15 Best Linux Games of 2015 – You Must Try Right Now

Video Gaming, introduced in last century with the rememberable earliest example being a “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device” developed in 1947 by Thomas T Goldsmith Jr has evolved many folds in its lifetime and has become undetachable part of human life.

This can be easily inferred by seeing stats of US Gaming Industry which is profited with 74 billion USD in year 2015. Linux Gaming, which started with the ideology to make Linux a gaming platform however started as late as in 1994, by Dave D. Taylor who ported the game Doom in his spare time to Linux.

Although before this, there were early free games like: NetHack, Neterek, Xbill, etc. but these were limited in number and also were mostly clones of famous arcade games or text adventures. After the porting of Doom to Linux, however there was no turning back and with porting of many more famous games like: Abuse, Quake, SimCity etc., many more people started contributing to this Open Source Industry, with development of Gaming Studios and much more.

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Apart from this, with employment of proprietary Linux Drivers like: Nvidia and AMD, performance of Games running on Linux became comparable to that on Windows. Now, almost all types of games, starting from Arcade, Action, Adventure etc are being developed for Linux by many for thousands of gaming fans who are liking them.

Steam OS

SteamOS is Debian-Based OS released on December 13, 2013 designed primarily for gaming in the living room. This OS is designed for gaming with support for Nvidia, Intel, AMD but is deprived of regular software’s which come by default with other OS like: Image Viewer or File Manager, however these softwares can be installed by accessing GNOME Desktop environment.

Researches on its performance show that it can deliver performance comparable to Windows 8.1 for almost all of the games. Introduction of Steam OS has leaded to hike in Linux Gaming industry many folds. Its installation apart from system requirements, need UEFI boot support, NVIDIA, AMD or Intel graphic driver. In todays time, SteamOS has capability to support almost all of Linux Games very efficiently.

Below is the list of 15 games which we have selected for this list. Some find their place because of critical acclaim they got and some because of hype they created leading to huge profit to their developers. But all 15 have been liked by masses and by far have successfully done business in 2015.

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1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

This Action role-playing game was released on Linux on May 19, 2015. Developed by CD Projekt RED, this game is a sequel of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher. This continues from the prequel where Geralt is now free and ready to set on his new personal mission while order of world is changing simultaneously. The game has by far released 6 million copies which itself highlights its grand reception by the audience.

Story starts with a bad dream to Geralt where phantom army kidnaps Ciri. Soon Geralt awakes and realizes himself on his journey to find Yennefer with his mentor Vesemir. Soon the sequence of events make him find Yennefer who takes him to Emhyr. Emhyr tasks Geralt to find his biological Daughter Ciri.

After this the whole game revolves around Geralt going places and finding clues to get Ciri. The fate of Geralt is left unambigious at the end with him being left with three choices.

Metacritic rated PC version of game 94% out of 100, with GameRanking rating 93%. Gamespot’s Kevin VanOrd awarded it a score of perfect 10 with the game being 9th ever to receive a perfect score from GameSpot. Other reviewers also rated game above 90%. Apart from this, game also debuted at No. 1 in the UK software sales chart in its first launch week and the income grossed by the game is 600% higher than predecessor.