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Steam Game Festival - Summer Edition is live, lots of Linux demos

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Want to get a peek at some upcoming games? The Steam Game Festival - Summer Edition is live now with lots to have a look at for the interested Linux fan.

Currently Steam developers appear to be having issues rolling out demos to store pages, we will update this with a Linux list as and when we see them appear. You should be able to install any from the Steam event page itself or just use SteamDB and search for the demo there as they give you an install link. We will not be listing all demos, just some to get you started!

Verified working Linux demos newly live (or updated) for the event:

art of rally ASYLUM
Backbone CARRION
Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands DRAG
Drink More Glurp Elteria Adventures
Flea Madness Fragment's Moonrise
Hadean Tactics Haulin' Oats
HyperCore LAZR - A Clothformer
Midnight Protocol

Monster Crown

Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp OFF GRID : Stealth Hacking
Patrick's Parabox Perilous Warp
Port Valley
On NVIDIA use "-force-glcore42 -force-clamped" as a launch option to get around graphics issues in Unity.
Ray's The Dead
Sail Forth Slender Threads
Soldat 2 Tallowmere 2: Curse of the Kittens
Tenderfoot Tactics The Last Cube
The Long Gate The Zone: Stalker Stories
Unbound: Worlds Apart
Run it manually, they're missing the Linux demo launch config on Steam.
Vagrus - The Riven Realms

We've already come across multiple entirely broken demos, so we will be feeding info back to developers. We'll be taking a look and perhaps doing a few videos and thoughts articles over the next few days, if they manage to catch our interest. We've already taken a look at ASYLUM and done a preview previously too.

A lot of developers will also be doing their own livestreams and Q&A sessions, which will be live on their Steam store page so be sure to take a good look at the times of each you're interested in.

Since most big gaming events were cancelled, online events like this are the next best thing. It would be great if this type of event continues each year because the bigger in-person events are usually quite restrictive due to location and prices - these open them up to many more people and potential buyers.

Take a look over on the dedicated Steam event page. It's live until June 22. As for the Steam Summer Sale, there's been rumours of it starting on June 25 only a few days later. If you discover something you love, do tell us in the comments!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Demo, Event, Steam
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33 comments
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kaiman Jun 17, 2020
Sadly, none of the game demos I'm really interested in have a Linux version. One worked with Proton, though, the other required the Media Foundation stuff in addition. At least now I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to play them at launch.
randyl Jun 17, 2020
Quoting: quyseJust a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To install the demo I searched for Insatia on the Steam store and selected the store page. Even though the demo entry shows only the Windows icon, the 64bit Linux version installed. The game kept crashing upon launch so I set compatibility to use "Steam Linux Runtime" and then the game launched and played successfully. The only issue is there is no sound.


Last edited by randyl on 17 June 2020 at 9:04 pm UTC
Whitewolfe80 Jun 17, 2020
Ahh steam special the day linus puts out another gaming on linux video, hopefully people follow the conclusion this time and give linux a try
Salvatos Jun 18, 2020
Tried the Iron Oath demo; seems to be Windows only for now but runs just fine via Proton.
pskosinski Jun 18, 2020
I love Tesla vs Lovecraft game. It's multiplatform, available for Linux too. There's demo of Tesla Force, new game in series and it's available only for Windows but it works without any issues in Proton. As far as I know Tesla Force will be available for Linux but demo is "Windows-only".
quyse Jun 18, 2020
Quoting: TheSLAP
Quoting: quyseJust a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Make sure you have the linux depot added to the demo package within Steamworks (Dashboard -> Click demo app -> "All associated packages, DLC, demos, and tools" -> Under "free to play packages", click demo package -> ensure your linux depot is added!) I hope this helps!

Yeah, thanks! I am aware of this trap, it was one of the first things I've checked :D Very obscure thing, especially that the free package was set up by Valve automatically.

EDIT: by the package set up by Valve I meant the one in "Free Weekend packages", and you mentioned a different one, my bad. But anyway, the Linux depot is added in every package.

Quoting: randyl
Quoting: quyseJust a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To install the demo I searched for Insatia on the Steam store and selected the store page. Even though the demo entry shows only the Windows icon, the 64bit Linux version installed. The game kept crashing upon launch so I set compatibility to use "Steam Linux Runtime" and then the game launched and played successfully. The only issue is there is no sound.

Indeed looks like we broke compatibility with Fedora recently, sorry :( (assuming you are on Fedora, your profile says so). I just pushed a fix for that to Steam. On no sound with Steam Runtime, will be looking into that too. But now it works for me out of the box (no Steam Runtime) on Fedora 32, sound works too. Really appreciate your report!


Last edited by quyse on 18 June 2020 at 10:19 am UTC
awesam Jun 18, 2020
Anyone with an Nvidia GPU able to play ASYLUM without problems?

There is a Linux bug report thread on Steam, I noticed that the couple of users reporting crashes have so far had an Nvidia GPU.

The game is looking pretty good to me, so I hope they get the issues fixed on Linux before release
randyl Jun 19, 2020
Quoting: quyse
Quoting: TheSLAP
Quoting: quyseJust a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Make sure you have the linux depot added to the demo package within Steamworks (Dashboard -> Click demo app -> "All associated packages, DLC, demos, and tools" -> Under "free to play packages", click demo package -> ensure your linux depot is added!) I hope this helps!

Yeah, thanks! I am aware of this trap, it was one of the first things I've checked :D Very obscure thing, especially that the free package was set up by Valve automatically.

EDIT: by the package set up by Valve I meant the one in "Free Weekend packages", and you mentioned a different one, my bad. But anyway, the Linux depot is added in every package.

Quoting: randyl
Quoting: quyseJust a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To install the demo I searched for Insatia on the Steam store and selected the store page. Even though the demo entry shows only the Windows icon, the 64bit Linux version installed. The game kept crashing upon launch so I set compatibility to use "Steam Linux Runtime" and then the game launched and played successfully. The only issue is there is no sound.

Indeed looks like we broke compatibility with Fedora recently, sorry :( (assuming you are on Fedora, your profile says so). I just pushed a fix for that to Steam. On no sound with Steam Runtime, will be looking into that too. But now it works for me out of the box (no Steam Runtime) on Fedora 32, sound works too. Really appreciate your report!
No apologies necessary. Nice job fixing it so quickly and I'm glad to help. Fiddling with software is fun.
Liam Dawe Jun 19, 2020
Port Valley is fixed, it launches now without needing to go to the folder. However, it's an old Unity build with NVIDIA issues. Added quick workaround to article.

Starmancer (not listed) now works too.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 19 June 2020 at 10:05 am UTC
Eike Jun 19, 2020
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