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Top 10 Free Linux Games
If the term “Can I game on it?” has been bothering you while thinking to switch on Linux from Windows platform, then here is an answer for that – “Go for it!”. Thanks to the Open source community who has been consistently developing different genre games for Linux OS and the online content distribution platform – Steam, there is no dearth of good commercial games which are as fun to play on Linux as on its other counterparts (like Windows).
We present to you the list of 10 best free games for Linux for this year which have been selected based on their popularity, their free-to-play title, and easy installation.
NOTE – Interested in First Person Shooter games, read our article on 10 popular first person shooter Linux games.
1. Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 is a team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed by Valve Corporation, and is a sequel to the original 1996 Quake modification, Team Fortress. The game was first released on October 10, 2007 for Windows and the Xbox 360, and was later released as a standalone package for Linux on February 14, 2013. The game was announced in 1998, and was initially powered by Valve’s GoldSrc engine but the launch was much delayed due to updates in its design during its 9 years long development cycle. The game became a free-to-play title on June 23, 2011.
It has received critical acclaim and many awards, mainly due to its artistic direction, balanced gameplay, humour, and graphical style. Unlike other games with ultra-realistic graphics such as Call of Duty, Half-Life franchises, this game’s set up looks like cartoons brought to life.
Gameplay: Like the original game, Team Fortress 2 is set around 2 opposing teams; RED (Reliable Excavation & Demolition) and BLU (Builders League United), both competing for a combat-based primary objective. Players can opt out of 9 character classes namely, Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, and Spy, each one with its own unique weapons, strengths and weaknesses.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum requirements | |
| CPU | Pentium 4 or Athlon XP or better | Pentium 4 or Athlon XP or better |
| CPU Speed | 3.0 GHz processor | 1.7 GHz |
| RAM | 1 GB | 512 MB |
| Video Card | DirectX 9 compatible video card (NVIDIA GeForce 7900+ / ATI Radeon X1900+) | DirectX 8.1 compatible video Card (NVIDIA GeForce4+ / ATI Radeon 8500+) |
| Sound Card | Yes | Yes |
| Free disk space | 5 GB | 5 GB |
2. Dota 2
Dota 2, a sequel to the Defence of the Ancients, is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed by Valve Corporation. Dota 2 was released as a free-to-play title for Windows on July 9, 2013 and for Linux on July 18, 2013, and is available exclusively through Valve’s online content-distribution platform Steam. The game was applauded by video game critics, who praised it for its pleasing gameplay, improved production quality. Though it was also criticized for its steep learning curve.
Gameplay: A standard match of Dota 2 is independent and involves 2 opposing groups, the Radiant and the Dire, each team having 5 players. Both the teams occupy a stronghold at a corner of the map and located at each stronghold is a building named “Ancient”. In order to win, a team must destroy the opponent’s Ancient. There are 9 game modes and 107 “Heroes” in Dota 2 to choose from. Each player controls a “Hero” character and aims on levelling up, acquiring items, collecting gold, and fighting against enemy team to gain victory.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum requirements | |
| CPU | Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz | Pentium 4 3.0GHz |
| CPU Speed | 2.4 GHz processor | 3.0 GHz |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| Video Card | DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better | DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better |
| Sound Card | Yes | Yes |
| Free disk space | 2.5 GB | 2.5 GB |
3. Urban Terror
Urban Terror, abbreviated as UrT, is a free-to-play multi-player FPS video game developed by FrozenSand. It was released as a free standalone game in 2007 utilizing ioquake3 (a game engine project to act as a clean base package for more advanced graphical and audio features) as an engine.
The official game motto’s ‘Fun over realism’ is true to its word as it is a well packaged product with simple installation, adequate graphics, low requirements, and a balanced gameplay, which makes it a unique, enjoyable and addictive game. Urban Terror was nominated to the 2007 Mod DB’s Mod of the Year Award.
Gameplay: The game billed as “Hollywood tactical shooter”, blends elements from games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Counter-Strike. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes like the weapons available are real-life, have recoil, are less accurate if fired while movement, and require reloading when a magazine has been utilized. Damage is also realistic such as wounds require bandaging, leg or feet wounds slow down the player.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum requirements | |
| CPU | Pentium 4 1.2 GHz or higher | Pentium 4 1.2 GHz |
| CPU Speed | 1.2 GHz | 1.2 GHz |
| RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Video Card | NVidia or ATI card with 256MB or more | NVidia or ATI card with 128MB RAM |
| HDD | 50 GB or more | 50 GB |
4. Alien Arena 2008
Alien Arena is a standalone 3D first-person online deathmatch shooter video game based on source code of Quake II and Quake III, released by id software. The game developed by COR entertainment was released in October 2004, and has been free-to-play title since its commencement, with currently no plans to change it to pay-to-play format.
