For me the performance was horrible, so I didn't finish the demo content. Looked nice though.

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Some leftover demos from the festival where the demos were still available and Railway Empire

With Railway Empire I have gotten little bit of frustrating point where better planning starts to be necessary, I haven't just necessarily found out all the best ways to do things. Signalling seems to be bit simplistic compared to OpenTTD, but scenarios are fun so far. It was in Humble Choice quite while back and I finally chose it and activated the license. I it seems I was right that I might spend quite several hours with it.

As for demos, all thee seem to have still the demo available. Vagabond Starship is adventure game that's mashup between sci-fi and fantasy tropes. It's at least mildly funny and some of the puzzles seem to give some challenge (which might be the reason why I didn't finish it). Seems to need some more polish still.

Tiny Planet Protectors. Name does explain the premise the game quite clearly. I got confused right at the second planet. Maybe vacuuming planets clean of everything is not enough. How the astronaut waters plants is quite creative though.

Bots Are Stupid. This one is platformer merged with a programming game. Practically lot of time can go into figuring out how long the bot has to wait until next action should be started (luckily I learned that instead of seconds, you can also wait frames). There's plenty of wait while and wait until constructs, but they don't cover all the scenarios. Cool concept though.

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Quoting: WorMzyAnyone else having issues with the "Steam Labs experiment 012" sales explorer not finding any results if they select Linux from the platform options?

I'm not 100% sure how you have selected the platform, but the default sales page for me is mainly Linux games at the top, more Windows games closer to bottom. I have no idea if that's by accident or not.

I have Linux set in the store settings, so widgets that do the filtering properly have only Linux games.

If I select Linux from category menu, all games seem to have Linux support as far as I can see.

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Demos I tried today.

Panic Mode
In short you're in charge of keeping idiots secure. Demo basically is just four levels in which building is on fire. There's only three devices available that you can use to get either fire little bit under control or get people to leave the building.

Idea might be good, but demo is so short and simple that it's hard to tell if game is going to be actually good or not.

Fantasy Town Regional Manager
Games is pretty much what you can deduct from the name. Idea is to try to balance food, housing and defense of your town. Each turn you get to buy buildings of three randomly selected buildings. To spice things up, each round there's news (where you can possibly select outcome of the story) and randomly there might be a quest.

Mechanics seem to be there, but hopefully full game will eventually add more complexity.

Insect Worlds
This one seems to be somewhat educational game. There are few problems though.

I'm not sure if the settings did had any difference. Performance was almost more like seconds per frame. Looked pretty though. I'm not sure if poor performance caused controls getting stuck now and then.

Also user interface was half translated. Luckily I remember tiny bit of German, so I was able to work out that Ja means yes...

Store page promises anthill fights etc. so maybe some day it might be good. Didn't finish the demo because of the performance though, so I don't know what demo has actually to offer.

Death Trash
Haven't finished the demo yet, but it looks promising. World building is interesting, there's several mysteries that I doubt will be revealed in the demo. Weakest link is the keyboard controls. At least the weapon switching keys commands haven't been mapped. I didn't find yet if controls can be redefined though, which might solve the issue.

Not for people who get grossed out easily (for example first abilities you get is puking). For others it's worth trying out.

Lila's Sky Ark

This is prequel to Resolutiion, but seems somewhat more approachable. The quirky humor is still there, but the game gives better directions what to do and where to go next.

I liked that you can pick things up and put into your backpack. Also throwing things is essential. Luckily in game tutorial hints that you can do that. How to apply that later in the demo is up to you though.

Enemies quickly get harder and best option seems to avoid them. Didn't finish the demo yet as it crashed and I got then preoccupied with Death Trash. But change of me finishing Lila's Sky Ark seems higher than with Resolutiion.

Because of the difficulty, it's good that the spawn points seem to be where they're needed the most. What actually counts as save point can vary little bit. Might have to play bit further to see if they're always the same after the first one.

Still seems worth a try if you feel that you need Zeldaesque game which is little bit bonkers and also gives some challenge.

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I found maybe bit easier way to find more Linux demos, right from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&category1=10&os=linux [External Link]

The trick is to filter for Linux and demos and then sort by release date. As lot of demos were released for the event, something released within or close to event dates is very likely part of the event.

