version. Written in Perl, the free to play Frozen Bubble features 100 levels and a cute penguin (I think it’s supposed to be Tux) who shoots to form bubbles of the same color.

17. The Open Racing Car Simulator

TORCS is an open source 3D racing simulator using OpenGL technologies. It is runnable on all Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX and Windows platforms. There are 50 different cars, 20 tracks and 50 opponents to race against. The multiplayer mode can accommodate up to 4 human players. Several of the simulation include damaged models, collisions and aerodynamics like ground effects, spoilers, etc. Development is currently being carried out to enable online racing mode.

18. FlightGear

Since 1996, FlightGear has been a collaborative project that aims to create a sophisticated open source flight simulator framework. FlightGear uses the SimGear simulation engine. Some of the aircraft models available in FlightGear include gliders, helicopters, airliners, fighter jets, etc. Weather effects such as clouds, lightning effects and time of the day is illustrated.

19. Frets On Fire

Winner of the Assembly Demo Party 2006, Frets on Fire is a music video game that uses the keyboard to play along with scrolling on-screen musical notes to complete a song. The player has to imagine the keyboard as a guitar and pick it up to play. One hand will be used to press the ‘frets’ (F1 to F5) and another will be used to press the ‘picks’ (Shift or Enter). Colored markers that appears are to be played by pressing ‘frets’ of the correct color and ‘picks’ at the correct moment. There are also song editors and tutorials featured in the game. This game was addictive once I got the hang of it.

20. Scorched 3d

Scorched 3D is a 100% free turn-based artillery game modeled after the classic DOS game Scorched Earth ‘The Mother Of All Games’. Operatable across all operating systems. What started as a 3D landscape generator has now become a cool 3D game that requires skills to master. Players are supposed to take turns homing in to hit the target by adjusting the angle, rotation, power and a weapon of choice every other turn. Hits and kills will generate income for you to buy better weapons and items. Note that items are as important as weapons.

21. ManiaDrive

ManiaDrive is a free clone of Trackmania, the great game from Nadéo studio, and is an arcade car game on acrobatic tracks, with a quick and nervous gameplay (tracks almost never exceed one minute), and features a network mode, as the original. Lots of crazy driving involved.