Features comprising new particle engine and effects, 32 bit graphics, reflective water, light blooms, high resolution textures and skins, stain maps, and more, make up for it to be an addictive game. This game has come a long way from its original version “CodeRED: Alien Arena”, with all new player characters, nearly 2 dozen new maps, new weapon models, and many substantial engine enhancements and optimizations.
Gameplay: Alien Arena features 37 levels, has fast and smooth gameplay with a high-tech atmosphere. The players can play online against one another or against the built in CodeRED bots, which feature multiple skill levels like rocket jumping and strafe jumping. The game also offers CTF (Capture The Flag), AOA (All Out Assault) modes, in which players can climb into vehicles to do battle, Deathball, and Team Core Assault.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum requirements | |
| CPU | Intel Pentium 4 1.7 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1800 | Pentium 3 @ 800MHz |
| CPU Speed | 1.7 GHz | 800MHz (or 1 GHz) |
| RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Video Card | BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC | NVIDIA GeForce 4400+ or ATI Radeon 8500+ (32 MB) |
| Video Memory | 64 MB | 32 MB |
| Sound Card | DirectX compatible | DirectX compatible |
| DirectX | 9.0c | 9.0c |
| HDD | 500 MB | 500 MB |
5. Nexuiz
Nexuiz is an Arena first-person shooter 3D deathmatch video game developed and published by Alientrap on May 31, 2005, and is build on a modified Quake 1 Engine named DarkPlaces, whose features include Quake3bsp support, coronas, new particle effects, real time World and Dynamic lighting and shadowing, advanced menu system, and Md3 model support. It is intended to be played on the Internet or over a local network.
Gameplay: The gameplay is deathmatch with the most exorbitant possible speeds and weapons, providing extremely fast paced action. Other than deathmatch, there are several game modes like team deathmatch, domination, capture the flag, multiple mutators, and weapon options like rocket arena and instagib. Although, Nexuiz is mainly multiplayer but it includes a full single-player campaign, which lets one to play through various multiplayer game types and maps with bots.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum requirements | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo at 2Ghz, or AMD Athlon 64 x2 2ghz, or better | 1 Ghz Pentium III or AMD Athlon |
| RAM | 2 GB | 512 MB |
| Video Card | NVidia 8800GT with 512Mb RAM, ATI 3850HD with 512Mb RAM, or better | GeForce 2 or equivalent |
| HDD | 3 GB | 400 MB |
6. Tremulous
Tremulous is a free and open source game that incorporates a team-based FPS game with real-time strategy elements. The game developed by Dark Legion Development, released on August 11, 2005 and is based on the ioquake2 game engine. Although it originated as a mod for Quake 3, but ultimately went standalone.
Tremulous won the Mod Database “Mod of the Year” 2006 competition under the category of “Player’s Choice Standalone Game of the year”, and also came in first in a “Best free game based on GPL Quake source?” poll on the Planet Quake website.
Gameplay: The game is presumably set in the future, where humans fight against spider-like aliens. Players can choose from 2 unique races, aliens and humans, and each of the team players can build working structures during the game like a Real Time Strategy game. The most significant structure is ‘spawn’, which provides each team with supplements to replace players who have been killed.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum requirements | |
| CPU | Pentium 4 3.46GHz or Athlon 64 3800+ | Pentium 4 1.8GHz or Athlon XP 1700+ |
| RAM | 2 GB | 256 MB |
| Video Card | Nvidia GeForce GT 120 , AMD Radeon HD 4550 | Nvidia GeForce 210 , AMD Radeon X600 Series |
| DirectX version | DX 9.0c | DX 9.0c |
| HDD space | 4 GB | 125 MB |
7. Warsow
Warsow is a First Person Shooter (FPS) video game designed for online play, inspired by the fast paced shooters of the late 1990’s and early millennium. Warsow’s codebase is free and open source software, distributed under the terms of General Public License, and is built upon Qfusion, an advanced modification of the Quake II engine. Warsow stands out as a unique experience as its development team has strived to create a fun, fast, and action-packed game focused on speed, trickjumps, art of movement. This title uses cell-shaded graphics in a cartoon-ish style to fuse themes including cyberpunk, industrial, and sci-fi.