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I played the Zoria: Age of Shattering demo all the way through. It's certainly rough around the edges. It looks nice, but it could use bit more modern GPU than I have right now. Luckily turning resolution from 2K to HD and turning down the details all the way down made it playable. I know, my computer is quite close to the minimum requirements, but updating is not as simple these days as it used to be.

There were few UI freezes and once game just didn't properly exit combat mode.

Also camera rotation is really needed as objects can block the camera. Rotating the camera can cause bit disorientation until you learn how to manually reset it. One key to reset the orientation would be nice (backspace is quite common). Also old school RPG:s turned objects that blocked the view transparent (they weren't fully 3D though, so rotating the camera wasn't an option).

Also few of the splash screen tutorials were maybe little bit too heavy. Especially the one teaching combat is so full of stuff that it's hard to remember it all. Luckily the combat system feels familiar enough that it's possible to learn by just playing. All the energy and focus stuff can be bit confusing at first, so some patience is needed.

There are few choices that seem to matter. I chose quite near the beginning something that might have affected the combat difficulty, which meant that winning wasn't really guaranteed. That meant that I learned the hard way that while there is autosave, it's very infrequent. So remember to save now and then, especially if you see the enemy, but combat hasn't started yet. There's limited number of save slots, so if you want to keep saves for the key choices, you'll going to run out slots quite soon. Not that all the choices actually might matter that much in the end, in games choice can be bit of an illusion and things are more fun if you don't know it.

In the end Zoria is solid RPG. Storytelling is solid enough, though it's hard to know if the full plot has enough twists to keep it entertaining. Despite it faults, it's still enjoyable.

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Tested two games today. Rail Route and Farlanders.

Rail Route is bit difficult train routing game. Bit similar to Mini Metro and Train Valley 2, just somewhat more complicated. Train Valley has bit similar train routing and both require adjusting the routes on the fly. Aesthetics are closer to Mini Metro though.

Playing tutorial and paying attention helps a bit. There's endless and timetable modes and timetable mode will get quite hectic before you end up in gridlock :whistle:

Could work better with some user interface polish and more gradual difficulty curve. The difficulty makes it bit harder to pick up than Mini Metro.

Farlanders felt bit like Red Planet Farming (which is free by the way). Both are turn based management simulations in Mars and in both space is premium.

Farlanders has bit odd terraforming mechanic. I checked the store page and terraforming makes bit more sense as it's described as a puzzle. Rules are explained in one page that describes the terraforming outcomes. As offered terraforming options are random, it might take several turns until you get what you actually need most urgently.

Seems like it's worth a try. It's by no means Surviving Mars as it feels like its done by lot smaller indie team.

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Not all of the demos are time limited though, too bad it's hard to know which ones are. I checked through demos that I still have installed and it's time limit is quite common.

However I tried one the demos that has expired and running it outside Steam worked fine. So just downloading the demos before they expire might be just enough. No need to make backups unless you're afraid that Steam will uninstall the demo automatically.

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That demo list is always helpful. I installed just seven by browsing the event page and looking for Linux demos that I haven't yet played. Could install few more once I have tried the ones that I found already.

I already tried Unpacked and it certainly was something different. It's basically about unpacking stuff and finding good place for everything. After all boxes are emptied, game checks if things are in correct enough place. It can be bit picky, so might have to try out few places. Especially the kitchen in the demo was bit confusing as there didn't seem to perfectly logical place for everything. I might be bit spoiled though as I have good place where the plates go for example and game didn't have that.

I guess it could be great game for somebody who hasn't played games that much. There's no pressure and game mechanics come mostly from real life (assuming you actually unpack the boxes when you move...). From the demo it's impossible to say though if the final game has enough new mechanics to keep the game interesting.

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Quoting: WorMzy

Quoting: slapinWhen NPCs?

The merchant's an NPC. You can't woo/marry them though, trust me, I've tried.

Merchant is easy to miss though, especially if you don't look for information about Valheim and just play the game. I don't think there's any hints about merchant in the game until you get close enough. Seems to be more like reward for exploring than mandatory thing you absolutely need to find like the bosses.

There has been hints though that there might new things to find in the upcoming updates, might not be NPC:s though. People at Iron Gate like to keep some details secret.

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