Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: mr-victory

Quoting: elmapulyou need an comparision point... eg: test it on windows too.
i saw a lot of reports on protonDB from people who never played an particular game saying it run flawless on linux, then you open the game and... where are the cutscenes? where is the video behind the title screen?

If they didn’t notice something is wrong, then Proton did its job nicely :grin:

sigh, nope, they never tried the game on windows so they dont know they are missing some features.
some people may not care about missing features, but a lot of people do, especially those who know those features supose to be there.
if we dont fix it, they will go back to windows.

Cutscenes is bit more of an licensing issue. Linux could play them, but Valve can't include the codec because it would eat their profits.

What Valve is doing is that they automatically re-encode the videos into free format. And at least these days there's hint that there's a missing video.

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As event is ending quite soon (which means that many of the demos might vanish), I'll my give my recommendations as a summary.

For the Proton titles, The Wandering Village and IXION are easy to recommend for sure. They have reviews right there in the previous post and another review earlier by Philadelphus.

Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit [External Link]
Nicest adventure game in this event that I have played.

TFC: The Fertile Crescent [External Link]
If you're looking for city build and RTS mashup, this seems to win in both genres (if Proton titles are not counted)

Oaken [External Link]
Pretty enjoyable card battler with hex grid based battles.

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I played the games that people have wishlisted the most and few that I downloaded already earlier. Philadelphus has reviewed both Wandering Village and IXION, I'll just add my own take on them.

The Wandering Village [External Link] (Proton)
The twist that the city builder is happening on top of a big creature works quite nicely. Creature being on the move adds totally different layer to the gameplay. With right buildings you can control the creature and go on expeditions nearby.

World is also quite hostile, so if you're careful you will kill the creature or your villagers. I haven't finished the demo yet. The poison clouds are still my nemesis, but I know tactic how to minimize the damage. The thing is that disease will spread quite quickly.

Still, it's great. I know it's not native, but this time around finding anything wishlist worthy from natives is bit of a challenge. Only technical issues that I noticed is that Valve hasn't re-encoded the videos. They're not long though, so maybe they don't have anything important.

IXION [External Link] (Proton)
Nice city builder inside a spaceship mixed in with space exploration. Kind of like Space Haven, but prettier.

Nice touch is that spaceship contains lot of resources that can be reclaimed. Also it's round like a space station .

Performance didn't seem that great, but I did turn all the settings to maximum. Could see what happens if I stick to defaults.

Stardeus [External Link]
Stardeus also city builder inside a space station. In the demo it largely plays like the other games in the genre, though user interface has nice search, so you don't have navigate through all the menus. I didn't manage to see any automation features in the demo. It's possible that they might be there, demo has two hour time limit and I got bit stuck (which usual for the genre).

If IXION is not an option because it's not native, give this one a go. Though if you have extra time, you could try both.

Tower Offender [External Link]
Tower offender is tower defense mashed up with platformer. You defend against the heroes and your character is a green pig.

I couldn't get past the tutorial as it's missing button customization and it doesn't list all the controls. If somebody figures out how to switch between trap types, I could give it another go. It might be good, but it's hard to tell.

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat worked. Unfortunately, although it worked, it didn't work. That is, I found the enable-y thing, and it let me download the demo and busily also downloaded Proton and tried to use it and . . . I'm not totally clear from the popups whether it was the demo or Proton itself that didn't happen, but yeah. Demo did not happen. Oh well. Thanks though--clearly in theory you gave me exactly the correct advice.

No worries. You said it was IXION you wanted to try, right? You might try forcing it to use Proton Experimental (if you didn't set that when you enabled its use for everything)—IXION itself didn't require it for me, but there were a few demos I downloaded that didn't run until I forced them to use it. And hey, at least you've got it next time you feel like trying a Windows-only demo. :smile:

You might accidentally anyway download the Windows demos. As usual some games have set the native version visible for the front page, but they don't actually have it yet. Or the game is native, but demo isn't native.

Usually I would be playing only native games, but I was playing Control and had the setting already enabled. I will give IXION a try as my plan for today is to play few of the most wishlisted games. Natives so far haven't had the most innovative games (though Liams list could have few, I haven't tried them all yet)

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMakes me think . . . they make consoles to sell more games, they make games to sell more hardware. Does anyone ever make a thing just to sell that thing, any more? :wink:

IKEA? Or perhaps they have a stake in marriage counselling?

Bit offtopic, but isn't IKEA making furniture to be able to sell more meatballs? Or was it other way around? They might make more money from marriage counselling though...

If I would want to smooth jump back to the topic, rings are used to mark that people are married. Which would awkwardly lead me to Elden Ring...

The meatballs came much later, for the first 24 years they only sold furniture.

No company perfects their business plans right away :tongue:

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Today I have more time, so I could try more demos than during the week.

Elemental War 2 [External Link]
Element War 2 is tower defense game that places emphasis on elements (as kind of can be guessed from the name). Launching demo throws error message about online functionalities right at the start, but as far as I know, it just means that leaderboard don't work.

Demo throws so many hints at once that I missed how the elements are supposed to work. Tutorial also go into state where I could build new towers or scroll.

One you start the main mission things start work better. Defeating elementals in order to unlock new towers and upgrades is nice variation to the tower defense formula. In addition to element, tower types have different range, damage and alike.

Could be fun if they would spend more effort into to the tutorial. Not straight to wishlist material, but there's some potential.

Crystal Plague [External Link] (Proton)
Crystal Plague is dungeon crawler with very small dungeons. After each dungeon you have to pick a curse, so if you though the game is easy, it's really not. The dungeon end screens are quite buggy. Skill upgrades screen doesn't properly, but if you try to dismiss once, you can move and if you align yourself with the portal correctly, you can progress. Demo has two characters with different set of skills.

