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After closing up shop back in 2022, Farsky Interactive have now revived their game FarSky and made it free on itch.io.

With FarSky, you take the role of Nathan who got lost in the Ocean after the crash of his submarine. You need to learn how to survive in the depths of the Ocean. Your end goal is to gather up all the pieces of your submarine, to fix it and finally reach the surface.

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Features:

  • Use the environment to gather resources.
  • Build a base to refill your oxygen and manage your items.
  • Craft equipment and weapons to explore and protect yourself in the Ocean depths.
  • Create an in-base farm or go fish hunting to feed yourself.

It might seem like a smaller version of Subnautica and in a way it is. So much so in fact, that the developer of FarSky publicly called out developers of Unknown Worlds Entertainment for pretty much poaching the entire idea, here's an excerpt:

"In January 2014, as I was looking for underwater inspiration visuals, I found an image on google that caught my attention. I clicked on it and was redirected to a game page called… « Subnautica ». My first reaction was to think « damn, I made a game way too closed to another one without knowing about it ». Then I realized the game was not even in development yet, there were only some concept arts and ideas. When I saw the name of the project director, I knew I saw this name somewhere … I went on my Twitter account and discovered he was following me as well as his coworkers. At that time, I was devastated. My game was not even out yet, maybe I showed it too early ? I did not expect that, and I knew I could not compete a bigger company like this one. I also found the Subnautica’s director email in the buyers of the game in Beta stage. I felt I needed to quickly finish the game. As I published the Steam Greenlight trailer on Youtube (you needed to put the game on Greenlight before it gets on Steam at that moment), Subnautica project’s leader put a comment with a link to his website. I removed that comment."

Check it out free on itch.io.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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8 comments

Ardje Mar 29, 2023
That game was stunning and still is pretty good. Nice physics. I've been base building a lot in that game.
Just free swimming and driving my sub from base to base.
It was so light I would have hoped they would port it to gear-vr...
(It uses java-gl so you have to install openjdk 8 on linux. Didn't get it to work on the deck though).


Last edited by Ardje on 29 March 2023 at 3:43 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Mar 29, 2023
I'm feeling a bit less like buying Subnautica now.
Klaas Mar 29, 2023
QuoteSubnautica project’s leader put a comment with a link to his website

The nerve of some people.
CatKiller Mar 29, 2023
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Quoting: Ardje(It uses java-gl so you have to install openjdk 8 on linux. Didn't get it to work on the deck though).
The hassle of managing specific Java versions for Minecraft got me to use a flatpak Minecraft launcher that could provide its own Java separated from the system Java. If someone - ideally FarSky's developer - could package up FarSky as a flatpak on flathub along with the Java bits it needs, that would make it easier to manage in general and easy to install on the Deck specifically.
silverhikari Mar 29, 2023
has anyone who has played the game gotten sound to work? as after switching java to 8(openjdk) to get the game to load i can't seem to get any sound. i am using pipewire in case that causes problems?
BloodScourge Mar 29, 2023
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On Arch Linux, after installing a compatible java JRE (as mentionned above) and setting it as default (if multiple JREs are installed), it seems to work fine from my quick test in sandbox mode:
 
$ sudo pacman -S jre8-openjdk
$ sudo archlinux-java set java-8-openjdk/jre


I use pipewire with alsa/pulse/jack support.

Already owned the game but it's a nice gesture.

Thank you, FarSky Interactive
whizse Mar 29, 2023
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I had some problems running it with the native libs supplied, but running the .jar manually with
java -Dsun.java2d.d3d=false -cp ./farsky.jar -classpath ./lib/*:./farsky.jar game.Main works fine.
whizse Mar 29, 2023
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Quoting: silverhikarihas anyone who has played the game gotten sound to work? as after switching java to 8(openjdk) to get the game to load i can't seem to get any sound. i am using pipewire in case that causes problems?
Should be a log file in the game dir or in ~/.FarSky/log/farsky.log

It might help you figure out what's wrong,
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