It's important to name and shame devs like this one. Almost as important as to remind everyone not to preorder, and I'm not being sarcastic here. I'd also like to see an article about tips on what to look at when considering to support a dev on KS/IGG. Like, check their previous titles, the engine they use, ask them about the middleware and whether they consider to post updates about the Linux version progress, whether the game will be available for Linux at alpha/beta stage (if not, that's a valid point not to back them, been there seen that) and so on. Nowadays many advanced games on KS have a playable demo available, in that case if there's no Linux demo ask the dev for it. If they can't provide one it's probably safe to move on, either they're gonna scam you or support it as a third-class citizen if not worse. Just from the experience.

That would help many Linux gamers to back delivering developers and discard scammers like Stainless Games early on.

Would be interesting (I don't know if this is polite or acceptable to do, don't want any drama so just an idea) to track the devs by several categories on wiki (probably?):
— green zone: those who always deliver and care about Linux gamers (Arcen Games, InXile, Paradox, Frictional to name a few), back anything from them; if they promise Linux, they get it done;
— yellow (or gray) zone, not so famous devs, no previous record on Linux games, poor state of existing Linux versions or just plain unsupported ones with lots of bugs that are never fixed, unfriendly/hostile towards Linux gamers (Uber Ent. with Planetary Annihilation, Wildcard with ARK, Facepunch studios with Rust); whether to support is up to you but you're warned, they may become better or fail;
— red zone: outright scammers; promise and never deliver, sometimes not just the Linux version but any game at all, keep silence about Linux, no alphas/betas/anything tangible like it never existed in the first place (Stainless Games, Warhorse Studios although they refunded the Mac/Linux pledges in full so I'm not so sure to put them into this category); avoid at all costs and tell your friends and family.

Personally, I don't have a lot of scam experience. Almost every game from KS was released for Linux in some form I find satisfactory. However, I do have enough experience in poor Linux ports and bad support.

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Combining high and low levels is way to go as always. It speeds up developing while allowing for optimizations later if needed. I expect it to be like OpenGL (or even D3D considering it's in C++) in terms of ease of use but with the ability to rewrite slow paths at the lowest level possible. Before only vendors could fix that.

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That's a good and tough question. Just by my playtime it's obviously Natural Selection 2, but that's my own daily dose of heroin. What I'm really grateful to have on Linux, that made an impact on me, are:
- Bioshock Infinite
- Life is Strange
- Dying Light
- Factorio
- SOMA
- Dust: An Elysian Tail
- Tomb Raider

It's hard to tell which one I liked most, they all have so good stories and stylish visuals! I think without these games my Linux gaming experience would be a totally different thing.

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Same here, they refunded the rest, no questions asked. I can only wish them luck with their game and hope it'll get the Linux version eventually.

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It starts exactly with that, "extremely simplistic puzzles". The language consists of very simple and handy instructions (conditionals, for instance, are implemented nicely with +/- prefixes) and the learning curve is quite gradual. Many people say that SHENZHEN I/O is the most accessible Zachtronics game ever and I agree with them. Played all the mentioned games before. So go try it and don't be afraid that much. Controllers don't bite!

PS: it also has a story and even characters, all well written. Something I haven't seen before in this kind of games.

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Looks really good and StarCraft-ish. Developers confirm it as the source of inspiration in this comment [External Link] (in Russian). If anyone's interested, here's my translation (corrected the Google translate because the text is too big to write it from scratch):

We did not use RTS Creator, we don't really understand what's so similar except the genre, and are very curious to see a project of an adequate quality. Do you know any examples? We develop the game on Unity.

The Earthlings space suits look similar in almost all Sci-Fi products, including movies and illustrations, including our beloved SC.
We have meticulously studied the classics and we know what it's made of. But we never wanted to copy, and tried to discover the reasons behind certain decisions in the classic games and take them into account in our development, considering the resources available to us. Doing that is more difficult and expensive than just making a copy.
We spent many weeks searching and verifying hypotheses about the appearance of each unit.
For example, at some point our infantrymen looked more like this http://take.ms/exatg [External Link]
But this infantry was difficult to distinguish between the types, the animation looked strange, and we declined such shape and color scheme.
The camera angle and RTS palette impose many restrictions on what units are convenient to play.