First Parsec [External Link]
First Parsec seems to be space dogfight game. User interface is quite minimum, but you do get status updates when your shields deplete. And missiles won't fire when you have run out of them. Music is also nice.

Problem is that game doesn't bring much new that hasn't done many times in other games. Other games have also many other things going on, First Parsec based on the store page is only about the fights. Though if that's exactly what you're looking for First Parsec might have some potential. Alternatively you could just download the demo if you want to have fun. Just be warned that second mission ramps up the difficulty quite a lot.

Chill Panda [External Link]
This is something you can find, when you don't look too closely at the store description. I played it anyway.

Chill Panda is game that teaches relaxation to children. I'm looking things from gaming perspective as I'm more familiar with that.

Chill Panda sprinkles in relaxation exercises. Most of the time exercises can be skipped. Otherwise gameplay is mostly about collecting coins (you can buy furniture to your house with them) and doing fetch quests. Also at the same time you can get mildly creeped out with the panda models and voice acting.

Performance is not that good and there are several bugs. Player character went invisible inside the cave, there's at least one quick way to fill the chill meter. Basically when you get out of labyrinth, you chill meter fill up as a reward. The thing is that you can go in and out of the labyrinth and you get the reward every time.

For kids there's potential as they might overlook the issues. And collecting things is kind of fun and for kids it might be something new.

Circle of Kerzoven [External Link]
Circle of Kerzoven is city builder in similar style than Settlers. It's still in alpha stage and it shows in few things. Tutorial doesn't hold your hand, it just tells what to build. After a while it starts to assume that you know what other buildings you need to build in order to build the building tutorial asks you to build.

I run into issues where I couldn't figure out why buildings weren't producing materials. I could figure out that I can rearrange priorities, but for some reason only for some people. I gave up at that point and there's you can't save in the demo.

All in all, at the moment game seems to be for city builder veterans. Store page mentions deeper nature simulation. That alone might not be enough differentiate it.

If I remember, I should maybe still take another look.

Intruder in Antiquonia [External Link]
Intruder in Antiquonia is adventure game, though based on demo, focus seems to be on the story. Plotwise it seems to be aiming for bit more serious tone. If you need to fill your amnesia mystery fix, try it out. Plot will keep you hanging though until Q2 though.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMakes me think . . . they make consoles to sell more games, they make games to sell more hardware. Does anyone ever make a thing just to sell that thing, any more? :wink:

IKEA? Or perhaps they have a stake in marriage counselling?

Bit offtopic, but isn't IKEA making furniture to be able to sell more meatballs? Or was it other way around? They might make more money from marriage counselling though...

If I would want to smooth jump back to the topic, rings are used to mark that people are married. Which would awkwardly lead me to Elden Ring...

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Few more from tonight

Grieve [External Link] (Proton)
This one is third person shooter. Graphics look nice, but otherwise it's horrible. Right in the first mission controls are wonky, there's plenty of invisible walls and mission ends without any other feedback than the mission failed screen.

Based on the window title, games name is MyProject, which explains quite lot.

If Fusion Were That Easy [External Link]
Retro adventure game. Odd humour easy and easy enough puzzles.

Not wishlist material, but will provide entertainment for a moment. Try Crowns and Pawns first as that is the best adventure game that I have played from this festivals selection.

Oaken [External Link]
This one is turn based strategy game and card battler mashup. Tutorial doesn't feel much like card battler, but once you start the actual game, card mechanics come into play. In the tutorial there's not much difference between skills and cards.

If you have played Slay the Spire, some things might feel familiar. What makes Oaken different is that battles happen on hex grid and you can summon allies with the cards.

If these kind of games interest you, it's worth taking a look.

Garbage Crew [External Link]
This co-operative garbage truck game, bit in style of Overcooked games. To be honest, they are bit confusing garbage trucks with firetrucks. At least in the demo garbage truck has hose attachment and you need to put out fires in addition of emptying garbage containers.

The twist is that garbage truck moves constantly forward and emptying the containers takes lot of time. So doing all the tasks need some co-operation. It seems though that targets might not be adjusted for single player. Or it might be that I need to get much better.

So all in all, this time quality varied quite lot, but at least the best one (Oaken) is close to getting into my wishlist.

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Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: Guesthow to get to that page through steam client?

With the Steam client in Big Picture mode, go to Web and put https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck/mygames [External Link]

I found it also by going stores news section and selecting steam official from the side bar (by default it shows personalized news feed).

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I have recently played three demos now:

Core Keeper [External Link]

This one is kind of mining, building and crafting game. You're mostly left on your own. For example in the first screen you need to figure out that you can remove roots blocking your way by left clicking.

After while you can find some more resources you can mine and eventually start crafting. I quite when I couldn't figure out farming. Let's see if I take another look. Possibly there could have something interesting around the corner.

TFC: The Fertile Crescent [External Link]
This one is kind of village building RTS set in bronze age. Basically idea is to gather resources, build infrasture and defenses. And then get wiped out by the enemy. Oh, and you can research technologies too. Might take another look at some point.

John's Tombstone [External Link]
This one is walking simulator with some light puzzles. And lot of jank. If you wan't to try it out, have some patience with the settings menu, it's bit buggy. Also it's possibly to get stuck. Good news is that you don't have to start all over again as game saves if you have solved puzzle or not. But bad news you have to walk all the way from the beginning to where you were.

Story is kind of heavy though at the same time game doesn't take itself seriously. Really weird one. If that's your thing, try it out.

As for the event itself, surprisingly I have gotten only one missing executable error. Though I have still quite small sample. Four out of 111 that claim to support Linux. And missing executable came actually for game that doesn't actually have Linux version yet (it tried to launch with Proton)

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