I stumbled across this sweet little game by chance today, and after looking at it and its reviews I instantly bought it - at £3 in the Steam Winter Sale, I couldn't say no! Having just played the first half-hour on my Steam Deck (where it works perfectly), I felt compelled to give it a shout-out here on the forum, because it's a nice native Linux title that seems to have flown under everyone's radar. It was released in August of 2022, so sadly it's way too late to submit an article about it (with any luck I can do that when it gets a Steam Deck rating), but hopefully it'll get some attention here!


The game is called Chico and the Magic Orchards DX, and it's a top-down platform/puzzle game, about a cute little squirrel who must solve puzzles by rolling around a giant walnut. The nut can be used to push switches, activate pinball-bumpers, and battle bosses, and there are various gizmos and environmental factors that affect how you go about all of these things.


Its style is inspired by the Game Boy Colour - the game feels true to the late-90s handheld era, and offers Game Boy Colour, Game Boy, and Super Game Boy style palettes (some of which are available right away, some of which can be unlocked using an in-game currency that you pick up in the levels) and a toggle for a dot-matrix grid effect for the graphics, as well as a selection of borders based on various styles of Game Boy and Game Boy Colour hardware, along with some based on the game's promotional artwork.


Chico plays, looks, and sounds completely authentic when compared to games for the 1990s Nintendo handhelds, and, from what I can tell, is intentionally quite short for the same reason, so if you're looking for something bite-sized to play, you may well want to give it a look.

Last edited by Pengling on 29 December 2023 at 4:31 am UTC