First glances would paint Zoon as a more action-oriented take on the Faster Than Light formula. Using the tools provided, you’re tasked with building your own ship and piloting it throughout deep space, shooting aliens and avoiding various instances of space debris as you go. At least, that’s what the plan is for the final version; right now the demo version only consists of ship building and space flight with not a single enemy or asteroid in sight, but that might have something to do with my complete inability to build a ship that doesn’t rotate faster than the speed of light.

I’ll confess I’m no rocket scientist, but I spent a large portion of my time in Zoon trying desperately to install various thrusters and engines throughout my strange U-shaped ship in an effort to counter balance the constant death spiral I’d somehow found myself locked into. Unfortunately my efforts were in vain, and after 20 minutes of uncontrollably rotating through the black abyss a feeling of nausea called an end to my suffering.  And yet, despite now acknowledging that I’ll never be an astronaut, those frantic twenty minutes revealed a great deal about how things can go terribly wrong, and how entertaining it is to watch as everything collapses around you.

This demo build seemed to focus specifically on the ship building aspects, which allowed me to create several odd designs before finally settling on the ill fated U-boat I mentioned earlier. After the walls and floor tiles are connected up, it’s simply a matter of adorning the interior with a variety of machines and devices that allow you to control a number of functions like piloting the ship, long/short range communications, and even armour racks that let you remove your trusty space suit when you want a bit more freedom to roam around your ship.

Discovering that last item was a mistake though, as I soon learnt I had forgotten to plug a hole on one side of my ships wall. Venturing too close to the gaping hole promptly saw me sucked out into deep space, and without my spacesuit on I was quickly snuffed out of existence. After regaining my life in space and rebuilding the U-boat to its former glory I soon made the same mistake of hastily ignoring the gaps in my vessel, only this time I was still wearing my suit. As you’d expect, I was sucked out into deep space again, but it was to the sight of the U-boat casually flailing across the stars in its spiral of shame, leaving me behind to waddle around while contemplating if perhaps my ship had gotten sick of my antics and intentionally ejected me because of it.

When it comes down to it, Zoon is still very much work in progress. Some of the items available to place inside your ship provide absolutely nothing, and right now there is little to do other than rotate furiously through space. With that said, there are some interesting plans listed for the game’s direction. Player-made missions will provide the bread and butter of objectives for would-be space dwellers, mods will be fully supported for extra customisation, and there’s also a multiplayer mode for those who want to sail across the stars with their friends. For now, though, the game does an excellent job of creating an existential crisis amongst those willing to ponder the aimless journey across the stars, if you’re into that sort of thing that is.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The indie game community and the Linux community have lots in common. They both live happily outside of the mainstream, they’re both forward-thinking, and they are both created and maintained by small communities of developers. So if you like indie games, there’s a good chance that you might also like Linux. If you’re considering making the switch, here are ten indie games you can play on Linux right now.

1. Minecraft

Minecraft is not only the best indie game for Linux, it’s one the best indie games ever made. It’s almost certainly the most successful. Minecraft’s success makes it easy to forget the game’s humble beginnings, since it began as a solo developer project.

Minecraft has its own culture, and it’s probably the most watched game in history. The variety of custom maps and building projects makes it just as fun to be a spectator as a player. If you haven’t yet played this game, you’re denying yourself the most important game of the last ten years.

Click here to find out more about Minecraft.

2. Faster than Light

In Faster than Light you journey across space on an important mission. You move from sector to sector and each area of space contains a new problem which you will need to deal with. This often means fighting other spacecraft.

The fun lies in upgrading your ship and seeing how it fares against the range of enemies you encounter. Will the shields hold out? Will you run out of oxygen? Will your new laser destroy the opposing ship’s hull? You’ll escape from certain disaster time and time again, and each time you’ll have created a new story. Read a full review of Faster than Light here.

Click here to find out more about Faster than Light.

3. Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is the kind of game I’d have expected to play on Linux before I knew about Linux gaming. It’s complex, forbidding, and geeky. But once you get past the ASCII graphics you’ll see why so many people are willing to sit through tutorials to learn how to play.

In Dwarf Fortress your goal is to survive. This normally means creating a fortress for your dwarves and helping them to find food and drink. They’ll be attacked by a range of mythical beasts so you’ll also need military protection. The game is very difficult, and embodies the phrase “losing is fun.” Each time your fortress falls you have the opportunity to create a new one, and the fun begins all over.

Click here to find out more about Dwarf Fortress.