Segmented life bars are easier to read in the battle on a bright background.
Therefore, they are in SC, hence we used them as well.

It would be better to answer the question like this: "No, coincidence is not accidental, these are very thought out steps."
Contrary to many comments, we are not trying to make our own SC, we are preparing to launch a small game for fans of the genre, and we want to make it comfortable and familiar, so that players could enjoy the gameplay.

For the same reason we do not spend time on "Blizzard-like" videos, instead we spend time trying to make the game better.
And we ask our dear Russian community to voice their support and spread the information about the game.

Whew, Google definitely has made a lot of progress improving the translator but it's still far from perfect.

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Some people say it still takes too long but for me it's very good. About 15 seconds or so after the initial loading. Depends on whether the game is installed on HDD or SSD.

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Quoting: manero666Is this Unreal Engine 3? It looks like so to me..

It's their own in-house engine called Spark.

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Also, that new game mode is totally cool and addictive. Go check it out, a lot of players are playing, look for the servers in the Arcade tab. I'll tell you the rules so you wouldn't have to figure them out all by yourself and ruin your first games for other players:
1) first 30 seconds friendly fire is off;
2) then one or more marines become the infested, friendly fire goes on;
3) infested see everyone on the map and through the walls, marines only see in the line of sight;
4) infestation spreads around the resource towers and kills them so as a marine you have to burn it and weld the towers, as an infested you could either burn it when someone sees you or leave it alone as it helps you to win;
5) to infest get real close to a marine so his outline becomes red and press the alt-fire button (right click by default);
6) as a marine, if you kill another marine you both die, if you kill an infested you stay alive. An infested can't damage marines (and if it tries, it dies instead), however if someone sees you damaged they may question themselves if you're an infested or just got friendly fired by another marine out of suspicion;
7) being an infested, lie to the others that you go somewhere to clear the infestation but actually lurk in dark corners (to let the infestation kill as many RTs as possible) and also lure victims by telling them to check some place. Feel free to play meta mindgames of any complexity so that nobody trusts each other anymore;
8) dead players can't be heard or read in the chat by those alive so they can't ruin the game for the others;
9) if RTs are being damaged, the air quality goes down and when it reaches zero all marines die and infested win;
10) RTs are eventually destroyed if no one cleans them up and the pollution rate is increased then;
11) infested have to infest more people or they die of starvation;
12) if there are no infested left, marines win;
13) as a marine, don't get too close to the others and also don't let them get too close to you (burn them if they try). If the burned one was actually a marine you both die and can blame each other in the voice chat, however, if that was an infested you'll score some points;
14) so to effectively infest you have either to lurk or rush a marine when he doesn't see you or equips a welder, if you can't get to them just wait for them to die.

The game forces both teams to move and effectively prevents camping. Marines die if the atmosphere becomes too polluted, infested die of starvation so they have to run around constantly and encounter each other all the time. Rounds are pretty quick and fun, less than 5 minutes probably and NS2 is free to play for a couple of days so you have no reasons not to try it at least!

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Just a heads up, they recently introduced a new skill system called Hive 2 that uses an algorithm that powers machine learning. Because of that now you're much likely to have an intense and longer round, not a one-sided massacre. In the end of the round Hive assigns per-player skill points (instead of an equal amount for each player in each team) so sometimes you can have several hundreds points and the other time you get none because Hive predicted the outcome correctly. So now your skill (if I got it right) only changes if you won or lost against the odds and that's why your win/lose ratio should go closer to 1 and you'll have much better time playing the game.

Despite the overall low player count compared to bigger popular competitive games, you'll have no problems finding a server with people and I actually see new faces every day. Many people say it's a dead game but it's very alive and kicking, also people are almost always good and just plain fun to talk to. Very rare you'll meet a toxic or misbehaving player.

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