Gameplay: This fast-paced 3D ego-shooter focuses heavily on movement and trickjumps, where many of the tricks originate from the Quake series, including circle-jumping, bunny hopping, strafe-jumping, double jumping, ramp-sliding, and rocket jumping. Apart from these tricks, Warsow also allows the players to dash, dodge or wall jump, which were originally possible in the Urban Terror.
System Requirements:
| Minimum Requirements | |
| CPU | Pentium II 300 Mhz or greater |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| Video Card | 16 MB (Riva TNT or better) |
| HDD | 400 MB |
Note – The recommended requirements for this game weren’t directly available. This is what we got from some discussion forums:
- CPU – Intel Pentium 4 (3.00 GHz)
- RAM - 512 MB
- Video Card - 256 MB (nVidia GeForce 5500 FX)
- HDD - 2 GB
8. Open Arena (OA)
Open Arena is an open-source multiplayer FPS game based on the ioquake3 fork of the id tech 3 engine. It is developed by the OpenArena Team and released under the GNU General Public License V2.0 (GPLv2). The game’s official site includes downloads for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X Operating systems and is also available from the default repositories of Linux distributions, like Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Arch, Mandriva, and Ubuntu. OpenArena can be played freely, offline or online, and users are also able to run their own LAN or internet server.
Gameplay: OpenArena’s gameplay is precisely same as Quake III Arena: Win the game by scoring frags with the help of a balanced set of weapons designed for different situations. Every match happens in an “arena”, a map where players try to kill each other; arenas are designed for gametypes such as deathmatch, Tournament, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. Due to violent and mature content, it’s unsuitable for children under the age of 17.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum Requirements | |
| CPU | Pentium III 700MHz / AMD Athlon XP 2800+ | Pentium II 233MHz / AMD K6-2 300MHz or equally powerful processor |
| RAM | 256 MB | 64 MB |
| Video Card | Geforce 4 Ti 4400 | 16 MB (with OpenGL acceleration) |
| Free Disk Space | 270 MB | 50 MB |
9. Freecol
FreeCol is a free and open source turn-based strategy video game, which is imitation of the old game Colonization, and is similar to Civilization. The game was initially released on January 2, 2003, but its stable release came out 17 months ago, on January 7, 2013. It remains same in terms of mechanics and gameplay as the original game, but with newly added set of redesigned graphics.
Gameplay: The objective of the game is to colonize the New World. The game starts in 1492 with a vessel and some colonists, and the player builds up colonies in the New World, struggling for power with other colonies from rival Europeans. The expansion of colonies continues with help from the European king until no help is required from Europe, meaning that colonies can stand alone without any exterior help, and declares independence from the King. If the colonies are able to resist attacks of the King’s forces, then victory is obtained.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum Requirements | |
| CPU | Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 2.53 GHz | Pentium 3 1GHz |
| RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Java Version | Java Runtime Environment 7 | Java Runtime Environment 5 (or JRE 6) |
| Resolution | 1024 X 768 | 1024 X 768 |
10. Extreme Tux Racer
Extreme Tux Racer, originally named Tux Racer, is a free software 3D computer game which lets a player take on the role of the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. The game was released on October 2, 2000 by Jasmin Patry, a student studying at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. An original Linux game, it is a very fun and simple racing game, without any complexity or violence, which makes it suitable for all age groups.
Gameplay: In the game, Tux slides down various courses of steep, snow- and ice- covered mountains, to achieve the best time and the best score. The score can be increased by collecting herring while racing and sliding down the course. Sliding on snow allows more manoeuvrability, sliding on ice makes Tux go faster and sliding on rocky patches slows down Tux.
System Requirements:
| Recommended Requirements | Minimum Requirements | |
| CPU | 400 MHz CPU or better | Pentium 200MMX |
| RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Video Card | TNT2/Voodoo3-class 3D graphics card or better | 3D graphics card with full OpenGL support |
| Sound Card | 16-bit | 16-bit |
| HDD | 20 MB | 20 MB |
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via: http://mylinuxbook.com/top-10-free-linux-games/
作者：Himanshu Arora 译者：译者ID 校对：校对者ID