4. Kerbal Space Program

What’s more fun than flying a rocket? Crashing a rocket! At least, it is for the first few attempts. Kerbal Space Program lets you build and fly space craft around a fictional solar system. It accurately simulates the physics of spaceflight, which makes it difficult but rewarding. Eventually you’ll have to complete missions to earn money for ship building. For now there’s a sandbox mode, which lets you create as many crazy ships as you like. That mode is ideal because you may well be crashing quite a few of them. You can read a full Kerbal Space Program review here.

Click here to find out more about Kerbal Space Program.

5. Dungeons of Dredmor

Character creation is often the most enjoyable part of RPG games. When you make a character, you are free to theorise about what will or won’t work, before being tied down by the realities of the game.

Dungeons of Dredmor realises how fun character creation can be, and lets you experiment with your choices. The game sees you attempt to reach the end of a randomly generated dungeon. The combat can be repetitive but the options for character progression keep the game interesting.

Click here to find out more about Dungeons of Dredmor.

6. Super Hexagon

Games don’t get much more simple than Super Hexagon. You control a small triangle and your goal is to move left or right to avoid incoming lines and shapes. The addictive appeal of Super Hexagon lies in its difficulty. To get it right you’ll need to react quickly and achieve a state of ‘flow’ . The simple controls, throbbing visuals, and heavy audio mean that it’s easy to fall into a trance and forget everything apart from beating your high score.

Click here to find out more about Super Hexagon.

7. Warsow

Warsow is one of many Quake style FPS games released for Linux. The game-play is fast paced, and focuses on smooth and fluid movement.

Of the FPS games for Linux, there isn’t any one particular stand-out. Warsow just happens to be my favourite. It works well and the graphics are relatively unique for the genre. You’d get a very similar experience from any of the indie FPS games on Linux such as Nexuiz, Open Arena or Red Eclipse.

Click here to find out more about Warsow.

8. Dungeon Defenders

Dungeon Defenders puts you in control of an adventurer who can run around, attack enemies, cast spells and summon towers.  Your goal is to prevent enemies from destroying your crystal. You can play on your own, or cooperatively online. Dungeon Defenders doesn’t bring too much new material to the genre of tower defence – this is simple, wave after wave fun.

Click here to find out more about Dungeon Defenders.

9. Battle for Wesnoth

Battle of Wesnoth may be the best strategy game you’ve never played. Despite being relatively unknown, the game has an established  and dedicated community. Gameplay wise, there isn’t anything especially revolutionary, but Wesnoth is polished and fun. There are a variety of add-ons to download, including a variety of single player campaigns. If you’re a fan of strategy games, give Wesnoth a try.

Click here to find out more about Battle of Wesnoth.

10. Anodyne

Anodyne is a top-down action/puzzle game. If you’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Game Boy this game should feel familiar. The graphics and gameplay are a very clear nod in the direction of Nintendo’s classic dungeon explorer.

Anodyne is far from a clone, however. It’s much simpler, with hardly any items to acquire and only one weapon – a broom. The majority of game will have you searching for keys to progress through various areas. This can feel repetitive but the main appeal of Anodyne is it’s strange atmosphere, and interesting locations. The core of the game won’t take you long to get through, but there are a number of hidden extras to keep you exploring.

Click here to find out more about Anodyne.

Why you should switch to Linux

With all these indie games on Linux, and more to come, Linux has never been more tempting for gamers. It’s easier than you think to make the switch – you can even keep your Windows installation.

If you’re already a Linux user, do you think there are any games missing from the top ten? Leave a comment below and let us know which games people should be playing on Linux.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

When I found out about FTL’s confirmed release less than a week before the fateful day, I went out of my way to clamp weary pessimism over my delirious excitement. ‘It’s a Kickstarter-funded indie game,’ I reprimanded myself. ‘Ziggy says there’s an 82% chance of it being rubbish.’ With past disappointments looming at my shoulder, counselling caution, I tentatively launched FTL and discovered with a growing sense of unease that it is exactly what it set out to be.

As someone who read a lot of solo gamebooks back in their heyday, the first comparison for FTL that comes to mind is the Fighting Fantasy series’ Starship Traveller. The game gives you a basic spacecraft and a crew of three. You have some fuel – though not enough – a handful of missiles and a few bits of the scrap that serves as currency in space, and with these meagre reserves you have to flee the advance of the savage rebel forces in order to convey vital strategic information to the beleaguered federation.

Narratively it’s an unusual arrangement; games, like films, generally have us rooting for the underdog. Here we are alone against a huge force, but we are also agents for a still larger force. It’s not even a cut-and-dried, good-versus-evil situation. The federation seems to be not much beloved of the populace, but at the same time the rebels are widely considered pompous and opportunistic. Neither faction is really in the right, and that’s perfectly fine for the game, since you will seldom see the bigger picture until the endgame. For the most part it’s just you and your little ship trying to get across the galaxy, scrimping and saving every missile, every drop of fuel and every fistful of scrap.

The FTL adventure definitely has a sort of Firefly-meets-Star Trek: Voyager feel, in that you often just barely scrape through. Most battles present a credible threat even on the easiest setting, and even outside combat you often find yourself watching tensely as your resources dwindle while all you can do is keep moving and hope you’ll stumble across a cache of fuel.

The most basic battles revolve around targeting parts of the enemy vessel. Target their shield generator to leave them vulnerable, or their weapons room to prevent them firing on you. Take out their engine room if they try to escape, or, if you’re feeling particularly cruel, shoot out their oxygen supply. This alone is a more detailed combat system than most randomly generated adventures, but it’s only the beginning.

You see, FTL is, at its core and as dull as it sounds on paper, all about resource management. Each improvement in your ship’s performance makes combat and sudden disaster less hazardous but also puts more strain on your already limited supplies. Even just buying an upgrade, such as a better engine to improve your ability to evade attacks, isn’t as simple as it sounds. Each upgrade also requires power, so you have to either spend more of your precious scrap upgrading your reactor to generate more power, or you have to shut down other systems and keep re-routing your energy supply as circumstances demand.

It isn’t long before the initially simple combat becomes a frantic scramble to ensure the relevant systems are powered up – shut down the medical bay to divert power to the weapons, then divert it back as your crew sustain injuries and instead take power from the air system, but make sure you finish the fight before everyone suffocates. Once you factor in fires, hull breaches and being boarded by the enemy crew you find yourself wrestling with a surprisingly elaborate strategy game that puts you through a punishing series of short skirmishes.

This is no RTS, though. There’s limited scope for planning. Since you never know what you will face next, you can never really be prepared, and each encounter is a panicked rush to react to the sudden danger. Even space itself is out to get you. Nebulas limit your ability to scan enemy ships, and even go as far as to truncate your internal sensors. Woe betide anyone whose ship catches fire inside a nebula; the only way to locate the blaze is to send someone looking for it – and risk them accidentally stepping right into it.

Solar flares and asteroid fields are worse still. They rob you of the opportunity to carry out repairs after combat, continuing to assault you after the enemy ship is gone and forcing you to quickly jump away to the next system, where the unknown awaits once more. Like Firefly or the modern Battlestar Galactica, your voyage is less a heroic expedition than a febrile stagger from crisis to crisis, throwing together improvised solutions to survive an endless torrent of catastrophes.

That’s the real strength of FTL. ‘Randomised space exploration through the medium of resource management’ might sound as tedious as a sanitation conference, but in practice it’s a tense experience that might grey your hair long before its time. Failure and destruction lurk only moments away at all times, and when you succeed it will usually be by the narrowest of margins. The occasional frustration that results from random chance throwing you into an almost impossible situation is mitigated by the sense of accomplishment when you do manage to limp to the end of your journey with your ship and nerves in tatters, but aglow with hard-won triumph. If you’re anything like me, you will feel like a hero. I felt like Mal Reynolds, or James T Kirk, or Nick Succorso – a grizzled but daring captain whose bold plans and reckless gambits carried him and his devoted crew through the depths of hell on a wave of sheer audacity.

Don’t rest on your laurels too long, though. The itch to campaign through space that FTL imparts isn’t scratched so easily, and there is a lot more to discover. Each journey is different thanks to procedural generation, and there are various different ships and interior layouts to unlock, which make more than a cosmetic difference. While you might soldier on to victory with the default Kestrel, the unlockable Engi vessel’s dependency on drone technology might see you founder in the first few encounters. Each ship demands different skills; even the different layouts for the rooms in the ship will affect how easily you can make repairs and extinguish fires.

The simplest and clearest expression I can give you of my opinion of FTL is this: once I started, I couldn’t stop playing it for days. I repeatedly and unwisely stayed up until 2am in defiance of my day job commitments, simply to continue trying to cross the galaxy with my tiny crew of desperate fugitives.

If any of this makes you think ‘that sounds interesting’, then you will probably enjoy it. FTL has always promised a lot, since its Kickstarter days, and this is one game that actually delivers on all its promises. Just be warned: once FTL boards your life, there’s no escape.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.